As the 2026 season approaches, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. isn’t foremost among the Toronto Blue Jays‘ concerns, but it’s unclear exactly what he’ll produce.
Guerrero is clearly a safe bet to be a good hitter. He’s a 27-year-old in his prime whose wRC+ hasn’t dropped below 110 since he was a 20-year-old rookie in 2019. In the seasons since his breakout in 2021, his 143 wRC+ ranks ninth among all qualified hitters.
That’s an impressive half-decade overall, but Guerrero has been tough to predict on a year-to-year basis. In 2021 and 2024, he won Silver Slugger awards and finished in the top six in MVP voting. In 2022, 2023 and 2025, he was more of a very good starter than a superstar, never topping 30 home runs or 4 fWAR in any of those campaigns.
Heading into 2026, it’s difficult to know what kind of year he’s in for. He’s coming off his worst full regular season from a power standpoint by both home runs (23) and ISO (.175), but he was electric in the playoffs, slashing .397/.494/.795 with the third-best wRC+ (241) of any hitter with 70-plus plate appearances in a single post-season run.
When considering what to expect from Guerrero in 2026, it’s probably worth looking at another piece of evidence, too: what he’s done in the spring. While the small samples and variable competition in spring make it dangerous to read too much into the results, between Grapefruit League action and the World Baseball Classic, Guerrero has raked:
|
PA |
BB% |
K% |
AVG |
OBP |
SLG |
OPS |
|
33 |
15.2% |
0.0% |
.407 |
.485 |
.778 |
1.268 |
That number of plate appearances will never tell you something you can have complete confidence in, but Guerrero has had similarly hot springs before each of his best seasons.
|
Season |
Spring training OPS |
Regular season OPS |
|
2019 |
.556 |
.772 |
|
2020 |
.934 |
.792 |
|
2021 |
1.247 |
1.001 |
|
2022 |
.888 |
.818 |
|
2023 |
1.028 |
.788 |
|
2024 |
1.218 |
.940 |
|
2025 |
.812 |
.848 |
There isn’t a perfect correlation here, with 2023 standing out as a bit of an outlier, but the two times Guerrero has been unbelievable in the spring in his career, he’s carried it over into the regular season.
It’s also interesting that one of the key ways Guerrero has excelled in the spring matches one of his greatest strengths from the post-season. Specifically, he just isn’t striking out.
During the playoffs, he struck out just seven times in 18 games, which helped him elevate his production. It wasn’t a totally unprecedented stretch in his career, but undoubtedly one of his best.
Between spring training and the WBC, Guerrero hasn’t struck out once. Although the competition level has varied, he has faced some star pitchers during this time, like Paul Skenes, Griffin Jax and Cristopher Sánchez. His 33 plate appearances are approximately eight full games’ worth of work at the dish, and Guerrero has gone eight games without a strikeout just twice in his MLB career.
Guerrero isn’t just making contact in the run-up to the season; he’s put a charge into the ball. His 27 balls in play this spring have averaged 98.5 m.p.h. — a number he bested in just two 25-batted-ball stretches last season.
He was particularly hot at the WBC, with a 101.5 m.p.h. average exit velocity and 14 of his 19 balls in play exceeding 100 m.p.h. His 116.1 m.p.h. double off Skenes was the hardest-hit ball off the emerging ace in 344 innings of MLB action (including spring-training work).
Because Guerrero’s standards are so high, these types of feats aren’t unprecedented. They’re just a taste of the slugger performing at the peak of his abilities. The 27-year-old isn’t demonstrating completely novel capabilities after making a profound mechanical adjustment or rebuilding his approach from the ground up. Those are the most obvious signs of a breakout, whereas Vladdy might just be locked in.
That alone is a positive for the Blue Jays. Combined with the predictive power of his previous special springs and the downward trend in his strikeout totals, the available signs — imperfect though they may be — are pointing towards a big 2026 for Guerrero.
