In roughly eight months, franchise cornerstone Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be preparing to hit free agency for the first time in his young career, allowing the 25-year-old superstar first baseman to speak to baseball’s 29 other clubs. Meanwhile, the Toronto Blue Jays’ future faces far less certainty as the 2025 season nears.

As players arrived in Dunedin, Fla., ahead of Tuesday’s first full-squad workout at the player development complex, everyone’s attention centred around Guerrero’s self-imposed negotiations deadline ahead of his final year of club control with the organization. But after both sides couldn’t agree on a long-term extension, the Montreal-born franchise icon now faces the realistic possibility of playing elsewhere starting in ’26.

It’s the outcome all Blue Jays fans had feared for several weeks/months leading up to this day.

It should be noted that Guerrero said he isn’t shutting the door, at least completely, on a potential return to Toronto after this season. He has continued to proclaim his love for this organization, this city and the country where he was born during his father’s Hall-of-Fame career. But anything can happen in free agency. It can often be a valuable tool for players, especially those with as much youth as he features.

Guerrero will be highly coveted next winter. Not as highly as Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto, but close to it. Franchise players rarely become available on the open market. Now that the Blue Jays are facing the possibility of losing theirs, it significantly raises the level of concern about what this franchise will resemble beyond this season.

Failing to extend Guerrero has put a ticking clock on the organization’s competitive window, which could potentially expire after 2025. And it leaves this team without a clear direction moving forward.

Guerrero, Bo Bichette, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer, Chad Green and Erik Swanson are all free agents after this season. Joining them after next season will include Kevin Gausman, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Alejandro Kirk, Yimi García and possibly José Berríos, who can opt out of the final two years of his deal following the ’26 campaign.

Toronto’s roster could look vastly different in two years. The only players with guaranteed contracts signed through ’27 include Anthony Santander (who can opt out during the ensuing off-season), Andrés Giménez, Jeff Hoffman (a free agent after that season) and Yariel Rodríguez, whose contract holds a $6-million player option for ’28, which the club can void by triggering a $10-million club option.

So, where do the Blue Jays go from here?

That’s the million-dollar question — the $400 million-plus question if you’re Guerrero. It likely doesn’t change the front office’s intention to return to a competitive state this season, vying for one of the three wild-card seeds in what’ll surely be a tightly-packed American League race.

However, if the Blue Jays stumble out of the gate for a second straight season and ultimately fall out of contention in early June, with Guerrero still unsigned beyond 2025 — as well as Bichette — general manager Ross Atkins will have no choice but to seriously consider moving both franchise pillars ahead of this summer’s trade deadline.

If that outcome comes to pass, we’d be looking at the beginning of a rebuild, one that could span several years as Toronto searches for the next versions of Guerrero and Bichette — items not easy to find. Just ask teams like the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Colorado Rockies and Athletics. It could take decades to locate gems like that again.

The ever-looming question regarding Guerrero’s future will hang over this franchise all season. And, to a lesser extent, it will for Bichette, too. But now that management has, in their words, exhausted all options with its star first baseman before he becomes a free agent, the only opportunity they have left to extend their competitive window may lie at the shortstop position.

The Boston Red Sox embarked on a similar path after Xander Bogaerts departed for the San Diego Padres in free agency a few years ago, shifting their focus to keeping Rafael Devers at all costs — which they did by inking him to a 10-year, $313.5-million extension. It’s somewhat of a backwards comparison to the Blue Jays’ situation, but those events could act as a template for how this front office should proceed.

Given how last year played out for Bichette, who missed half a season due to a nagging calf injury and struggled mightily when healthy, the chances of both sides finding common ground involving a long-term deal before this season remained extremely low. And that’s probably why the front office didn’t engage in any contract discussions with the 26-year-old over the winter. They couldn’t risk insulting him with a low-ball offer based on his 2024 woes.

It won’t be as simple as pivoting to Bichette after failing to reach an extension with Guerrero. At the same time, though, perhaps there could be an opportunity to negotiate in-season if the right-handed-hitting infielder regains his all-star form and looks more like the two-time AL hits leader who slashed .298/.336/.472 with a 127 wRC+ (100 league average) from 2022-23, opposed to the one that registered career-lows across the board last season.

A short time ago, it was Bichette who emerged as the unspoken leader and face of this team. He was the one many clamoured for Toronto’s front office to extend, while others questioned whether Guerrero could recapture his prior MVP form. Now, the narratives are reversed.

Enjoying a bounce-back performance will help cement the idea of Bichette’s 2024 season being an outlier, which should help boost his odds of landing a lucrative deal — either from the Blue Jays or another franchise. Locking him up beyond ’25 would allow Atkins and his staff to signal a direction moving forward — something they’re currently without. And it’d surely improve their pitch to Guerrero after this season as he contemplates his long-term future.

Still, even if Toronto were to extend Bichette, it remains almost impossible to envision a scenario where they’re a legitimate playoff contender if their perennial MVP candidate walks out the door next off-season.

Simply put, there is no replacing Guerrero.

The Blue Jays brass could re-engage its pursuit of slugger Pete Alonso if he opts out of his contract with the New York Mets after this season. Or they could take a run at fellow pending free agent Kyle Schwarber, who they previously pursued in 2022 but has expressed interest in remaining with the Philadelphia Phillies beyond this season. Neither offers as high of an offensive ceiling as Guerrero, though.

Whether it’s by Toronto or someone else, Guerrero will be paid handsomely less than a year from now. He afforded this team five and a half wins above replacement per fWAR a season ago, nearly one fewer win compared to his MVP-calibre 2021 showing. If he replicates that performance in ’25 or even improves upon it, it’ll serve as extra motivation for other teams to intensify their pursuits of him — both during this season and after it.

Losing Guerrero and Bichette next winter would be devastating. Yet, it’s an increasingly possible outcome that, conceivably, would set the franchise back several seasons, if not decades. That’s the risk Atkins and Mark Shapiro are currently facing with their superstar first baseman.

Of course, until he officially puts pen to paper with another organization, there’s still time to work things out. Free agency can be impactful even if a marquee player returns to his previous employer, just as Aaron Judge did a few years ago with the New York Yankees. He tested the waters, leveraged other teams’ interest to improve his former club’s offer and ultimately stayed put.

There’s zero guarantee Guerrero’s fate will end as happily for the Blue Jays, though, especially since division rivals like the Yankees or Red Sox could be their top competition. They’ll be like sharks circling their prey after tasting blood.

While Toronto remains focused on winning in 2025, failing to reach a deal before Guerrero’s deadline has all the makings for this season to become the “last dance” for all involved. Not just for the players and coaches but also for management.

As the feeling of a new season sets in, few are focused on the usual clichés echoed in camp — like which players are in the best shape of their life — around this time, instead guilty of looking ahead at the potential dark days that lie ahead for this franchise.