Quinn scores twice in win, Sabres hand Senators fourth straight loss

Jack Quinn scored twice and the Buffalo Sabres spoiled the Ottawa Senators’ homecoming with a 4-0 win Thursday night.

TORONTO — Before reading too much into what comes next between Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Toronto Blue Jays, start with this — avoiding arbitration for a second straight year really was the minimum.

The sides accomplished that Thursday night with a $28.5-million deal that’s the third-largest sum ever for an arbitration-eligible player. A raise of $8.6 million on his 2024 salary of $19.9 million bests the $8-million bump, to a record $31 million, that Juan Soto got a year ago. And while every case is complicated, there was no reason for the Blue Jays and Guerrero to end up in a hearing room next month the way they did last year, when the four-time all-star first baseman was awarded his ask by a unanimous decision.

Good piece of business all around, then, to find the necessary common ground.

Now, whether that becomes a springboard to a lifetime extension before the Guerrero-set deadline of spring training’s first full-squad workout is an entirely different matter.

The arbitration process is designed to push teams and players to reach a deal, as both are usually loath to put fate in the hands of a three-person panel of arbitrators. Only when the sides face insurmountable disagreement does it get that far.

Free agency — all discussions now are about how to value Guerrero’s free-agent years alone — is an entirely different beast, both in how it rewards players and, obviously, in that other teams can get involved.

With Guerrero not eligible for the open market until after this season, there’s the added challenge of finding a sweet spot between buying the 25-year-old out of the chance to let others bid on him, and rewarding the Blue Jays for committing a year early.

So, that they came together to avoid arbitration doesn’t mean there’s a natural springboard in place to a longer-term deal, although it’s clearly better than the alternative.

As such, this is the hard part and an interesting model for the Blue Jays is the Boston Red Sox, who in 2022 finished last in the American League East at 78-84, watched Xander Bogaerts leave in free agency after and then faced a moment of truth with Rafael Devers.

Devers and the Red Sox first agreed on a $17.5-million deal to avoid arbitration and soon after rolled that into a $331-million, 11-year pact, locking in a cornerstone as they embarked on a soft reset, trying to compete in the big leagues while providing some internal players opportunity and stocking up their farm system.

After middling seasons in 2023 and 2024, the Red Sox own a deep and enviable farm system, which is still deep even after they leveraged it to get ace lefty Garrett Crochet, bolstering an on-the-rise roster which they can further augment.

It’s not a direct parallel by any means, but it’s the type of line the Blue Jays could take in bridging to a new core as their current group runs out this year and next.

Lots will need to go right for that to happen — the Blue Jays clearly must draft more effectively, stat, for that to even be a possibility — and they absolutely must have Guerrero be the bridge that takes them over the worrisome abyss ahead to safe ground on the other side.

For those reasons, it’s not an exaggeration to call the coming discussions with Guerrero among the most fateful in franchise history.

If he signs a long-term extension, it will easily dwarf the club’s current record deal — the $150-million, six-year contract George Springer signed in 2021 — and it will impact the team at every level for a decade-plus. The scale of such a roster decision, then, is without peer in the club’s 48 years, which perhaps explains the messy path to this pivotal point.

If he doesn’t extend, well, the Blue Jays can certainly try again in the fall when he becomes a free agent. But they’ll also have to asset-manage their core in the interim, which would mean tear-down trades should they fall out of post-season contention, and a much longer and rockier path to the other side of the cliff.

Through those lenses, a one-year deal to avoid arbitration, even at $28.5 million, was easy. The really hard work, trying to lock up Guerrero for the rest of his career and dealing with all the ramifications that come with that attempt, is here for the Blue Jays and the clock is running.