As the Toronto Blue Jays keep searching for upgrades on both sides of the ball this offseason, one name stands out as a fit that could come together quietly but hit hard: Randy Arozarena.
He’s one of the more intriguing free agents on the board, and maybe one of the more undervalued too. Coming off a season in which he hit .281 with 26 home runs and 79 RBI, Arozarena also finished with the 12th-best OPS in baseball at .865. That kind of production is going to cost real money.
The catch is his age. At 31, he’s not the kind of player teams are likely to chase with a massive, long-term commitment, even with the bat doing plenty of the talking.
The Athletic recently projected Arozarena for a four-year, $108 million deal and listed the Blue Jays among the teams that could be in the mix.
“Amid a disappointing season for the Mariners, it was possible to lose sight of the fact their left fielder was enjoying a career year. Arozarena finished third in the American League in fWAR, and his 151 wRC+ was third in the majors behind only Yordan Alvarez and Pete Crow-Armstrong.
“Defensive metrics have consistently pegged Arozarena as a negative defender, but he’s made up for it at the plate. Since becoming a fulltime player in 2021, he’s only once had a season worth less than 2.6 fWAR and he’s never finished with less than a 114 wRC+.
Arozarena’s groundball rate spiked in 2026, but he otherwise avoids the extremes. He can run well enough to steal bases, he consistently hits 20-plus homers, and neither his walk rate nor his strikeout rate is problematic,” The Athletic wrote.
What makes him especially appealing is the October factor. Arozarena has built a reputation as one of baseball’s best postseason performers, even if the sample size is limited.
He’s only been in the postseason and played more than five games in it twice in his career, and he struggled in 2025 with the Mariners. But there’s still the memory of what he did for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2020, when he blasted 10 home runs in just 20 games.
If Toronto could get that kind of production when the games matter most, it would make an already dangerous team even tougher to handle in October.
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Toronto has reason to weigh the fit carefully. Hernndezs bat showed some improvement last season, but the defensive concerns that followed him in recent years have not gone away, which makes any reunion a more complicated call than the nostalgia might suggest. The Jays need outfield help for the seasons ahead, and whether they chase Hernndez or pivot to other free agents could shape how aggressively they try to patch that area of the roster. [Read more 🡒]