Board up the doors, the windows, and keep your crying under your breath
You don't live 'til you're ready to die
Unsurprisingly, the 2020 season was a frustrating one for those of us watching Vladimir Guerrero Jr’s progress closely. Anyone who says they know more about Vlad Jr on September 29, 2020 than they knew about him on September 29, 2019 is either lying or selling something.
It was another up-and-down campaign, albeit a COVID-shortened one, that only increased the frustration. While Guerrero was the only Blue Jays player to suit up for all 60 games this season, any attempts to forecast his future remains a guess at best. There remains too little signal and far too much noise. And, worse yet, the signal we have received is itself fractured and open to interpretation.
The heights weren’t quite as high but we were again subjected to deep troughs. Would these extremes flatten themselves out with the benefit of another 350 plate appearances? Was the adjustment he made at the end of the season more real than some of the other perceived oases?
We can point to individual moments or unsubtle displays of freakish skill but, on balance, are these the real adjustments we’ve waited for? Was the late September hot streak, kicked off by a scorer’s decision triple, the beginning of sharp upward ascent towards the elite stratosphere of great hitters in the game today? Who knows.
The biggest difference when trying to evaluate Vlad Jr after 2019 compared to today is, frankly, nobody cares. This is not a time for analysis and tea leaf reading to glean What Vlad Jr’s 2020 Season Really Means. Because last year he was a 20-year old player muddling through the ass end of a 95-loss season. Right now, today, he’s headed to the goddamn playoffs.
What do hard hit ground balls eluding the grasp of the Rays’ third baseman mean this week? They mean rallies. They mean opportunities to score runs and wins games and oust the deplorable Rays with extreme prejudice.
Expected weighted on base average is a great predictive stat, one that hints at great things for Vlad Jr in the not-too-distant future. But, in October, it’s time for storytelling stats. Numbers that tell us what happened rather than what would’ve happened if the scenario was replayed thousands of times over.
In the playoffs, it only has to work once. When you’re the underdog eighth seed, it doesn’t have to be repeatable or even fair. Just get it done and we all go home singing. The playoffs exist outside analysis as well as beyond the realm of time and space. A team that is zero percent intimidated asks just one thing of itself: you want to live forever?
Billy Beane famously told Michael Lewis that his “shit doesn’t work in the playoffs.” Nobody’s shit works in the playoffs…until it does. Vlad Jr is swinging the bat well at the moment. Is it because of adjustments or fitness or just dumb luck? For the next three games, who cares? If it works often enough between now and October 1st, the Blue Jays will figure out the rest later.