NEW YORK – Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s extended tear at the plate isn’t getting its just due. Sure, the past couple of weeks as he’s built a 16-game hit streak, extended Saturday with a first-inning homer to straightaway centre off Carlos Rodon, have been especially torrid. But this is well beyond a short-term hot stretch at the plate. Since a slow and sub-par April, he’s progressively upped the damage he’s caused, posting an OPS of .917 in May, .962 in June and 1.113 in July while keeping the vibes going a few days into August.
More impressive is that Guerrero keeps stomping opponents even though he’s increasingly isolated in a Toronto Blue Jays lineup first hollowed out by injury and trade, and now giving runway to young players seeking to secure their footing in the majors. For the moment, nothing is cooling him down. “We sit here and do all this planning and (Aaron) Boone is doing the same thing over there,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider, “and you circle Vlad’s name no matter who’s sitting behind him, because he’s that talented.”
No doubt, which is why imagining how he might fare with the type of supporting cast the even more remarkable Aaron Judge enjoys with the New York Yankees makes for an interesting thought exercise.
Judge is so absurdly off the charts right now, “it’s comical,” said Schneider, who after watching the giant hammer Jose Berrios for a go-ahead two-run homer in the first, issued the superstar outfielder an intentional walk with two outs and the bases empty in the second.
Before Saturday’s 8-3 loss, Schneider said that during Friday’s 8-5 win, he had joked with pitching coach Pete Walker about giving Judge a free pass as he led off the seventh inning. “It’s tempting, for sure, to just put up four fingers,” he explained. “But there are still major-league hitters behind him and we’ve still got major-league pitchers on the mound. The score dictates a lot of it.”
This time, the Blue Jays were down 4-1 in the second after Trent Grisham’s two-run homer earlier in the inning and they were trying to keep it there. It worked, even though Austin Wells followed with a single, as Berrios rallied to strike out Gleyber Torres. But with Juan Soto getting on-base roughly 44 per cent of the time in front of him, well, Judge is going to get his pitches, which is why he’s already at 41 homers and 103 RBIs two-thirds of the way through the season.
Pitch around him if you like – that’s what the Blue Jays did in the seventh when he led off with a walk against Ryan Burr and later scored on Anthony Volpe’s base hit – but eventually someone will make you pay.
Now, if the circumstances were reversed, and Guerrero was surrounded by a deeper lineup, would he be similarly productive? That’s an important question for the Blue Jays to really dig into this off-season when they decide how to proceed – extend-and-build-around/trade-and-rebuild/play-it-out – with the four-time all-star.
Worth remembering is that Guerrero is 25, the same age when Judge enjoyed his first monster year in the majors. His peak years are still in front of him and his best season at the plate came in 2021, when he and Marcus Semien finished second and third in AL MVP voting and Bo Bichette and Teoscar Hernandez were fellow all-stars.
What does his game look like in two or three years, with more experience and a deeper lineup around him? He can certainly hit the ball as hard as the big man. Can he grow into a patience and discipline akin to that of Judge, too?
“It’s him understanding how he’s being pitched with what’s around him a little bit,” Schneider said of Guerrero. “That’s something we talked about even when our roster looked a little bit different.”
There’s time for all that to play out, but the longer Guerrero stays hot, the more intense the conversations around him will be. After his homer in the first, he added a single in the fourth before lashing a 99.6 m.p.h. fastball down the right-field line for a double in the sixth, setting up Alejandro Kirk’s two-run single, their first non-Guerrero hit of the afternoon.
That wasn’t enough to undo the three two-run homers surrendered by Berrios over five uneven innings because the Yankees are built around Judge but aren’t Judge alone. The Blue Jays have one more season of Guerrero but they can extend him this winter to ensure there are plenty more, and then work to build around him in the same way.