Vladdy got his power back

There aren’t many reasons to watch the Blue Jays, who are nine games under .500 and ticketed for last place in the AL East. Yet, Toronto withheld from a complete fire sale at this year’s Trade Deadline, keeping its core — though the exact makeup of the core is tenuous, with Bo Bichette, Kevin Gausman, and Jose Berrios all compiling underwhelming seasons. 

That decision has as much to do with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s resurgence as anything else. Guerrero, 25, is slashing .311/.382/.524 with a 155 OPS+, his highest-mark since 2021, when he seemed prime to become one of the faces, if not the face, of baseball. Once again, he seems firmly on that path, because he’s doing things like this on a nightly basis. 

Just two years ago, Guerrero had the 11th-largest drop-off in SLG in all of baseball. His SLG in 2023 was .444, right below Luis Rengifo and Masataka Yoshida. There were a few notable red flags — namely, he stopped hitting fastballs — but, for the most part, no one could pinpoint what exactly was going on. 

Now, Guerrero’s SLG is .524, next to more appropriate company in Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa. He has the 13th-highest increase in SLG from 2023 to 2024, among qualified hitters. 

So, how did he resurrect himself? It’s probably not how you’d think. 

Guerrero’s SLG by batted ball direction by year	Pull	Straightaway	Opposite
2023	.742	.332	.523
2024	.605	.630	.686

The increase in SLG is not coming from the pull side. Guerrero’s .605 pull-side SLG is his worst single-season mark in his six-year career, down 200 points from its peak in 2021. Which is to say, when Guerrero was at the apex of his powers, he hammered the ball to his pull side. But instead of looking to emulate his past success, Guerrero appears to have reinvented himself, taking advantage of his natural power to all fields. 

Look at the dispersion of his XBH in 2023 vs. 2024:

Guerrero, to be clear, has always sprayed the ball. For the third straight season, he is hitting more balls straightaway than he is pulling them; for his career, his Straight% is 37.5%, compared to a 37.1% Pull%. The quality of contact, though, has changed drastically. On balls to the middle of the field, his Exit Velocity is up 4.6%, his Hard Hit % is up to 65.9% (from 48.5%) and he has 51 hits, compared to just 48 last season. 

We see the biggest difference on fly balls — not because he’s hitting more of them, but because he’s generating much better results. Last year, Guerrero hit 40 fly balls straightaway, accounting for a .250 SLG. This year, among 27 fly balls hit in the same direction, his SLG is 1.111. 

What does that look like? Well, instead of this, Guerrero is doing this. 

Those are very similar pitches — two helicoptering sliders over the heart of the plate, one from Clay Holmes (87.9 mph with a 2556 spin rate), and the other from Grayson Rodriguez (88 mph with a 2577 spin rate). On one, Guerrero looks like he’s trying to pull the ball, his bat path grows long, and he gets way under it — a LA of 42 degrees, good for a harmless pop-up. On the other, Guerrero goes with the pitch and lets his natural power do the rest, effortlessly depositing it 415 feet to dead center.

Similar trends follow the rest of his straightaway batted-balls. His line drives to this portion of the field are also finding substantial success, mainly because he’s hitting them way harder (101.9 EV and an 83.8% Hard Hit%, compared to 95 EV and a 54.9% Hard Hit% a year ago). This year, Guerrero has hit just three pop-ups to the opposite field or straightaway. In the previous two seasons, he combined for 27 such results. 

This is Guerrero’s calculated response to a league that, for two years now, is beating him with fastballs. This seemed improbable in 2021, when Guerrero posted a .522 wOBA and .803 SLG with a mere 15.1% Whiff% and a Run Value of 34 against the fastball. But Guerrero simply isn’t a fastball-first hitter anymore, not with a .426 SLG and 21.7 Whiff%, the worst single-season marks against the 4-seam fastball in his career. He couldn’t get by any longer merely hammering fastballs to the pull side, so he had to change his approach.

After a two-year lull, Guerrero is back to destroying sliders, posting a .719 SLG — his third-highest single-season mark against any pitch, of at least 100 pitches seen. And that success is coming the other way: He has a 1.133 SLG on sliders not hit to the pull side, compared to a .241 mark on such batted balls last season.

Again, this doesn’t have much to do with how often he’s doing it. Both this season and last season, Guerrero pulled just 37% of the sliders that he put into play — roughly on par with his career pull-rate, at 37.1%. He’s not trying to do it any more frequently, though you can argue that he should. But he is hitting more conducive batted-ball contact (57% fly balls/line drives, compared to 49% last season). And, of those, it sure looks like he is driving these pitches with a purpose, a year after looking, well, far-less purposeful. 

He has a higher SLG against sliders, changeups, sweepers, and split-fingers than he does against the 4-seam fastball, and his ability and willingness to use all fields is the main reason why. Against sliders, Guerrero has 5 XBH to the opposite field, a year after recording just one. And he has XBH straightaway against seven different pitches — including eight against non-fastballs, after having just three XBH straightaway against non-fastballs a year ago.

We know that Guerrero is showcasing his power to all fields, allowing him to recoup his lost SLG. And he’s smashing non-fastball offerings, particularly the other way, helping compensate for career-low marks against 4-seamers. In both cases, he’s not necessarily doing more or less of anything; he’s simply generating better contact, leading to markedly better results. Perhaps that’s a byproduct of a new approach, maybe a mechanical tweak, maybe a confidence boost. Maybe something else entirely. But in the process, Guerrero has returned to the type of player capable of powering the Blue Jays lineup and striking the opposition with fear.