Vladimir Guerrero Jr. leaving Blue Jays would provide final bragging rights for Alex Anthopoulos

While Ross Atkins has done an admirable job of late salvaging the Toronto Blue Jays' offseason, adding Jeff Hoffman to the back-end of the bullpen, Max Scherzer to the back of the rotation and Anthony Santander to the middle of the lineup, the team is seemingly no closer to accomplishing its primary goal this winter: convincing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to forgo free agency and sign a long-term extension that will hopefully keep him in Toronto for the remainder of his prime.

While the Jays appear to have gotten more serious about meeting Vladdy's asking price of late, there still seems to be a gap between the two sides. Guerrero Jr. is hardly willing to take a discount just 12 months before he can hit the market and have every big-market team competing for his services, and with less than two weeks to go before the clock strikes midnight at the start of spring training, time is not on Toronto's side.

Of course, as a wise Hall of Famer once said, it ain't over 'til it's over. Toronto has built a more competitive roster around its slugging first baseman, and there's still an opportunity to back up the Brinks truck and get a deal done. But with each passing day, the odds of that happening seem to get slimmer and slimmer; at this point, you'd have to say it's more likely than not that Guerrero Jr. reports to camp without a deal, and the Jays have to reckon with the prospect of trading their foundational star. We aren't there yet, but if that does indeed come to pass, it would be a poetic coda to the Atkins era in Toronto.

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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. exit would complete Ross Atkins' teardown of everything Alex Anthopoulos built with Blue Jays

Should Guerrero Jr. eventually leave the Jays, either via free agency next offseason or via trade during this one, it'll be a watershed moment in more ways than one. Not only will it signal the departure of one of the most talented players in franchise history, but it'll also signal the departure of the last vestige of the Alex Anthopoulos era in Toronto.

Yes, really: After non-tendering Jordan Romano earlier in the winter, Vladdy is the last active Blue Jays player linked to Anthopoulos, who signed him as a 16-year-old international amateur free agent back in the summer of 2015. Toronto would go on to make its first ALCS appearance in over two decades that season, the culmination of a years-long ascent that made the Montreal-born Anthopoulos the toast of his home country.

Of course, that toast was awfully short-lived: That offseason, Anthopoulos bolted for the Atlanta Braves, where he'd go on to win a World Series a few years later. The Jays, meanwhile, pivoted to Atkins, and it's been a long, slow slide since. One by one, the building blocks of those Anthopoulos teams have been jettisoned elsewhere, replaced by a series of signings that haven't worked out as Toronto had hoped. Now, only Guerrero Jr. is left, and there's some irony in the fact that he too might bolt after being underwhelmed by the roster Atkins has put around him. No one ever said the baseball gods are without a sense of irony.