Tuesday was not a great day for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He played two games and came to the plate eight times. He managed one hit, a single, but struck out five times. He struck out more in this one day than he had in the previous nine games, a span of 40 plate appearances.
On top of a rough day at the plate, he also had some tough luck in the field. He lost a ball in the sun and was charged with an error, tacking on a few runs for the Angels that the Blue Jays would never get back.
It was an atypically bad day in what has been an atypically rough month1. Guerrero has been frankly awful in August, which is an arbitrary end point but also frames his struggles nicely for our (teeth-gnashing) purposes.
The explosion of strikeouts on Tuesday in Anaheim added a new wrinkle into something I’ve been chewing on over the last week or so: I think Vlad Jr is tired. What we’re seeing is similar to old, bad Vlad: he’s getting himself out, as much as he can. Putting crappy balls in play to produce easy outs rather than living to fight another day/pitch and swinging through tough breaking stuff when he’s behind.
Reality is somewhere less clear. The “getting himself out” point above isn’t as cut-and-dried as I’d like it to be. The bigger issue is the swing and miss that we’ve seen all season from Guerrero is coming home to roost as he struggles to get or stay into good hitters counts.
Teams have ramped up their attack on Vlad Jr’s current soft spots. It’s hardly a novel approach but he’s getting attacked with the “hard in, soft away” approach. The below chart groups pitches by type (hard, breaking, offspeed) against their position on the plate - here, the bigger number means further away from the middle of the plate away/outside.
More soft stuff away than usual and more hard stuff inside. This isn’t TRULY unusual but the difference is Vlad is chasing more now than he has before, getting into fewer hitters counts as explained above and not laying off tough pitches to earn himself more hittable stuff later in the plate appearance.
He’s still Vlad Jr so he’s still doing damage when he can, but his walk rate has cratered and his ground ball rate has grown. His performance against breaking balls looks suspiciously like the bad old days at the end of 2019 or the early part of the shortened 2020 season.
While it looks grim, it’s a very small sample (less than 50 plate appearances) and all is surely not lost. It is at this point that Vlad Jr can lean on the fitness gains he made during the offseason, hopefully rediscovering the explosiveness that made him so potent against pitches of all stripe in 2021. His consecutive games streak over, it might be worth looking for a few extra opportunities for rest when the Blue Jays hit some of the softer landing zones in their schedule.
Guerrero has shown so much growth as a player in 2021. To see him fade down the stretch would be a disappointment not just in terms of his own incredible season but what it would mean for his playoff-aspirant ball club as well.
The hope, my hope, is that beyond the fitness improvements made last winter, the Blue Jays slugger tapped into previously untapped pools of grit and perseverance, enabling him to dig deep2 to find the focus and physical strength required to finish strong. His numbers — be they 50 home runs or 7 WAR or whatever other round number goals we collectively graft our hopes upon — will more than take care of themselves. But the Rays, Yankees and Red Sox will not take care of themselves3. The Blue Jays need the best hitter in baseball operating at his best to achieve that feat and push on into October.
we’re 10 days in. Hardly a month! Relax, man.
into the bag of clichés, am I right?
The Red Sox seem determined to try.