Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Rises to Superstar Status Once More

If you’re speaking with someone from Toronto who doesn’t follow baseball, they can probably tell you two things about the Blue Jays. The first is that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the best player on the team. The second is that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sucks.

The first point is pretty accurate, and it’s absolutely true this season — more on that in a moment. The second point is categorically false, but alas, such is the curse of superstardom. The player who has his face on posters all around the city is going to get plenty of credit when things go right, but he’s also going to shoulder an excessive amount of criticism when things go wrong. When you’re the guy starring in the Uncrustables ads, fans expect a crust-free performance on the field, too.

Guerrero made a name for himself in 2021, which was no easy task considering the man with whom he shares his name. Yet, with 48 home runs, 111 RBI, and a runner-up finish for AL MVP, Guerrero gave the average Torontonian a reason to talk about baseball for the first time since José Bautista was punched in the face. Then, Guerrero spent the next two years corroding his golden reputation. To be clear, no one who knows what they’re talking about ever thought he was a bad ballplayer — heck, he set a new record for the highest salary ever awarded in an arbitration hearing this past offseason — but his performance certainly went downhill. If all you were comparing him to was the best version of himself (like that motivational poster in your gym always tells you to do), he really was pretty disappointing last year:

All that is to say, the criticism Guerrero faced wasn’t entirely unwarranted, even if it was overblown. The one thing the Blue Jays needed last season was a star-caliber performance from their star-caliber player. Their pitching staff finished fifth in the majors in WAR, and their defense won the AL team Gold Glove. The offense, however, came up short too often, finishing 14th in baseball in runs scored. In 2023, a superstar season from Guerrero was all the Blue Jays were missing. This year, in a bitter twist of fate, it’s just about all they have.

Indeed, while Toronto sits in last place in the AL East, Guerrero ranks among the top 10 AL position players with 4.0 WAR. His 167 wRC+ is fifth best among qualified batters in either league, trailing only Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Bobby Witt Jr., and Shohei Ohtani. He also ranks among the top five hitters in OBP (.394), wOBA (.404), xwOBA (.414), and wRAA (39.5). His bat is every bit as potent as it was when he burst onto the scene. If he keeps this up, word will eventually trickle down to the non-baseball fans in the GTA that Guerrero, the best player on the team, no longer sucks (even though he never really did).

Ultimately, whether Guerrero thrives or flounders, he may never escape comparisons to his 2021 performance. Last year, superstar Vladdy was long gone. This year, he’s back in all his glory. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my own comparison that is hopefully a little more meaningful than the “It’s so over/We’re so back” meme. While his comprehensive offensive stats (i.e. wRC+) are almost identical in 2021 and ’24, I’m interested in the small differences that have led him to another superstar season.

To put the numbers on that graph into perspective, the difference between Guerrero over his past 25 games and Guerrero’s best 25 games at any other stretch in his career is 63 points of wRC+. That’s the difference between Barry Bonds (career 173 wRC+) and Adam LaRoche (110 wRC+). That’s nuts.

Bonkers comps aside, I’d take the exact numbers with a grain of salt, since we don’t have a great sense of the park factors at TD Ballpark and Sahlen Field, where the Blue Jays played their home games for the first four months of the 2021 season. All the same, it’s hard to deny that Guerrero is playing the best baseball of his career right now. Only four other players have had a higher OPS during any 25-game stretch (limited to a single season) over the past 10 years: Judge (2022, ’24), Ohtani (’23), Bryce Harper (’15), and Giancarlo Stanton (’17). Usually when a guy hits like this, even in such a small sample size, it’s almost a sure bet that he’s on his way to winning an MVP.

On the point of small sample sizes, I should clarify this isn’t a sustainable run for Guerrero. If common sense couldn’t tell you that, then his .432 BABIP should. Still, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t earned his success. This 100-PA rolling xwOBA graph looks a whole lot like the 25-game rolling wRC+ graph I included above:

One reason Guerrero’s numbers are so eye-popping as of late is that he has hit 11 home runs since the All-Star break. That matches his highest home run output from any 25-game stretch in 2021. Yet, he had far more of those stretches that season, finishing with a major league-leading 48 home runs. This year, he’s on pace for a mere 33 bombs. Indeed, his home run production is probably the biggest difference between his offensive profile in 2021 and ’24. However, that difference might not be as meaningful as it appears.

Firstly, Guerrero crushed 11 home runs over 21 games at TD Ballpark in Dunedin and added another 10 over 23 games at Sahlen Field in Buffalo. That’s a 77-homer pace over a full season… at a couple of minor league stadiums. To be fair, Guerrero crushed another 10 bombs in 36 games once the Blue Jays returned to Rogers Centre, which is still a 45-homer pace. However, it’s important to keep in mind that home runs were up all around the league in 2021 compared to ’24. What’s more, the Blue Jays made significant renovations to Rogers Centre that have made the ballpark far less homer-friendly over the past two seasons. For what it’s worth, Guerrero is on pace for 17 homers on the road this year, which would match his output from 2021.

It’s also worth pointing out that a ton of the home runs Guerrero has not hit have landed for doubles instead; the slugger has climbed down doubles to dingers mountain. While his home run output is down compared to 2021, he is on pace for 78 extra-base hits, which would match his total from that season. Indeed, he is only four doubles away from setting a new career high. Once again, this isn’t entirely sustainable — Guerrero’s .225 BABIP on fly balls is more than twice the league average — but you can’t look at his .585 xSLG and suggest he hasn’t earned his success. Guerrero remains a serious power threat, even if he’s hitting fewer home runs.

One last notable difference between Guerrero’s offensive numbers in 2021 and ’24 comes by way of the types of pitches he’s hitting. In 2021, Guerrero feasted on four-seam fastballs — more than any other hitter in the short history of Baseball Savant’s pitch arsenal stats (’19-present). Per Savant, he provided 34 runs of value against four-seamers that season. He also added another six runs of value against sinkers. In 2024, Guerrero is seeing heaters at a similar rate, but he has not been nearly as productive against them. He has a +6 RV against four-seamers and a neutral 0 RV against sinkers. His numbers against fastballs (not including cutters) are still above average, but they’re a far cry from what they were in 2021:

On the other hand, his numbers against all other pitches are the best they’ve ever been:

All things considered, it doesn’t really matter which pitch types a batter succeeds against as long as he’s producing the same value in the aggregate. However, Guerrero’s strong performance against non-fastballs means he has been less vulnerable in pitcher-friendly counts this year, and I wonder if that has given him the freedom to be a little choosier with his swings. He is swinging at fewer pitches in the zone this year, leading to more called strikes. When he chooses to hack, however, his results are better than ever. His run value of +11 on swings this year ranks fifth in the majors and is already tied with his +11 RV on swings from 2021. He is one of only 22 qualified batters (out of 300) with a positive run value on swings. Unsurprisingly, his success on swings has played a huge role in his overall success.

The only disappointing differences between Guerrero’s two best seasons have come not at the plate, but in the other aspects of his game. Unfortunately, he is putting up some of the worst baserunning and defensive metrics of his career. As you might imagine, that’s really saying something. Guerrero ranks last among first basemen in Fielding Run Value and third worst among all players in BsR. Thus, he is “only” on pace for 5.3 WAR, a full win less than his 6.3 WAR in 2021. It’s not the end of the world, but even for a bat-only first baseman, there is a meaningful difference between poor defense and baserunning and atrocious defense and baserunning:

We’ve written quite a bit here at FanGraphs (both directly and indirectly) about how Guerrero could get back to his peak form. They were all good ideas — hit fewer pitches but hit them harder, limit groundballs, pull more fly balls in the 95-105 mph EV bucket — but ultimately, Guerrero did it his own way. He’s making more contact, hitting more grounders, and pulling less than ever. He’s also using his remarkable raw power and beautiful swing to hit a lot of baseballs and hit them stupid hard. The results speak for themselves. He may look a little different, but in almost all the ways that matter, the 2021 version of Vladdy is back.