While Sportsnet has enjoyed record-breaking ratings this month as the Blue Jays ramp up their first pennant race in more than 20 years, the team’s official broadcaster is also stuck in a protracted conflict with its highest-profile player.

Jose Bautista has refused to do one-on-one interviews with Sportsnet for the past three months in protest of the broadcaster’s refusal to pay the cost of a designer suit purchased by rookie Devon Travis as part of a TV segment aired on Sportsnet on May 19.

Bautista declined to comment when approached about the issue last week, but confirmed the Star’s understanding of the conflict.

Representatives of the Blue Jays and Sportsnet — who are both owned by Rogers Communications — also declined interview requests from The Star.

“We will not be commenting,” Sportsnet spokeswoman Jennifer Neziol wrote via email.

Bautista, a six-time all-star who has played in Toronto since 2008, has told Sportsnet executives he will not do any interviews until Travis is reimbursed for the cost of the suit or he is given a gift certificate from Gotstyle, the men’s clothier featured in the segment.

Bautista believes Sportsnet took advantage of Travis — since it was the network’s idea to do the suit-buying special — and that he needs to stand up for his rookie teammate, who is unable to stand up for himself given his lower-echelon status in the league and with his new team.

Travis, who is currently on the disabled list, declined to comment through a team spokesman last week.

In the six-minute-and-30-second segment, Sportsnet host Hazel Mae takes Travis to Gotstyle in Toronto’s Distillery District, where the rookie second baseman models a handful of suits before settling on a two-piece, cobalt blue Ted Baker suit, a microprint shirt, hounds tooth tie and “cognac” lace-up shoes.

“This is pretty tight right here,” he says.

Bautista is still giving one-on-one interviews to other media outlets, but the last time he spoke exclusively to Sportsnet was May 12, according to a search of Sportsnet’s video archive by the Star. Since then he has not done any post-game, on-field interviews and has only been interviewed by Sportsnet cameras as part of group scrums with other media.

It is an awkward standoff for Rogers Communications, which owns both the team and the broadcaster. On July 29, for instance, Sportsnet evening talk show hosts Tim and Sid used a recording of Bautista speaking to MLB Network radio when discussing comments he made following the trade for Troy Tulowitzki. But Bautista’s boycott appears to be reserved only for the TV side of Sportsnet’s operation, as he has done occasional radio interviews with Sportsnet 590 The Fan.

Janice Tibbetts, a journalism instructor at Carleton University in Ottawa, believes Sportsnet was right not to pay for the suit.

“If Sportsnet had’ve paid for the suit, it could have given the appearance of having too cozy a relationship with Travis and the Blue Jays,” she said. “It’s a lot fuzzier than out-and-out paying for news, but Sportsnet and the Jays already have the same owner, so there’s the perception already that they’re too close, that there’s an ethical conflict or there could be some threat to journalistic independence. So it just looks better if he pays for his own suit.”

It is common practice for lifestyle or makeover shows to cover the costs of clothing or haircuts when the guests are ordinary people, but the Sportsnet piece was something different, she said. “If this was a show like, ‘What Not To Wear,’ of course, that would be covered,” Tibbetts said, adding that the Sportsnet segment was a “crossover” between human interest journalism and lifestyle entertainment. “There’s an interest in him as a new player, it has some legitimacy that way and it has some value as journalism.”

But Tibbetts said Bautista is also free to decide for himself whether he wants to do interviews with Sportsnet.

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“He’s not a journalist, he’s not bound by those ethical standards. It would be another story if Rogers forced him to do interviews. Then we would have a problem of ethics. I’m just saying from a journalism point of view, from an ethical point of view, from Sportsnet’s point of view, I think that it just looks better if Devon Travis pays for his own suit.”

As a player in his first year in the big leagues, Travis’s salary this season is the major-league minimum $507,500.

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