TORONTO – If you’ve been watching closely, the signs that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is turning the corner after an extended cool spell have been there over the past week or so.
Check out this sampling of swings, beginning with a third inning double Friday night at the Texas Rangers in which he turned around a 90.7 m.p.h. sinker from Dane Dunning and lined it 411 feet at 107.7 m.p.h. off the centre-field wall.
Here’s a fourth-inning base hit Saturday at 111.4 m.p.h. off a 92.9 m.p.h. sinker down and away from John King.
This is a first-inning double also ripped at 111.4 m.p.h. Sunday against a 92.4 m.p.h. cutter down and in from Martin Perez.
Finally, some deliverance for the Toronto Blue Jays slugger in Wednesday’s 5-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays when he turned on Drew Rasmussen’s 95.5 m.p.h. four-seamer and launched it 363 feet at 98.3 m.p.h. for his first homer since Aug. 30 and second in the past 26 games.
Each swing did damage on a pitch in the bottom third of the strike zone, the area where opponents most often try to attack him and where contact regularly produces the groundballs that have become such a frequent talking point.
If Guerrero starts crushing there, well, good luck pitchers.
“It just comes down to which pitches he offers at,” interim manager John Schneider said before the game. “Whenever a player is, quote/unquote pressing, those decisions get a little bit wider, if you will. I don’t think it’s anything mechanically right now in watching him. It’s just where he’s being pitched, wanting to do well. I’d love to see him take a walk and then swing at a hanging slider and hit it out, or hit it in the gap. That’s where you kind of see that he’s back. He wants to help. He wants to be a big part of the team. Just slowing it down and really just hunting his specific zone is going to be what he needs.”
Of course, making opponents pay when they’re pitching him down is another path to forcing them up in the zone, where he may end up getting those hanging sliders and taking more walks.
It’s clear that teams believe pitching him down is the way to go. This is how the Rays approached him Wednesday. With a groundball rate of 52 per cent, up nearly seven per cent from last year, opponents have contained him much better than last season.
Worth noting is that Guerrero is still among the 30 most productive hitters in the majors and the reason it feels like he’s having a down season is because of the heights he scaled a year ago.
If this is his floor, it’s a pretty damn elite floor.
“He’s obviously being pitched very deliberately from Tampa and a couple other teams,” said Schneider. “He’s really focusing on getting the ball up in the strike zone. We all see the results when the ball’s down in the strike zone with where the ball goes off of his bat. That’s a conscious thing he’s working on. But if Vlad gets going, we’re talking about an elite hitter and one of the best ones in the game. Couple that with what Bo (Bichette) doing what he’s doing and that’s a really good thing for us. With a hitter like that, you’ve got to be patient and know that he’s going to do his thing.”
Guerrero’s 28th homer of the season gave the Blue Jays (81-62) a 1-0 lead in the first inning and jumpstarted them to a third win over four outings of the Rays (79-63), who fell 1.5 games back in the wild-card race.
The all-star first baseman brought home the game’s second run with a fielder’s choice in the second and Bichette followed with an RBI single that made it 3-0, while RBI singles from Santiago Espinal in the fourth and Raimel Tapia in the sixth pushed the edge to 5-0.
All that was plenty for Ross Stripling, who continued his remarkable season with another 6.1 innings of tremendous baseball, keeping the Rays under his thumb throughout. He allowed three hits, one of them a Harold Ramirez homer that opened the seventh, and left before facing nemesis Manuel Margot, who doubled in the second, a third time.
