Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s playoff legend

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., in his first postseason since signing a 14-year, $500 million contract extension, helped the Blue Jays fall within one win of their first trip to the World Series since 1993. The 26-year-old slugger continued his October heroics in Game 6 of the ALCS on Sunday night in Toronto, helping the Blue Jays beat the Mariners with his third home run and sixth of the series. The postseason also showcased key points in baserunning skills. Guerrero bounced back from a late-season slump to put up some absolutely astronomical numbers this fall.

Sunday night’s game didn’t start out that way for Guerrero. As they did in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto and Game 5 in Seattle, the Mariners kept him from doing significant damage in his first two games against starter Logan Gilbert. In the first inning, with Nathan Lukes leading off, Guerrero chased down a low slider and ground out for a forced out. The Blue Jays scored two runs in the second inning, starting with George Springer, who hit a searing grounder to left at 116 mph. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez made a diving stop and then threw from his knees to second base to end the inning.

The 116 mph exit velocity was Guerrero’s hardest-hit ball of the postseason and the eighth-hardest of any player this fall; seven others, such as Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Schwarber, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge, were among the favorites. Vladito was not so lucky.

When Guerrero took the lead in the fifth inning, the Blue Jays led 4-0. With the score tied 1-1, Gilbert pitched a curveball; Guerrero’s bat wasn’t as violent as before — just 102.6 mph — but he lifted the ball to the pull side and blasted a 384-foot home run to left field to extend the lead to 5-0.

Guerrero also appeared in the Blue Jays’ next game when Matt Brash – the only Mariner to strike out Guerrero in this series – whacked Guerrero on the left elbow. After Alejandro Kirk’s single, Brash threw a wild pitch; Guerrero sprinted to third base and when catcher Cal Raleigh’s pitch sailed into foul territory in left field, he stood up to score – and let off some steam.

In the final game of the night, with two outs in the eighth inning, Guerrero smashed his bat and successfully hit a high, tight 98.5 mph sinker from Carlos Vargas to left-center for a single. When you are on, you are on.

So far in the ALCS, Guerrero is hitting .409/.519/.955 (285 wRC+) with three doubles and three home runs in 27 games. In the Division Series against the Yankees, he hit .529/.550/1.059 (324 wRC+) with 3 homers and just 1 strikeout in 20 PA. If there’s any consolation for the Mariners, it’s that his three long balls in the ALCS represented his only runs scored in the series, and in the Division Series, he drove in nine runs. His three hits included a solo homer off Luis Gil, followed by a sacrifice fly as the Blue Jays won Game 1 10-1. In Game 2, he again had three hits in a 13-7 win, including a grand slam off Will Warren. In Game 3, he hit a two-run homer off Carlos Rodon in the first inning to give the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead, but the Yankees came back to win 9-6. Guerrero put the Blue Jays ahead again in Game 4 on Cam Schlitler’s first-inning RBI single, and although the Yankees quickly tied the game, the Blue Jays won 5-2 and advanced.

The Mariners defeated Guerrero and the Blue Jays in their first two games of the ALCS; he went 0-for-7 with a walk and the team scored just four runs. He had only one runner on base in four games in the opener, but in Game 2 he had runners on the first three of four leadoffs; in the first inning against Gilbert, he got out with Lukes on second inning, advancing Lukes to third, but when Guerrero hit a 109-mph grounder on first and third of the third inning, it fell right on second baseman Jorge Polanco, a routine occurrence. The score was tied at 3-3 at the time, but when he hit again, against Eduard Bazardo (who induced a soft grounder), the Blue Jays trailed 6-3, and when he faced Emerson Hancock to lead off the eighth inning, the Blue Jays trailed 10-3 (he walked).

The unstoppable Guerrero returned in the Blue Jays’ 13-4 win in Game 3, going 4-for-4 with two doubles, a homer and a walk. Facing George Bryant, he hit a hot drive to Suarez, who rose high to stab the ball in but wildly delivered the ball to first; Guerrero was credited with the infield single. He knocked down Kirby and scored on the Blue Jays’ five-run third. Kirby hit a 406-foot solo shot to start the fifth inning and extend the lead to 7-2; in the sixth, he intentionally walked runners on second and first base (he scored on Kirk’s three-run home run); and in the eighth, the Blue Jays led 12-2. He went 2-for-5 in Game 4, including a first-inning single by Luis Castillo in the third inning and a 359-foot solo home run by Bazardo in the seventh inning that extended Toronto’s lead to 6-2.

The Mariners won 6-2 in Game 5, minimizing the damage Guerrero could have done. In the first inning against Bryce Miller (who was 0-for-3 in Game 1), he drove into the left-center gap with a 113.5 mph velocity, but ended up in trouble with two outs and no one on. He intentionally walked two but scored neither time, first on a free pass from Miller in the fourth inning after Lukes’ leadoff double with the Blue Jays trailing 1-0, and then again in the seventh inning on a free pass from Miller, who had led off with two outs and a runner on the inning, giving the Jays a 2-1 lead. Between those two at-bats, with the men on first and second base and two outs, and with the score still tied in the fifth inning, Brush struck him out with a sinker that, at best, grazed the inside edge of the strike zone; it might have been pitch four if Guerrero hadn’t swung. The Mariners finally tied the game in the eighth inning on Rowley’s skyscraper solo shot and Suarez’s comeback grand slam.

By many measures, Guerrero’s postseason performance was one of the best since the divisional series was introduced in 1969. I prefer this comparison because the expansion of the postseason from a World Series-only event to a multi-round playoff event expands the sample size. No one has ever made more than 36 plate appearances in seven World Series (the record is 37 in an eight-game series), and we’re not even in this year’s World Series yet, so if we want to put what Vladito has done into perspective, a good starting point is the 40-PA cutoff. As of wRC+, he is currently ranked second:

Those are some respected companies. Guerrero ranks second behind Beltran in slugging percentage and fifth in on-base percentage. In terms of Blue Jays postseason history, he surpassed 1993 World Series MVP Molitor’s slash stat line and surpassed 2015 hero Jose Batista’s four home run total. As good as he was, the Blue Jays needed one more win to ensure he avoided the fate of Alvarez and Beltran, who both missed the World Series despite strong individual performances.

All of this comes during a regular season in which Guerrero was terrific (.292/.381/.467, 137 wRC+) if not the unstoppable force he will be in 2024 (.323/.396/.544, 164 wRC+) or ’21 (.311/.401/.601, 166 wRC+). He ended the season in frustration, batting just .256/.299/.263 without a single home run in the final 21 games and finishing with 23 homers, his lowest total all season; he hit 30 last year and is averaging 34 in 2021-24.

During the regular season, Guerrero showed new selectivity as his overall swing rate (42.2%), zone swing rate (61.1%) and chase rate (21.2%) all hit career lows. He has surpassed that last one (20.5%) so far in October, and while his other ratios are even lower, his 43.6% overall volatility and 63.9% zone volatility are both well below his 2024 and career levels. What matters is that he is not missing; He lowered his swing rate from 8.4% to 5.8% (9 swings and misses in 10 games) and struck out only 4.4% of his plate appearances, down from 13.8% in the regular season.

Our sample size is particularly small in terms of individual pitch types, but one thing worth noting is that the only pitch Guerrero had a particularly difficult time with during the regular season was the changeup, where he hit just .239 with a .324 slugging percentage, just 1 homer, and a 25.6% batting average. He only had 10 changeups in the postseason, but he went 2-for-4 with two home runs (Gill and Rodon) against them and has yet to hit one. Additionally, he’s only hitting .275 with a .407 slugging percentage against sliders and a 25.3% slugging percentage in the regular season, but he’s 2-for-7 with a home run and a double (both from Kirby) so far, which is pretty good for a .857 SLG.

When Guerrero gets the ball, he hits the ball harder and more often than he did in the regular season:

By comparison, Guerrero’s career lows in groundball rate and groundball/flyball ratio were in 2021 (44.8% and 1.23, respectively); that year, he also posted career highs in average exit velocity (95.1 mph), xSLG (.597), and barrel and slugging percentage (15.1% and 55.2%, respectively). His highest average launch angle was in 2023 (10.5 degrees); during that incredible ’21 season, he averaged 9.4 degrees.

Guerrero’s inconsistency hitting the ball in the air remains the biggest what-if of his career. His bat speed is outstanding and he can charge with the best of them; his maximum exit velocity this year (120.4 mph) surpasses Ohtani (120 mph) and Judge (118.1 mph). However, these sluggers hit fly balls more consistently and ultimately did more damage, taking their production to another level. Of course, they also struck out far more than Guerrero did, and as we’ve seen time and time again this fall, contact does have its merits in forcing defenses to make plays in high-pressure situations. As Suarez’s two aforementioned games show, sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.

No one can sustain this level of performance forever, but what Guerrero has done puts him in the pantheon of October performances. Whether the Blue Jays make it to the World Series or not, they have to be excited about what they see from their half-billion-dollar slugger.