TORONTO — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is hearing about the batting race from family and friends calling in with updates — like Bobby Witt Jr., ahead of him did this, or Aaron Judge behind him did that — so he’s got a sense of where things stand.
Not that he really wants to know.
“I always say this, I never want to think about my numbers,” Guerrero, speaking through interpreter Hector Lebron, said before going 1-for-4 with an RBI double and an intentional walk that led to the winning run in a 4-3, 11-inning Toronto Blue Jays victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night. “I’m trying to stay focused on my work, my routines and my job out there every day. But yeah, people are talking to me about the average, how close I am. We’ll see what happens.”
Barring a sudden, extended slump from Witt, the Kansas City Royals’ MVP candidate batting .332, Guerrero, at .320, is going to need a significant surge over the Blue Jays’ remaining 14 games to catch the all-star shortstop.
To frame what that would look like, let’s assume he takes four at-bats per game the rest of the way, which gives him 56 more trips to the plate. That would push his season total to 618 and to surpass Witt, he’d need to get to 206 hits – 26 more from his current 180 – to end up at .334.
Witt, of course, would need to avoid a hot streak of his own, as would Judge, who entered Friday’s action at .319. So, a lot of pieces would need to fall into place and batting .464 over the final two-plus weeks is a remarkably tall order, although as manager John Schneider put it, “I wouldn’t put anything past Vladdy.”
“He’s not in a rush in the box right now,” said Schneider. “Early in the year, he was a little bit in a rush and trying to hit every pitch. You see hit at-bats now, he’s patient, he’s waiting for his pitch. I’ve always said he’s a good hitter before a power hitter. I think you’re seeing the hitter really come out and power’s been outstanding, too.”
Guerrero demonstrated that in his second at-bat against Erick Fedde on Friday, lacing a first-pitch sweeper off the left-field wall at 104.3 m.p.h. The Cardinals met at the mound to discuss the approach right beforehand, so they went with their A plan against him and it still turned into an RBI double that helped fuel a three-run fourth that erased an early 2-0 deficit.
In the 11th, the Cardinals didn’t give Guerrero the chance to beat them by walking him intentionally to open the inning. Leo Jimenez followed by beating out a bunt that loaded the bases and after a Will Wagner fielder’s choice, Alejandro Kirk sent a base hit to the outfield to bring home Guerrero.
The only batting champion in Blue Jays history is John Olerud, who hit a club record .363 in 1993, when teammates Paul Molitor (.332) and Roberto Alomar (.326) finished second and third behind him.
The landscape of the sport has changed significantly since then, with the emphasis shifting to on-base percentage from average at the beginning of the century, and a willingness to accept more swing and miss in pursuit of slug in recent years. Combined with rising velocity and advances in pitch design and pitcher usage, simply hitting .300, let alone winning a batting title, is a feat in and of itself.
Consider that heading into Friday’s play, only eight hitters with enough at-bats to qualify for a batting title were hitting .300. Last year, only nine hitters reached the plateau, down from 11 in 2022 and 14 in 2021. In 2016 and 2017, there were 25 players who hit .300.
Not counting the pandemic-shortened season of 2020, the only qualified hitters on the Blue Jays to reach the plateau this decade are Bo Bichette, who hit .306 last year, and Guerrero, who batted .311 during his MVP runner-up season of 2021, when he led the majors with 48 homers.
Guerrero takes pride hitting for average because he believes the portion of a hitter’s on-base percentage made up of average “is the key,” to how productive someone is at the plate. Still, in the off-season, when he does his annual reflection and reviews his numbers, he focuses on his groundball rate, which has gone from 45.6 per cent in 2021, to 52.3 in 2022, to 45.3 per cent last year to 48.6 per cent this year.
“In the off-season, you work very hard to drive the ball,” he explained. “So if for some reason, I don’t see that happen, maybe a lot of groundballs, I take it real personal and the next off-season I’m going to work double as much to make sure I drive the ball.”
Guerrero’s certainly done that this year and considering the lineup that’s been around him all season, what he’s accomplished, batting title or not, is all the more impressive.
“Batting average tells you a lot about a hitter, I’ve always thought,” said Schneider. “Home runs are great but when you look at Vlad, Judge, they’re hitting and they’re hitting with power. Not many guys can do that. Contact is kind of coming back in today’s game and it’s being valued more around the industry. You can see the game trying to get it back, too, with some of the rules. People want to see the ball put in play so I think it is coming back around and I think it bodes really well for Vladdy.”
Don Mattingly, the Blue Jays’ offensive co-ordinator who won the 1984 batting title at .343, has seen the game’s evolution from his days playing for the Yankees before coaching with the Dodgers and managing the Marlins. He remembers feeling locked in wire-to-wire when he edged out teammate Dave Winfield’s .340 for his sole hitting crown and he indeed didn’t have a month worse than .319.
Guerrero, on the other hand, started off cool at .229 in March/April but then took off, hitting .357 in May, .318 in June, 358 in July and .375 in August. What most impresses Mattingly is “the steadiness after the rough start.”
“He slowly started getting his hits,” he continued. “Then the talk became, he’s not hitting homers, but he stayed with that approach and that mindset and all of a sudden the homers came. He took his hits, the at-bats got better and he didn’t really try to force the home run. With that good approach, just hitting the ball hard, when you’re like Vlad, you’re going to get X amount of balls in the air. That’s what I’ve seen. It’s been impressive.”
Shaking off his cold opening – he went 12-for-64 (.188) through his first 17 games – was a matter of trusting in the work he put in during the off-season, said Guerrero.
“I knew with the way I felt that I was going to have a good season this year, regardless of the slow start,” he said. “You know you’re going to have some ups and downs. You don’t know when. But the hard work that I put in plus the confidence allowed me to be where I’m at today.”
