Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. catches a foul ball to out Texas Rangers designated hitter Mitch Garver during the sixth inning in Toronto on Sept. 11.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
In the fifth inning of Monday’s blowout loss to the Texas Rangers, Vlad Guerrero Jr. came up to bat. The Blue Jays were still in it at that point. A single would have tied it.
Guerrero struck out swinging – his third swinging out in a row. Guerrero wasn’t just missing the ball. He looked as if he was trying to screw himself feet first into the batter’s box.
After that last one, and just for a minute, you could hear it beginning – a boo. In the silence that trailed Guerrero back to the bench, a few in the crowd tried it. But it didn’t take.
The Jays lost big, the bullpen took the blame and Guerrero’s good name was safe for another day. How long is that going to last?
Though the Jays’ season is almost over, no one has any clue yet how it’s gone. Good? Bad? Awful? Too soon to say.
If they make the playoffs and win a round, it was a triumph of the will. If they drop a couple more against Texas this week and end up getting pipped to the final wild-card spot, it was a disaster.
All the little decisions that define a year will be re-evaluated in that light. The apparent rendition of Alek Manoah to wherever they hide baseball players? A heroic overcoming if the Jays win; a failure of HR and coaching if they lose.
Trading for Daulton Varsho? Okay idea if they win, bad if they lose. Frozen stiff at the trade deadline? Ditto. Giving manager John Schneider some rope? You can play this game for the next two weeks and never get an answer wrong.
The ultimate of these see-saw tests is Guerrero. How was his season? Right now, a disappointment. But if the Jays flub this last push and he’s AWOL during the retreat, it was abysmal.
If the Jays go down now, someone must be blamed. Aside from the usual moaning about management, it’s already clear which player will be first up against the wall – Guerrero.
By most measures, he is a good baseball player. He’s been that way since the moment he arrived, which also makes him a bargain.
The knock on him when he first got to the bigs was that he was never going to make it through a full season. But since getting serious about his fitness a couple of years ago, Guerrero has become the Jays’ Cal Ripken. He never misses a start.
Currently, he leads Toronto in home runs and runs batted in. He’s up there in hits and on-base percentage. He plays a surprisingly decent first base. You could pick through his advanced stats for weakness, of which there are plenty. But it’s not that he’s terrible. It’s that he’s not great.
Guerrero is only really failing in one metric – in comparison to the Guerrero people expected him to be. People convinced themselves this was the Second Coming. They’re getting a randomly numbered coming instead. Just another routine player arrival.
This is the Jays’ own fault. When they were in their doldrum years with no on-field product to sell, all they could talk about was this kid in the minors who was going to fix everything.
It didn’t help when ex-Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman declared Guerrero a “legend” in spring training. He’d just turned 19 and wouldn’t make his major-league debut for more than a year.
By the time Guerrero arrived, people were frothing. He was Babe Ruth plus Ted Williams. He was going to hit two home runs per plate appearance.
How is anyone supposed to measure up to that?
Five years into his career, Guerrero hasn’t. He had one great year in 2021. It’s been a slow slide since. He no longer gets an anticipatory trill from the home crowd when he comes to bat with runners on. He’s not special any more. He’s just another one of the guys.
It doesn’t help that Guerrero’s Robin has become the Jays’ Batman. If you asked a hundred people who they’d rather keep – Guerrero or Bo Bichette – 110 would say Bichette. (A few would feel strongly enough to vote twice.)
If Bichette were some guy the Jays traded for a year after Guerrero arrived, it wouldn’t feel so much like a direct comparison.
But Guerrero and Bichette are a matched pair. They came up together and debuted within a couple of months of each other. They’ve always been discussed in tandem and, whenever that happened, it was agreed that Guerrero was the better of the two.
It hasn’t turned out that way. Bichette is shaping up to be an all-timer and Guerrero is starting to look like a Rubén Sierra. Someone who’s good, but anonymously good. Good in the background.
Given the close connection between Guerrero and Bichette, it already feels like one guy exceeded his possibilities, and the other undershot them. Like one of them really wants it and the other’s on cruise control. That impression is not helped when you watch the two of them running out ground balls.
That’s right now, and right now can change. If Guerrero goes on an almighty tear, or lifts his game in the playoffs, or finds another gear in years to come, then the story shifts.
But for the first time this year, Guerrero’s story requires a major rewrite. As of right now, the idea that he has failed to realize his promise is the through line. He’s not a bust. He’s something even more depressing. He’s a guy who should’ve been a contender.
We haven’t reached the point where Toronto fans have begun to turn on Guerrero. But that now seems more likely than the can’t-miss career everyone was so invested in selling long before Guerrero had any say in the matter.