Nine months ago, Jose Bautista stood outside the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse in Dunedin and laid out his personal vision.
"My job is to play baseball, and I know what my value is," Bautista said.
As it turns out, no.
"There is a direct correlation with the success of [Rogers'] earnings-per-share after we start experiencing success."
Incorrect.
"I'm not trying to sound like it was adamant and I put down the law and I drew lines in the sand."
It sounded that way.
Long after Bautista has retired to nurse his many grievances in private, agents will be showing that clip to their clients and saying, "You've heard of negotiations, right? This is not how to do them."
Rather than give a news conference, Bautista might as well have spent those 10 minutes soaking himself in lighter fluid. It's had rather the same effect on his career.
Now that the winter meetings are done, one senses a theme emerging when it comes to the Blue Jays and anyone connected to it – decline. Steep, sudden, unexpected decline.
Bautista is the most jarring example. A few months ago, he was certain he was worth $150-million (U.S.). Now he must realize he erred in refusing the Jays' $17.2-million qualifying offer.
Through a combination of age and injury and lack of production, Bautista finds himself reduced to baseball's working class. His dreams of multiyear stability are gone. From now on, he's Mike Napoli with a better beard.
What's most notable about this is how baseball is reacting to Bautista's diminishment – with malign glee. We knew people in baseball did not like Bautista, but we didn't realize they despised him.
Bautista's people took a meeting with the Baltimore Orioles this week. You can imagine going to an AL East rival would appeal to Bautista's petty streak – a chance to stick it to everyone in Toronto who'd doubted him.
Instead, the Orioles used this opportunity to humiliate him. First, they leaked the fact the meeting had amounted to a hard "No" with an explanation – that everybody in Baltimore hates Bautista.
Then, Baltimore GM Dan Duquette repeated the insult in a radio interview: "I told the agent we're not interested. Our fans do not like your player."
Bautista's agent denied it had happened. Then Duquette circled back to confirm he'd said it.
This is almost unprecedented stuff. Every once in a while, a manager or executive will kick their own player on the way out the door, but never someone else's on the way in. The former is politics. The latter seems capricious.
That's the only way to explain Duquette going so far out of his way to embarrass a guy he's never worked with.
Whatever small market Bautista was hoping to put together for his services, Duquette has gone a long way to ruining it. Signing Bautista was always going to be a risk. Now it's a time bomb. If it goes sideways, the GM who made the call cannot say he wasn't warned. There is a significant possibility that Bautista ends up somewhere on a one-year reclamation deal for less than his qualifying offer. One can only imagine how well he's going to take that prospect.
Things aren't going quite as poorly for Edwin Encarnacion, but they're close.
It appears baseball has got smart at the worst-possible moment for Bautista's less prickly doppelganger. Nobody wants to pay $125-million for a one-dimensional soon-to-be middle-aged player.
One by one, Encarnacion's likeliest suitors have opted for budget versions of what he does. With each new signing, a little of the shine comes off Encarnacion.
Part of the point of dropping nine figures on a player is generating excitement and selling tickets. Encarnacion has been sitting on the MLB shelf for weeks now, getting mouldy. Once somebody does sign him, it's shaping up as one of those "We paid how much for whom?" disappointments.
Of course, the best fit for Encarnacion is returning to Toronto at something substantially less than his initial demand. That'd make everybody (except Bautista) happy.
With that PR and performance gift being dangled in front of them, the Jays instead signed Steve Pearce. You'll be forgiven for being unfamiliar with his oeuvre, perhaps because he's not very good at baseball.
Pearce is also a one-dimensional soon-to-be middle-aged player, but far less impressive in that one dimension and often injured. It's subtraction by addition.
While the Jays drift backward, their opponents are making ambitious leaps forward. The Boston Red Sox flipped three years of Chris Sale for a Cuban kid they'd paid $63-million in signing bonuses and resultant penalties.
The Yankees gave Aroldis Chapman a market-upending $86-million to throw one inning two nights out of three.
In Boston and New York, that sort of money is the cost of doing business. It creates an understanding with fans that the team is trying to win every year.
In Toronto, that money is a way to pad the bottom line. The team might occasionally be in, but not all the way. Not any year. They're going to hope to get lucky and do it on the cheap. If it works, great. And if it doesn't, well, we can fail to try our utmost again next year. The Jays' only gamble right now is that, having created so much new interest in the past couple of years, the inertia of 2015 and 2016 will carry them through to the end of 2018.
That's when Josh Donaldson leaves and Toronto re-enters its habitual baseball funk.
For just a moment there, this team and everyone connected to it were buoyed by an unfamiliar feeling of hope. That things were not just possible, but sustainable over the long term. You can't win every year, but you can be in with a shot – St. Louis Cardinals-style.
That feeling is being buried under market realities that were papered over for a while, but never really changed. While always talking a good line about competing with the best, the Jays remain a team of miserly aspiration. And that aspiration is to wring as much money as possible out of the baseball operation.
After a few years of flux, the familiar order is being restored. The Yankees and Red Sox think big; the Jays stay small.
It's probably fitting that as the Jays playoff ship begins to sink, it's taking everyone down with it. Even the guys who'd already got off.
Cathal Kelly