Jose Bautista arbitration hearing pushed back

According to Enrique Rojas of ESPN, and later confirmed by everybody on the internet, the Jays and Jose Bautista have agreed to push back the date of their arbitration hearing four days in order to further discuss a muli-year deal. This is great news for any Jays fan wanting the team to lock up their best player for the next several years as it clearly indicates the sides are working towards a deal.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to the potential of signing Bautista to a long term(ish) contract. I won't get into the discussion of whether or not the Jays should actually sign him - because that argument has been beaten to a pulp - but instead will focus on whether the team should sign Jose now or wait for him to prove himself for one more year before locking him up.

The first argument centres around the idea that since the Jays unloaded the massive Vernon Wells contract, along with Alex Rios' contract the year before, they now have the financial flexibility to to take a "wait-and-see" approach with Bautista. This argument has been..ugh..argued..at Getting Blanked (which if you're a baseball fan and haven't yet read, do yourself a favour and bookmark the shit out of it). The argument follows that the Jays can now afford to risk having to pay him the massive contract that he no-doubt will command should he produce numbers even close to what he accomplished last year. Instead of getting hamstrung with another large contract committed to an under-producing player (because they want to take advantage of the discount the team would receive by taking a chance on Bautista's ability to replicate last year's performance) they can simply wait until next offseason to better judge Bautista's talent.

I tend to disagree with that argument. A lot. I look at the Jays the newfound financial where-with-all as an opportunity to take a chance on Bautista being able to replicate his 2010 performance. This is all within reason, of course, but if the two sides can agree to a 3-year contract in the $30-$45M range then I (as a Jays fan) would be more than willing to take the chance.

I think we can all agree that it will be tough for Bautista to put up the ridiculous numbers he did last year, but even if his homerun production drops by 20, he's still a 30 homerun guy who adds significant value to the team in other areas with his defensive flexibility and OBP. I'm not saying he's a great defender by any means, but he's a capable defender who is able to be moved around to different positions, allowing the Jays to set their young prospects up for success by being able to place them in the field where they are most comfortable (re: Brett Lawrie).
Even if Bautista's production siginificantly drops, he'll still provide value, and if the team can sign him for three years then with the money saved on the Wells and Rios deals they can afford to pay a bad contract. It's not really all that big of a risk. This all changes, though, if Bautista is looking for a 5+ year contract. If that's the case, then run Alex, run!

I also find it hard to accept as an argument that one more year is enough to solidify Bautista as a legitimate superstar. If the wait-and-see argument takes into account that we don't yet know if Bautista is for real, are we really THAT much more confident in his long-term viabilty after two years of success? Obviously two years is a greater sample size to judge just that, but are the additional at bats really worth what would likely be a contract double the size of what the Jays could sign him for today? I think not.  

It should be an interesting next four days!