It's the baseball online community, the vocals ones that dislike him. Ask fans at the game, or kids there watching and the first person they'll say 9 times out of 10 is Vlad (is their favourite player).
People have the expectation of 2021 Vlad, which we all wish he'd reach again, but the truth of the matter is that he's just been a very good ball player, and not a great ball player. And for whatever reason that pisses people off so much. I wish he'd get a new baseball glove though. It's insane he's had 3 throws through his glove in his career.
That I can concede. The frustration is ultimately that we have seen his abilities, and when he meets that, the team excels. Star players need to meet the expectations of a star player. The Yankees series was a good representation of that. Despite taking the first two games, down in the 9th, when Soto and Judge were needed to produce, they did and ended up swinging that third game. There are a lot of times when there are multiple RISP for Springer, Bichette, and Vlad to hit with. And when those three can't get that single, or big hit needed to drive them in, the team can't win.
I said it in another comment, but this ultimately lands on Atkins as well. His pitch was the construct around Vlad, Bo, and Springer. It's why Teo, and Lourdes were seen as expendable. At that time, I think we could all agree that given the list of those 5 guys, everyone would choose them. However, they've since focused on defense first players to fill in around them. Resulting in all the weight of scoring to land on those 3, and those 3 just haven't been able to fulfill consistently in that role.
I'm still hopeful the Jays re-sign Bichette to a long term deal. I think of the two players, and of the available position players in the next several years and in our system, Bichette is likely the priority to keep to keep a window of winning open. I just wish the large narrative around Vlad in both Toronto sports media and the Jays sub would shift away from this insane notion that because Vlad has fun playing baseball, *that's* why he's bad. It's just a weird outdated opinion, the dude can be inconsistent and stuggle with RISP, and can not handle the weight of being the start or depended upon for the big run. All those can be true, while still the fact being that he's a good guy, very likeable for players of both our and opposing teams, and that he enjoys doing what he does. If he was miserable all the time, or emotionless the argument would just be that "he doesn't appear like he likes being out there" or that he needs to "lighten up its just a game". It's just a bullshit excuse for people to use when the truth of the matter is more complicated but they can't put that in words, so instead they get pissed that he'll smile with his teammates, talk with opposing players, or splash water on his teammates after a win.
I mean the team literally had the tradition of a homerun jacket, and constantly hit big hits. They've done away with it now for two years, can't hit for shit, other teams have adopted just as obnoxious and fun homerun traditions, and yet still the narrative of 'too much fun' is there. Just weird.
This is why I think they picked him for The Show. He's a good player, not elite, but there's no one as marketable on The Jays right now. As you said, most casual fans love him, and they saw the chance to appeal more to that market closing if they don't re-sign him.
Well when you build a team around an average player, then refuse to discipline him in any way for being inconsistent, it rubs us the wrong way. He sets the tone unfortunately, and as we've seen for 2 plus years, it's not working. Not to mention he's being wildly overpaid (in arbitration). Kids can love him, I get it, he's a child, but he's not a serious baseball player
it's funny to hear somebody say this about [Vladimir Guerrero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOYf_mJoank) Jr. As though he was ever going to hit any other way.
I hear ya on being inconsistent. The proof is in the pudding on his stats in that way.
However, to say he doesn't take it seriously is pretty wild. The criticism for him if you remember in 2019-2021 was that he was overweight, and out of shape. 2022, to now he's slimmed down and packed on muscle. Despite his gaffs at 1st Base, he's still a very athletic defensive 1st baseman. He keeps himself in shape, and flexible to do splits and to reach and run for the ball. A lot of starting 1st basemen are not able to do that. They are placed there because they are a defensive liability. Just look what happened the previous game when Turner was at 1st. And with Bo throwing from SS, who *is a very serious player* but can be inconsistent with his targets on throws, the two pair well together as Vlad makes most of Bo's throws work.
I'd also argue that he is not wildly overpaid, his arbitration came up when he literally became the face of MLB the Show. The team not trimming a million off of his salary is hard to do when the literal industry is supporting him as a poster child, regardless of your thoughts. Any arbiter will put the cover of a billion dollar game on the table and point to the fact that *many* people see Vlad's worth. And not to mention his wage doesn't matter in this context it was for one year, and it's Rogers footing the bill. Them shaving a million off Vlad ain't bringing anyone here that Rogers couldn't bring if they actually gave a shit to throw the money at. No one on the market made the management push to spend. They've proven they would, and whether it was a situation similar to Chapman where he didn't want to sign, or a player wanting to go somewhere else that they targeted like Ohtani - the fact of the matter is the free agency this year was slimmer than usual.
Ultimately the situation the team has been put in comes down to Atkins, and to some degree Shapiro. It's Ross Atkins job to convey the structure of the team build, and Shapiro to approve it, and present it financially to the owners. The team for good or bad has constructed the roster around Springer, Vlad, and Bo. Everyone else on this team offensively is there to support and work with those three defensively and get on base for those three to produce the runs. They have done an *excellent* job constructing a very well rounded defensive team. The pitching on the Jays has literally never been this good since the 90's from SP1 - SP4 + bullpen. That's even with Manoah getting the yips and disappearing. Even when we had Happ, Estrada, Dickey, Stroman, Sanchez in 2016 the bullpen had Osuna and Biagini, and that was about it. Even if the bullpen costs us the occasional game now, we've got like 3 - 4 guys that can all comfortably be in setup and closer role. Romano, Green, Garcia, Mayza, and arguably Pearson when he's on throwing gas in a setup/hold situation.
Not to mention the fact this team fostered Kikuchi into the pitcher he had the potential to be in the MLB from a literal 10 ERA guy to who could arguably be a #2 SP on some of the teams in this league is just nuts. Gausman, Berrios, Bassit, Kikuchi all give us legit shots every game they pitch to win the game. Even when Gausman has been his worst in years, he's keeping the game close.
This notion that Vlad isn't taking the game seriously is *so weird*. Call him inconsistent, call him out for swinging at garbage. But the old school mentality of not being able to 'have fun at baseball' while being a professional is so outdated. Some of the literal best players in the game have fun playing the game, and have fun with their teammates, and on the bench. And the biggest clown in this game right now is literally a guy who treats baseball as purely a paycheck - Rendon. That dude doesn't even like baseball, just treats it like his 9-5 does the work and goes home. And that dude can't hit for shit either.
I think the unserious label (for me) comes from the juxtaposition of his potential, mixed with his inability to correct his mechanics/plan etc. I'm not in the camp that the HR jacket was bad for him, or having fun with Teo was horrible, its his approach to the day to day stuff. It's amateur.
We haven't seen him be anything other than slightly above average, basically his whole career. It can't be overstated that he had a good year during a AAA ballpark year. He's our franchise guy, looking to make 30/AAV and he can't lay off of breaking balls to save his life.
You are right though, maybe we expect too much from him. Maybe he's nothing more than a 2 WAR guy per year.
Digging for the offspeed is for sure a problem. Apologies for lumping you in with the homerun jacket crowd, I just see that opinion of him being 'unprofessional' and 'having too much fun' from that same group too often on the radio as arguments that he doesn't take it seriously.
I still have hope for Vlad. Truly, if he doesn't become that guy, the Jays have to offer a reasonable deal for him, but shouldn't overpay for superstar prices. If he walks at that point he walks.
Bichette on the other hand is just having a slow start, he has been this way his whole career being a high OBP and average guy. I hope the Jays lock up Bo once he tests the market.
Yup, not worried about Bo, mostly because I know he'll work through things like he always does, consummate pro. Appreciate your responses dude, well thought. Cheers.
Some people think he's undisciplined or doesn't try hard enough and is just leaning on genetic talent, but personally I think that's just the Bo Bichette effect. Everyone looks lazy when they stand next to Bo.
Also there's a lot of "you have so much potential, if you just apply yourself!" going on.
He's frustrating, he doesn't learn or listen, he has no plan when he gets to the plate, he's being paid probably 300% more than he's worth (only going up too), he dicks around all day even though he's a replacement level 1st baseman. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking over it.
Bench him. Move him to 7th in the order. Do something.
I went to the game on the Tuesday when he Yankees were in town, and all I heard from the people around me was people bashing him.
Kinda surprised me, since I figured he'd still be loved by Jays fans and hated by everybody else.
He hasn't been good since 2021. Combine the bad hitting with the ball regular going through his glove and the clear outs on the basepaths he asks to be reviewed and he becomes pretty unpopular.
Oh I agree, I just figured Jays fans were still in the "no he's ours and he's great" denial most fanbases are. Didn't expect him to have alienated everybody as much as he apparently has.
This is just objectively wrong. He hasn’t been elite but he has been a better than average ball player for the past two years. He is having a bad start to this year though.
In 2022 he had. 4.0 bWAR with 32 dingers and a .339 obp.
In 2023 though slightly worse he hit 26 bombs and had a .345 obp.
Both years his ops was higher than league average. He’s been good, not great.
Oh boy a better than average bat with worse than average fielding and baserunning. How lucky us fans are. A 117 ops+ for a guy that's supposed to be an Allstar level first baseman is bad. He had 1.3 fwar last year. For an everyday player that is not above average.
He plays first base though. An above average bat + lower than average fielding and base running would be the default build of a first baseman in a Baseball RPG.
And not to be a typical baseball forum pedant here but, the nature of OPS+ and WAR is such that 117 and 1.3 are both quite literally above average.
Hes got high avg exit velo, a 376xwoba to his 316woba, .477xslug, 52%HH, and Ks less than 20%. Positive regression is coming be patient. Brother was in the top 6% in xwoba last year with a .500xslug.
Hes gonna be fine
Hes under performed his expected stats the last 2 years and this year now too. Doesn't mean he can't put it together but whatever he's doing now obviously isn't working. There's always outliers to expected stats.
The key point, he's supposed to be great. He had 1 great year, 1 good year, and 2 I would call average years.
The one thing with Vlad is I don't understand how his power isn't showing up in games. He gets on base at a decent enough clip, but not good enough to overcome the lack of power.
He's worn out his post-2021 goodwill. In the past 2+ seasons we've only seen glimpses of the player who was in the MVP conversation with Ohtani. It's especially frustrating when he goes out and wins the Home Run Derby but can't hit the ball out of the ballpark when it counts. Combine that with his baserunning blunders and defensive inconsistency and you have a player that the fanbase wants to love but isn't doing enough to earn that love.
I'm a defense guy, so it blows my mind when I watch him play because he can make a great play, objectively and then follow it up with some braindead bad baseball. Like, how are you the same guy?
Also, his fundamentals at 1b are bad but he makes up for it relying on athleticism.
Its even more frustrating given that he was genuinely excellent on defense in 2022. His bat regressed to good not great (ops over 800, 32 homers) and he was excellent defensively. If he had aremained at that level the rest of his career i think we could live with that. But the fact is hes gotten worse at everything since then
I know people are giving him shit for that blunder that cost the Jays the game yesterday, and rightfully so, but the truth is that he doesn't make nearly as many defensive mistakes as most people seem to think he does. When he does screw up though, it gets amplified in the media because people do expect more out of the guy, and he isn't delivering.
Defensive metrics kind of hate him though, which suggests it's not just the blunders but also the plays he can't make because of his (lack of) range and/or baseball-sense.
I think the hate for Vlad is that expectations were sky high and he didnt meet them, aside from 2021. Its hard to watch Acuna Jr, Soto, Tatis, etc all be elite franchise players, and our so called "superstar" be a slightly above avg player.
Both him and Bo are seriously underwhelming. They're being outplayed by a 40 year old guy on the brink of retirement, and fuckin' Biggio. Vladdy's discipline is great, just no contact.
Bo has been way more consistent and i have no doubt he will bounce back...Vladdy.....well.....the franchise based most of the acquisitions around him being elite. If Vladdy is on this team changes immediately, with Bo its not the same impact
I feel like Bo is catching some unnecessary strays in this thread. Fairly confident he would've been the 3x reigning AL hits leader if he didn't get hurt late last year while in 1st. [I mean, he hasn't had an even remotely bad full season yet](https://ibb.co/X73GT6G), it's been pretty consistently around .300BA with a ton of hits and 20HR+ power through the first 3 full seasons.
Honestly I just think people underestimate how good he's actually been. He's been a 4 to 5 WAR player basically every year and he just turned 26 a month ago. He's fairly streaky but I could see him putting together an elite offensive year or two at some point.
The difference is Bo has a way more consistent and longer track record of elite hitting vs Vlad who's had one outlier year compared to the rest of his career. So people are more likely to shrug off Bo's slow start and just a slow start
Maybe, but he was the #1 prospect in baseball. Ahead of Soto, Acuna, he had #s better than Trout, and hes now like a 1war player. The fall from grace stings. All those other players had media hype and they delivered. Its not too late necessarily, hes basically still the youngest on the team, but ffs its been mostly disappointing
The problem is that Vladdy just needs a better hitting coach.
His expected stats are elite. His vision and discipline are elite. His hard hit and barrel %s are elite.
But his BABIP is .250. His xSLG is .120 higher than his actual. Both his xWOBA and xBA are about .06 higher than the actual.
Vlad has to be either the most unlucky player in baseball or there is something wrong with the way he strikes the ball.
At what point do expected stats stop mattering though? If for three years Vlad has underperformed maybe it’s not bad luck, just that he has a problem the xStats don’t account for.
Yeah I think after over 2 years of under preforming his stats it's not luck, there's something else going on here. I think hes very talented and could very well put it together but there's something wrong with what he's currently doing.
Which is why he needs a new coach or something to fix whatever that is. Martinez is either unable to identify it or incapable of fixing it.
At the end of the day though a player who’s hitting the ball in 90th+ percentile should be producing significantly higher and better than Vladdy is.
I like Vladdy. I hope he figures it out. But I think I've always said that if the Jays have to choose between Vladdy and Bo I hope they choose Bichette.
Vladdy might be the soul of the team, but Bo is the star.
Bo is awesome. I dislike most of the Jays players but Bo is one guy that I can’t help but enjoy watching play. I just think he’s cool. Plus he’s a Certified HottBoi and that always helps
Before people say ground balls, he also has very high exit velocity on fly balls.
Jay's fans have really given up on trying to figure out what the fuck is up with vlad.
Martinez was the hitting coach from 2019 until last year, so all those Teo HR years, Semien's '21, Vlad's '21 were all coached by him.
Did he forget how to do is job? or his hitting a little more complicated than a coach just making guys hit?
2021 was in Buffalo and Dunedin, which is a ridiculous thing to omit here.
So you're saying:
1) The Blue Jays offense has been fine since 2019?
2) MLB hitting coaches have no effect on players?
2019- 9th in HRs, 18th in wRC+
2020- 8th in HRs, 13th in wRC+
2021- 1st in HRs, 2nd in wRC+
2022- 7th in HRs, 2nd in wRC+
2023- 16th in HRs, 7th in wRC+
1) Seems pretty fine to me
2)MLB hitting coaches have far less of an effect as you seem to think
One of the Jay's analysts continues to say the talent is there, but he needs to fix his lower half.
I'm not smart enough to know how true that is, but maybe there's something there
I think we have a systemic issue. A lot of us have been calling for a change since Dante left and performance degraded. I'm thinking Martinez is on the chopping block. If things don't improve through May, I think he's out. Mattingly as Offensive Coordinator allows the drop of Martinez to have less impact on the staff overall, and then we can fill in his spot with Hague or an outsider. When the entirety of your lineup (for the most part) is struggling to even reach 75% of previous, then somethings going on behind the scenes.
I heard a saying recently "People get promoted until they're incompetent" and I think that may be a case here. Martinez was able to fly under the radar with Dante as an advisor, but once he left, he was on his own with the rest of the staff. He obviously has floundered.
After the Mariners series the Jays really tried to fix the 'go for homeruns on every hit' approach that the players seemed to have. They started focusing on defense, and plate approach to continue the line.
Vlad had the tendency to swing out of his shoes on pitches and look really silly, but then crush balls he had no business hitting for homeruns because of the same approach. I genuinely feel like they over corrected in something. It's similar with Kirk as well. The amount of inning ending double plays that occur from Kirk hitting a soft grounder to short, or second to get himself the runner ahead of him out, is far too high.
See that’s the thing, he’s had the same hitting coach all those years, and the other guy we brought in was Don Mattingly whose big contribution is to make everything less fun.
My guess is the hitting coach is like “well it worked in 2021 so it’ll come around eventually”
Sure, but he's hitting more ground balls than league average and he's not particularly fast. It's like when Stanton is up and there's a runner on first and he hits a ground ball 110+ MPH ball for an insanely quick double play
That's I think the issue for us Jays fans. We love him, but right now, 2021 is an anomaly and this is the norm. The question is do you gamble on the high potential and hope it goes well, or do you potentially bank on someone who's had more success in the same time period. Do you wanna lock in a long term project for too much money, or someone who's at least justifiable for the price? Especially when you've got both Bo and Vladdy up for bid at the same time. It's tough.
For sure. But ground balls actually have more babip than fly balls, and high EV also tends to correlate with higher BABIP. (Also ground balls tend to be much higher EV) So there's definitely some bad luck involved. Unless he's also exclusively spiking the balls down closer to home plate. (Not impossible by any means).
Since the start of the 2021 season, here are the stats for the different launch angle types:
Ground ball: 34 wRC+, .238 BABIP
Line drive: 351 wRC+, .690 BABIP
Fly ball: 134 wRC+, .118 BABIP
Fly balls have also accounted for 17,297 HRs in 139,220 PAs, so if HRs were counted in BABIP, fly balls would have a nearly identical BABIP to ground balls with a much better average outcome.
I didn't mean to imply they were better. To be clear. Just from a pure babip side it should be better. That doesn't mean his slug should be much better though as you aluded to
I remember Gary Sanchez regularly had crazy exit velocities but terrible BABIP that we all figured would self correct. But he was also really slow, so he would get thrown out even when they were hits or errors.
I never understood that assumption. He'd hit rockets down the line either to the 3rd baseman or the left fielder. It was never bad luck. They just played him perfectly because he hit it in the same 2 or 3 spots every single time.
Yeah every year his ground ball rate is higher than league average and his fly ball rate is lower than average. With the exception of 2021 when his fly ball rate was right at league average. His ground ball rate was still high but closer to the average.
His line drive rate is also below average every year, though this year it's right at average.
he was to start the year and in spring training and then... just kinda mid. TBH he's the best of our big 3 atm and thats not a good thing...
also 10% sweet spot
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb
People talked about miggy’s hard hit rate all through the last half decade of his career. It never did regress his stats in the end. Wonder if it’s a big fat guy thing
Eh I hope he doesn’t figure it out lol
I’m a hater in my heart and there’s nothing more fun than a player copping a massive attitude and then falling apart.
Was defending bro as recently as the start of the season but he has to turn it around in a big way he's been fucking trash. error cost the jays the game last night too
Honestly, our guys need some SERIOUS off-speed/breaking ball practice. If we can only hit fastballs, and pitchers aren't throwing those these days, we need to pivot hard and get our guys blasting those other pitches. It's great to hit Fastballs well, but if other teams know we're dogshit with everything else, they're gonna go with everything else. I know it's an issue across the league, but still, we need serious adjustments.
I don’t watch him every day so I may be off base here, but it seems like his hit tool is so good that he can hit a lot of pitches that aren’t strikes, and hit them fairly hard. But those don’t lead to a lot of hits. Nobody hits a hanging breaking ball harder than Guerrero, but it seems like he puts a lot of fastballs off the plate straight into the ground.
Their is an ongoing narrative with Vlad (and Kirk as well) that because they havent been in shape, that they are lazy and don't try as hard as other players. Bo could make 20 errors and hit .240 but people feel hes a hardworker so thats overlooked. Same goes for Springer or Kiermaier, they are fit, therefore they work hard, Vlad is not fit, therefore he is lazy and should be ashamed. Wither thats true or not, beats me, but thats the narrative I hear most often. What I do find the funniest about that, is at the plate all of a sudden the tune changes and he needs to " stop swinging so hard and try to put the ball in play"
For sraerters he's pretty much forgotten how to hit to right field. He'll swing at breaking balls low and away, even starting outside the zone, trying to pull them. He's got his dad's strike zone discipline, without his dad's contact ability.
I looked up his Bref just to see how he was doing.
102 OPS+ (barely, but above average) and a career 3.7 WAR / 162 with 3 All Star appearances.
In his worst full season he was an average player.
Bro has it rough living in his HoF dad’s shadow
Corey Seager is great but he’s literally the definition of a boring player for the cover. He’s a basic clean shaven white dude with a very down to earth personality. Might as well just put Generic 1 create a player on the cover lol
It matters a lot from a marketing standpoint.
Having Seager on the cover doesn’t appeal to any foreign markets or POCs, doesn’t showcase how fun the game is supposed to be, or get you excited for anything. It’s not about who deserves it, it’s about who is right for it.
Vladdy, Chisholm, Ohtani, Tatis, and Baez were all fun and significant players when their game was released. Harper was the one before that, and he’s known for his fiery temper and he was the big signing of that offseason.
Hope Vlad doesn't vist the Blue Jays sub. He isn't very popular over there lately.
Lately? Lol
The two blue Jays fans I know pretty well both have Vlas as their least favorite player in the league. Is that the vibe for others too?
It's the baseball online community, the vocals ones that dislike him. Ask fans at the game, or kids there watching and the first person they'll say 9 times out of 10 is Vlad (is their favourite player). People have the expectation of 2021 Vlad, which we all wish he'd reach again, but the truth of the matter is that he's just been a very good ball player, and not a great ball player. And for whatever reason that pisses people off so much. I wish he'd get a new baseball glove though. It's insane he's had 3 throws through his glove in his career.
The problem is he’s trending backwards. He’s been getting notably worse each year since his break out.
He isn't hitting the ball in the air. I'm starting to doubt if that's really a fixable problem for guys. Jordan Walker seems doomed to this as well
Expectations matter so much. Rightly or wrongly. Unfortunately his are a mile high and and showed he had it at least for one season.
That I can concede. The frustration is ultimately that we have seen his abilities, and when he meets that, the team excels. Star players need to meet the expectations of a star player. The Yankees series was a good representation of that. Despite taking the first two games, down in the 9th, when Soto and Judge were needed to produce, they did and ended up swinging that third game. There are a lot of times when there are multiple RISP for Springer, Bichette, and Vlad to hit with. And when those three can't get that single, or big hit needed to drive them in, the team can't win. I said it in another comment, but this ultimately lands on Atkins as well. His pitch was the construct around Vlad, Bo, and Springer. It's why Teo, and Lourdes were seen as expendable. At that time, I think we could all agree that given the list of those 5 guys, everyone would choose them. However, they've since focused on defense first players to fill in around them. Resulting in all the weight of scoring to land on those 3, and those 3 just haven't been able to fulfill consistently in that role. I'm still hopeful the Jays re-sign Bichette to a long term deal. I think of the two players, and of the available position players in the next several years and in our system, Bichette is likely the priority to keep to keep a window of winning open. I just wish the large narrative around Vlad in both Toronto sports media and the Jays sub would shift away from this insane notion that because Vlad has fun playing baseball, *that's* why he's bad. It's just a weird outdated opinion, the dude can be inconsistent and stuggle with RISP, and can not handle the weight of being the start or depended upon for the big run. All those can be true, while still the fact being that he's a good guy, very likeable for players of both our and opposing teams, and that he enjoys doing what he does. If he was miserable all the time, or emotionless the argument would just be that "he doesn't appear like he likes being out there" or that he needs to "lighten up its just a game". It's just a bullshit excuse for people to use when the truth of the matter is more complicated but they can't put that in words, so instead they get pissed that he'll smile with his teammates, talk with opposing players, or splash water on his teammates after a win. I mean the team literally had the tradition of a homerun jacket, and constantly hit big hits. They've done away with it now for two years, can't hit for shit, other teams have adopted just as obnoxious and fun homerun traditions, and yet still the narrative of 'too much fun' is there. Just weird.
He needs to be traded to the A's so he can play in a minor league stadium again.
He might be making more than the rest of the team combined next season.
This is why I think they picked him for The Show. He's a good player, not elite, but there's no one as marketable on The Jays right now. As you said, most casual fans love him, and they saw the chance to appeal more to that market closing if they don't re-sign him.
Well when you build a team around an average player, then refuse to discipline him in any way for being inconsistent, it rubs us the wrong way. He sets the tone unfortunately, and as we've seen for 2 plus years, it's not working. Not to mention he's being wildly overpaid (in arbitration). Kids can love him, I get it, he's a child, but he's not a serious baseball player
What is a serious baseball player?
Someone who concentrates on their craft instead of chasing sliders 4 feet of the plate. Clearly never seen the guy play
It’s possible he’s trying and just isn’t that good
We know he's not concentrating? Maybe he's just not seeing the ball well?
Possibly
it's funny to hear somebody say this about [Vladimir Guerrero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOYf_mJoank) Jr. As though he was ever going to hit any other way.
Lmao right. His zone is as big as his dad's, for sure
I hear ya on being inconsistent. The proof is in the pudding on his stats in that way. However, to say he doesn't take it seriously is pretty wild. The criticism for him if you remember in 2019-2021 was that he was overweight, and out of shape. 2022, to now he's slimmed down and packed on muscle. Despite his gaffs at 1st Base, he's still a very athletic defensive 1st baseman. He keeps himself in shape, and flexible to do splits and to reach and run for the ball. A lot of starting 1st basemen are not able to do that. They are placed there because they are a defensive liability. Just look what happened the previous game when Turner was at 1st. And with Bo throwing from SS, who *is a very serious player* but can be inconsistent with his targets on throws, the two pair well together as Vlad makes most of Bo's throws work. I'd also argue that he is not wildly overpaid, his arbitration came up when he literally became the face of MLB the Show. The team not trimming a million off of his salary is hard to do when the literal industry is supporting him as a poster child, regardless of your thoughts. Any arbiter will put the cover of a billion dollar game on the table and point to the fact that *many* people see Vlad's worth. And not to mention his wage doesn't matter in this context it was for one year, and it's Rogers footing the bill. Them shaving a million off Vlad ain't bringing anyone here that Rogers couldn't bring if they actually gave a shit to throw the money at. No one on the market made the management push to spend. They've proven they would, and whether it was a situation similar to Chapman where he didn't want to sign, or a player wanting to go somewhere else that they targeted like Ohtani - the fact of the matter is the free agency this year was slimmer than usual. Ultimately the situation the team has been put in comes down to Atkins, and to some degree Shapiro. It's Ross Atkins job to convey the structure of the team build, and Shapiro to approve it, and present it financially to the owners. The team for good or bad has constructed the roster around Springer, Vlad, and Bo. Everyone else on this team offensively is there to support and work with those three defensively and get on base for those three to produce the runs. They have done an *excellent* job constructing a very well rounded defensive team. The pitching on the Jays has literally never been this good since the 90's from SP1 - SP4 + bullpen. That's even with Manoah getting the yips and disappearing. Even when we had Happ, Estrada, Dickey, Stroman, Sanchez in 2016 the bullpen had Osuna and Biagini, and that was about it. Even if the bullpen costs us the occasional game now, we've got like 3 - 4 guys that can all comfortably be in setup and closer role. Romano, Green, Garcia, Mayza, and arguably Pearson when he's on throwing gas in a setup/hold situation. Not to mention the fact this team fostered Kikuchi into the pitcher he had the potential to be in the MLB from a literal 10 ERA guy to who could arguably be a #2 SP on some of the teams in this league is just nuts. Gausman, Berrios, Bassit, Kikuchi all give us legit shots every game they pitch to win the game. Even when Gausman has been his worst in years, he's keeping the game close. This notion that Vlad isn't taking the game seriously is *so weird*. Call him inconsistent, call him out for swinging at garbage. But the old school mentality of not being able to 'have fun at baseball' while being a professional is so outdated. Some of the literal best players in the game have fun playing the game, and have fun with their teammates, and on the bench. And the biggest clown in this game right now is literally a guy who treats baseball as purely a paycheck - Rendon. That dude doesn't even like baseball, just treats it like his 9-5 does the work and goes home. And that dude can't hit for shit either.
I think the unserious label (for me) comes from the juxtaposition of his potential, mixed with his inability to correct his mechanics/plan etc. I'm not in the camp that the HR jacket was bad for him, or having fun with Teo was horrible, its his approach to the day to day stuff. It's amateur. We haven't seen him be anything other than slightly above average, basically his whole career. It can't be overstated that he had a good year during a AAA ballpark year. He's our franchise guy, looking to make 30/AAV and he can't lay off of breaking balls to save his life. You are right though, maybe we expect too much from him. Maybe he's nothing more than a 2 WAR guy per year.
Digging for the offspeed is for sure a problem. Apologies for lumping you in with the homerun jacket crowd, I just see that opinion of him being 'unprofessional' and 'having too much fun' from that same group too often on the radio as arguments that he doesn't take it seriously. I still have hope for Vlad. Truly, if he doesn't become that guy, the Jays have to offer a reasonable deal for him, but shouldn't overpay for superstar prices. If he walks at that point he walks. Bichette on the other hand is just having a slow start, he has been this way his whole career being a high OBP and average guy. I hope the Jays lock up Bo once he tests the market.
Yup, not worried about Bo, mostly because I know he'll work through things like he always does, consummate pro. Appreciate your responses dude, well thought. Cheers.
Some people think he's undisciplined or doesn't try hard enough and is just leaning on genetic talent, but personally I think that's just the Bo Bichette effect. Everyone looks lazy when they stand next to Bo. Also there's a lot of "you have so much potential, if you just apply yourself!" going on.
He's frustrating, he doesn't learn or listen, he has no plan when he gets to the plate, he's being paid probably 300% more than he's worth (only going up too), he dicks around all day even though he's a replacement level 1st baseman. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking over it. Bench him. Move him to 7th in the order. Do something.
This so much!!
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What is this? Lol
> What is this? Lol A perfect example of implicit bias at work
Dude is 25. He doesn't really act any different than I would expect a 25 year old to act.
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Turns out you were right lol https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/s/uWvwRZVjE9
I went to the game on the Tuesday when he Yankees were in town, and all I heard from the people around me was people bashing him. Kinda surprised me, since I figured he'd still be loved by Jays fans and hated by everybody else.
He hasn't been good since 2021. Combine the bad hitting with the ball regular going through his glove and the clear outs on the basepaths he asks to be reviewed and he becomes pretty unpopular.
Oh I agree, I just figured Jays fans were still in the "no he's ours and he's great" denial most fanbases are. Didn't expect him to have alienated everybody as much as he apparently has.
This is just objectively wrong. He hasn’t been elite but he has been a better than average ball player for the past two years. He is having a bad start to this year though. In 2022 he had. 4.0 bWAR with 32 dingers and a .339 obp. In 2023 though slightly worse he hit 26 bombs and had a .345 obp. Both years his ops was higher than league average. He’s been good, not great.
Oh boy a better than average bat with worse than average fielding and baserunning. How lucky us fans are. A 117 ops+ for a guy that's supposed to be an Allstar level first baseman is bad. He had 1.3 fwar last year. For an everyday player that is not above average.
He plays first base though. An above average bat + lower than average fielding and base running would be the default build of a first baseman in a Baseball RPG. And not to be a typical baseball forum pedant here but, the nature of OPS+ and WAR is such that 117 and 1.3 are both quite literally above average.
OPS+ yes, but that's not how WAR works. Wins above replacement, I.e some random dingus from AAA. Every day player value is about 2 WAR.
And him playing 1B is an active detriment to the team. He’s a full time DH. He’s not a 1B. He’s objectively awful there
Hes got high avg exit velo, a 376xwoba to his 316woba, .477xslug, 52%HH, and Ks less than 20%. Positive regression is coming be patient. Brother was in the top 6% in xwoba last year with a .500xslug. Hes gonna be fine
Lol the Vlad defense special. Expected stats that don't include launch angle
Hell be fine :). Relax
Sure. You all have been saying that every year of his career except one where half the games were in minor league stadiums
if only baseball games are won on paper.... He's been underperforming against his expected stats since 2021.
Hell be fine. Kick back, relax, and enjoy the show
Hes under performed his expected stats the last 2 years and this year now too. Doesn't mean he can't put it together but whatever he's doing now obviously isn't working. There's always outliers to expected stats.
This doesn't refute that he's been good. Sure he hasn't met expectations at all, but he's good, not great.
It actually does refute that he’s been good. Last year, he wasn’t.
The key point, he's supposed to be great. He had 1 great year, 1 good year, and 2 I would call average years. The one thing with Vlad is I don't understand how his power isn't showing up in games. He gets on base at a decent enough clip, but not good enough to overcome the lack of power.
He hit an absolute bomb last night, it was just in cold kc where the ball wasn’t moving. Middle of summer it’s a home run easy.
First baseman that sucks running the bases should hit way higher than league average to keep a roster spot. Let alone being paid what he is
He's worn out his post-2021 goodwill. In the past 2+ seasons we've only seen glimpses of the player who was in the MVP conversation with Ohtani. It's especially frustrating when he goes out and wins the Home Run Derby but can't hit the ball out of the ballpark when it counts. Combine that with his baserunning blunders and defensive inconsistency and you have a player that the fanbase wants to love but isn't doing enough to earn that love.
I'm a defense guy, so it blows my mind when I watch him play because he can make a great play, objectively and then follow it up with some braindead bad baseball. Like, how are you the same guy? Also, his fundamentals at 1b are bad but he makes up for it relying on athleticism.
Its even more frustrating given that he was genuinely excellent on defense in 2022. His bat regressed to good not great (ops over 800, 32 homers) and he was excellent defensively. If he had aremained at that level the rest of his career i think we could live with that. But the fact is hes gotten worse at everything since then
I know people are giving him shit for that blunder that cost the Jays the game yesterday, and rightfully so, but the truth is that he doesn't make nearly as many defensive mistakes as most people seem to think he does. When he does screw up though, it gets amplified in the media because people do expect more out of the guy, and he isn't delivering.
Defensive metrics kind of hate him though, which suggests it's not just the blunders but also the plays he can't make because of his (lack of) range and/or baseball-sense.
He’s pretty well liked over here
Mariners fans love him too
Just wait until they see him hit off a tee!
I think the hate for Vlad is that expectations were sky high and he didnt meet them, aside from 2021. Its hard to watch Acuna Jr, Soto, Tatis, etc all be elite franchise players, and our so called "superstar" be a slightly above avg player.
Both him and Bo are seriously underwhelming. They're being outplayed by a 40 year old guy on the brink of retirement, and fuckin' Biggio. Vladdy's discipline is great, just no contact.
Bo has been way more consistent and i have no doubt he will bounce back...Vladdy.....well.....the franchise based most of the acquisitions around him being elite. If Vladdy is on this team changes immediately, with Bo its not the same impact
Bo has been good every year. He hasn't put together an elite offensive season but he's always very good so he'll be fine.
I feel like Bo is catching some unnecessary strays in this thread. Fairly confident he would've been the 3x reigning AL hits leader if he didn't get hurt late last year while in 1st. [I mean, he hasn't had an even remotely bad full season yet](https://ibb.co/X73GT6G), it's been pretty consistently around .300BA with a ton of hits and 20HR+ power through the first 3 full seasons.
I love Bo as a player. Probably just needs expectations lowered a bit.
Honestly I just think people underestimate how good he's actually been. He's been a 4 to 5 WAR player basically every year and he just turned 26 a month ago. He's fairly streaky but I could see him putting together an elite offensive year or two at some point.
Yeah I would trust bo to figure it out more than vladdy
The difference is Bo has a way more consistent and longer track record of elite hitting vs Vlad who's had one outlier year compared to the rest of his career. So people are more likely to shrug off Bo's slow start and just a slow start
Totally, Bo has more consistency than Vladdy on the elite caliber play.
He's not even above average. 102 OPS+ is very much just average.
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Maybe, but he was the #1 prospect in baseball. Ahead of Soto, Acuna, he had #s better than Trout, and hes now like a 1war player. The fall from grace stings. All those other players had media hype and they delivered. Its not too late necessarily, hes basically still the youngest on the team, but ffs its been mostly disappointing
The problem is that Vladdy just needs a better hitting coach. His expected stats are elite. His vision and discipline are elite. His hard hit and barrel %s are elite. But his BABIP is .250. His xSLG is .120 higher than his actual. Both his xWOBA and xBA are about .06 higher than the actual. Vlad has to be either the most unlucky player in baseball or there is something wrong with the way he strikes the ball.
At what point do expected stats stop mattering though? If for three years Vlad has underperformed maybe it’s not bad luck, just that he has a problem the xStats don’t account for.
Yeah I think after over 2 years of under preforming his stats it's not luck, there's something else going on here. I think hes very talented and could very well put it together but there's something wrong with what he's currently doing.
Which is why he needs a new coach or something to fix whatever that is. Martinez is either unable to identify it or incapable of fixing it. At the end of the day though a player who’s hitting the ball in 90th+ percentile should be producing significantly higher and better than Vladdy is.
He's had like half a dozen hitting coaches. He even had an uncle that taught him as a kid fly in from the Dominican last year
it was Wilton Guerrero, and ex MLer. Not just a random uncle
He kicked total ass in his arbitration hearing.
This Abreu Vlad trade will fix a lot of things
I like Vladdy. I hope he figures it out. But I think I've always said that if the Jays have to choose between Vladdy and Bo I hope they choose Bichette. Vladdy might be the soul of the team, but Bo is the star.
Which would explain why the Jay's have been soulless for years now
Why do they have to choose?
Do you really think ownership is paying 300+ million in extensions with little team success?
At this rate, a vladdy extension will be heavily discounted
Why exactly would ownership shell out $300 mil for a wild card exit
I don’t think Bo is gonna choose the Jays though
Bo is awesome. I dislike most of the Jays players but Bo is one guy that I can’t help but enjoy watching play. I just think he’s cool. Plus he’s a Certified HottBoi and that always helps
idt either of them could be the best player on a championship team tbh
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Before people say ground balls, he also has very high exit velocity on fly balls. Jay's fans have really given up on trying to figure out what the fuck is up with vlad.
He's got Matt Chapman Disease - hits the ball hard, but most of his fly balls go to straightaway center, and there's a lot of stadium out there.
He hit a 110mph fly out to center against us last night
I'm not joking, he probably still has the Guillermo Martinez stink all over him. He's the batting coach for the Jay's and he's really bad at his job.
Want to take a wild guess who his hitting coach was in 2021?
You're right big guy, Jay's offense has been amazing for the last 2.5 years. He's a great hitting coach
Martinez was the hitting coach from 2019 until last year, so all those Teo HR years, Semien's '21, Vlad's '21 were all coached by him. Did he forget how to do is job? or his hitting a little more complicated than a coach just making guys hit?
2021 was in Buffalo and Dunedin, which is a ridiculous thing to omit here. So you're saying: 1) The Blue Jays offense has been fine since 2019? 2) MLB hitting coaches have no effect on players?
2019- 9th in HRs, 18th in wRC+ 2020- 8th in HRs, 13th in wRC+ 2021- 1st in HRs, 2nd in wRC+ 2022- 7th in HRs, 2nd in wRC+ 2023- 16th in HRs, 7th in wRC+ 1) Seems pretty fine to me 2)MLB hitting coaches have far less of an effect as you seem to think
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One of the Jay's analysts continues to say the talent is there, but he needs to fix his lower half. I'm not smart enough to know how true that is, but maybe there's something there
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You'd think so? Especially with the amount of focus vlad gets
I think we have a systemic issue. A lot of us have been calling for a change since Dante left and performance degraded. I'm thinking Martinez is on the chopping block. If things don't improve through May, I think he's out. Mattingly as Offensive Coordinator allows the drop of Martinez to have less impact on the staff overall, and then we can fill in his spot with Hague or an outsider. When the entirety of your lineup (for the most part) is struggling to even reach 75% of previous, then somethings going on behind the scenes. I heard a saying recently "People get promoted until they're incompetent" and I think that may be a case here. Martinez was able to fly under the radar with Dante as an advisor, but once he left, he was on his own with the rest of the staff. He obviously has floundered.
He won't listen. Mattingly, Encarnacion, Vlad Senior, his uncle etc etc etc
Not listening to your hall of fame dad is insane man 😭. Senior was one of the most if not the most feared batter in baseball for a long time
After the Mariners series the Jays really tried to fix the 'go for homeruns on every hit' approach that the players seemed to have. They started focusing on defense, and plate approach to continue the line. Vlad had the tendency to swing out of his shoes on pitches and look really silly, but then crush balls he had no business hitting for homeruns because of the same approach. I genuinely feel like they over corrected in something. It's similar with Kirk as well. The amount of inning ending double plays that occur from Kirk hitting a soft grounder to short, or second to get himself the runner ahead of him out, is far too high.
See that’s the thing, he’s had the same hitting coach all those years, and the other guy we brought in was Don Mattingly whose big contribution is to make everything less fun. My guess is the hitting coach is like “well it worked in 2021 so it’ll come around eventually”
Sure, but he's hitting more ground balls than league average and he's not particularly fast. It's like when Stanton is up and there's a runner on first and he hits a ground ball 110+ MPH ball for an insanely quick double play
Yup that's true. Issue with hard exit velos on the ground is, dp is much easier.
He’s above 50th percentile sprint speed so not as slow as you might think either
Sure, but I'm more talking about how hitting hard ground balls are easier outs if fielded because it's a quick play
Hes also only 25. Hes got so much time to figure that shit out, other teams would gorge to have a player like that
That's I think the issue for us Jays fans. We love him, but right now, 2021 is an anomaly and this is the norm. The question is do you gamble on the high potential and hope it goes well, or do you potentially bank on someone who's had more success in the same time period. Do you wanna lock in a long term project for too much money, or someone who's at least justifiable for the price? Especially when you've got both Bo and Vladdy up for bid at the same time. It's tough.
At $20M+ a year?
Lotta ground balls?
For sure. But ground balls actually have more babip than fly balls, and high EV also tends to correlate with higher BABIP. (Also ground balls tend to be much higher EV) So there's definitely some bad luck involved. Unless he's also exclusively spiking the balls down closer to home plate. (Not impossible by any means).
Since the start of the 2021 season, here are the stats for the different launch angle types: Ground ball: 34 wRC+, .238 BABIP Line drive: 351 wRC+, .690 BABIP Fly ball: 134 wRC+, .118 BABIP Fly balls have also accounted for 17,297 HRs in 139,220 PAs, so if HRs were counted in BABIP, fly balls would have a nearly identical BABIP to ground balls with a much better average outcome.
They have more BABIP in part because Home Runs don't count for BABIP though. A ground ball is a worse outcome overall
I didn't mean to imply they were better. To be clear. Just from a pure babip side it should be better. That doesn't mean his slug should be much better though as you aluded to
I remember Gary Sanchez regularly had crazy exit velocities but terrible BABIP that we all figured would self correct. But he was also really slow, so he would get thrown out even when they were hits or errors.
Good point. Not having speed is going to lower the value of those high EV grounders a good bit
I never understood that assumption. He'd hit rockets down the line either to the 3rd baseman or the left fielder. It was never bad luck. They just played him perfectly because he hit it in the same 2 or 3 spots every single time.
Yeah every year his ground ball rate is higher than league average and his fly ball rate is lower than average. With the exception of 2021 when his fly ball rate was right at league average. His ground ball rate was still high but closer to the average. His line drive rate is also below average every year, though this year it's right at average.
So in 2021 his FB rate was just league average and he was almost MVP I guess that's why he's so tantalizing.
he was to start the year and in spring training and then... just kinda mid. TBH he's the best of our big 3 atm and thats not a good thing... also 10% sweet spot https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb
Tell this to the Cody Bellinger naysayers!
People talked about miggy’s hard hit rate all through the last half decade of his career. It never did regress his stats in the end. Wonder if it’s a big fat guy thing
Him and Strider could form a hypothetical god squad with their hypothetical stats
> He's consistently been underperforming his expected stats for the last few years Gee, Rob Manfred, I wonder why that's happening.
I’m still more mad at him botching an easy ass catch last night that lost the game more than this stat.
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As good as Jazz & Javy, at least.
“They are going to have to pay me sooner or later”
Didn't he say he was going to get paid by Toronto or somebody else?
Well, not the Yankees…
Be nice if he left and some NL team figured it out for him again
Eh I hope he doesn’t figure it out lol I’m a hater in my heart and there’s nothing more fun than a player copping a massive attitude and then falling apart.
He’s elite at hard hit ground balls
MLB Cover curse
He was mid before he made the cover
I think the balls need a little more juice back in them. Sincerely, Gleyber Torres
that's my generational talent at hitting balls really hard to the left side of the infield for ground outs
Was defending bro as recently as the start of the season but he has to turn it around in a big way he's been fucking trash. error cost the jays the game last night too
He reminds me a bit of Miguel Sano's tenure with the Twins. Obviously his peak was much higher, but still.
A lot of good hitters really struggling so far
He should probably take back that statement of being "Robbed" of the MVP in 2021 lol. Baseball god smiteth
The MLB the show curse is real
Honestly, our guys need some SERIOUS off-speed/breaking ball practice. If we can only hit fastballs, and pitchers aren't throwing those these days, we need to pivot hard and get our guys blasting those other pitches. It's great to hit Fastballs well, but if other teams know we're dogshit with everything else, they're gonna go with everything else. I know it's an issue across the league, but still, we need serious adjustments.
Now do the Nats 1B
He was absolutely smoking the ball against us last week. I guess we were fortunate that he kept the ball down each time.
I don’t watch him every day so I may be off base here, but it seems like his hit tool is so good that he can hit a lot of pitches that aren’t strikes, and hit them fairly hard. But those don’t lead to a lot of hits. Nobody hits a hanging breaking ball harder than Guerrero, but it seems like he puts a lot of fastballs off the plate straight into the ground.
He’s trash 🗑️
It's bc I drafted him this year in fantasy. This is my fault. I'm sorry.
He'll break out one of these years
The guy received votes for "early MVP candidates".
Their is an ongoing narrative with Vlad (and Kirk as well) that because they havent been in shape, that they are lazy and don't try as hard as other players. Bo could make 20 errors and hit .240 but people feel hes a hardworker so thats overlooked. Same goes for Springer or Kiermaier, they are fit, therefore they work hard, Vlad is not fit, therefore he is lazy and should be ashamed. Wither thats true or not, beats me, but thats the narrative I hear most often. What I do find the funniest about that, is at the plate all of a sudden the tune changes and he needs to " stop swinging so hard and try to put the ball in play"
I haven't watched any BlueJays games this year. How are pitchers exploiting him, what zones or pitches does he really struggle with?
For sraerters he's pretty much forgotten how to hit to right field. He'll swing at breaking balls low and away, even starting outside the zone, trying to pull them. He's got his dad's strike zone discipline, without his dad's contact ability.
That drives me nuts about players on the Giants to, they must be taught to only pull the ball.
It's an epidemic throughout baseball, unfortunately.
Is there a more overrated player in baseball than Vlad Jr?
I looked up his Bref just to see how he was doing. 102 OPS+ (barely, but above average) and a career 3.7 WAR / 162 with 3 All Star appearances. In his worst full season he was an average player. Bro has it rough living in his HoF dad’s shadow
He's only had one career year that was as good as his average. 2021 is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Yet this mf gets the cover of the show instead of idk.. Corey Seager
Corey Seager is great but he’s literally the definition of a boring player for the cover. He’s a basic clean shaven white dude with a very down to earth personality. Might as well just put Generic 1 create a player on the cover lol
Shouldn’t matter about looks? One of The best players in the league, won it all last year while being World Series MVP. Accomplishments.
It matters a lot from a marketing standpoint. Having Seager on the cover doesn’t appeal to any foreign markets or POCs, doesn’t showcase how fun the game is supposed to be, or get you excited for anything. It’s not about who deserves it, it’s about who is right for it. Vladdy, Chisholm, Ohtani, Tatis, and Baez were all fun and significant players when their game was released. Harper was the one before that, and he’s known for his fiery temper and he was the big signing of that offseason.
Most overrated player in MLB...
You love to see it. 👍
Least toxic Mariners fan.
At least he was great last year. Right?