A former MVP has a message for Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
· Yahoo Sports
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s career arc has been a lot like the baseballs he hits for the Toronto Blue Jays: so high at times, fans wonder why he can’t be one of the best hitters in baseball all the time.
Guerrero, whose stellar 2025 postseason carried the Blue Jays to the 2025 World Series, is slashing .280/.372/.366. His 103 OPS+ would be the lowest of his eight-year career over a full season.
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The only one in his game is glaring. Guerrero has hit only three home runs in his first 68 games of the season. For comparison’s sake, he hit eight home runs in 18 postseason games last year.
TORONTO, CANADA – JUNE 9: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. #27 of the Toronto Blue Jays looks on ahead of playing against the Philadelphia Phillies in their MLB game at the Rogers Centre on June 9, 2026 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)The Blue Jays’ most recent MVP Award winner, Josh Donaldson, recently offered a bit of prompted advice to Guerrero on “Get it Done League.”
Josh Donaldson is absolutely right about Vladdy pic.twitter.com/ME9IfzCNiN
— W҉E҉S҉T҉ (@StlllWest) June 13, 2026
“What I see for him, it’s not a matter of energy … he would be one guy I’d say, ‘try to hit a homer.’ Just because he gets so much on top of it a little bit,” Donaldson said. “I don’t think he needs to swing harder. I think he needs to start envisioning, let’s look up to the second deck. Let’s start looking to the (Flight Deck) and start visualizing balls going that way.
“That’s what I would say to Vlad, because I think he hits the ball too low too often.”
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The stats back up Donaldon’s observation.
He’s barreled the ball up just 14 times this season, per Statcast, after doing so 61 times during the 2025 season. His barrel rate his essentially half of what it was a year ago, down to 4.9 percent from 9.0 percent.
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Put differently, Guerrero’s line-drive rate is down to 19.1 percent from 21.2 percent, and his ground-ball rate is up to 48.6 from 46.5. For a player who hits the ball so hard — and has hit the ball over the fence 186 times before his 28th birthday — it’s a surprising decline.
The 2015 American League MVP (when he hit 41 homers), Donaldson is the rare player who believes the “hit more homers” advice might help.
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