Vladimir Guerrero Jr. feels a turnaround coming.
The Toronto Blue Jays first baseman is on pace for by far the least productive season of his career, sitting on just three home runs and 25 runs batted in through 64 games, but remains confident that he will find his stride, and soon.
“I always tell the guys, don’t worry about me,” Guerrero said via MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson after Sunday’s 6-4 victory over the Baltimore Orioles. “I’m going to be good. When I get hot, I’ll get hot.
“I don’t go up there to miss.”
Guerrero didn’t miss much of anything during the team’s run to Game 7 of the World Series, lighting up October with a .397/.494/.795 slash line, eight homers, 15 RBI and 58 total bases in 73 at-bats.
He served as the main cog in a dangerous Blue Jays lineup during the 2025 postseason, and was expected to do so once again in 2026 as he entered the first season of his 14-year, $500 million extension signed last April.
The results have been disappointing by all accounts so far, but Guerrero feels he’s been trending in the right direction and is inching closer to being the aircraft carrier the Blue Jays need him to be if they are to make another run down the stretch later this summer.
“I feel way better, I feel way better,” Guerrero said of his recent play. “I’ve been pulling the ball more in the air than I was two or three weeks ago. I just listened to my hitting coaches. I’m just listening to whatever they tell me to create a plan to go to home plate.
“I’ve been feeling good and I’ve been hitting the ball hard. There’s nothing I can do, I just try to go out there and put a good swing on the ball. I’ve been hitting the ball hard lately, but this is baseball. I’m going to keep working hard and keep doing this.”
Guerrero is still hitting for average and getting on base in line with his career averages, while improving both his strikeout and walk rates, but his slugging percentage (.374) has plummeted over a hundred points below from where he’s been for the vast majority of his time in the big leagues.
His barrel rate, a metric that measures the amount of balls hit with an ideal combination of both launch angle and exit velocity, has also been cut in half from where it was last year and sits in the 36th percentile of all major-league hitters.
The expected stats would indicate that Guerrero has been of the unluckier hitters this season, and should be slugging .054 percentage points higher than his real mark of .374.
Advanced metrics and expected numbers aside, the on-field production has not been where it needs to be through three months of the season, and has been one of the contributing factors in the team having a record below the .500 mark at 32-34.
But Guerrero believes it’s coming, and it’s only a matter of time before his process begins to manifest itself in production at the plate.
“Things are going to go my way. At one point, the baseball is going to be good to me. Right now, I’m hitting the ball hard, just out. I know that’s not going to be all year.”
The Jays kick off a three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night, and will face a tough test with National League Cy Young favourite Cristopher Sanchez getting the ball opposite Patrick Corbin in the opener.
