perhaps the greatest single-game performance<\/a> ever in the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 NLCS clincher. This postseason, Ohtani is batting .220 with a .967 OPS. Guerrero is at .462 and 1.532.<\/p>\nHis contract, as crazy as it sounds, helped make much of this possible. The Jays\u2019 first AL East title since 2015. Their four-game blitz of the New York Yankees in the Division Series. Their chance to return to the World Series for the first time since they won back-to-back titles in 1992 and \u201893.<\/p>\n
Once Guerrero agreed to his deal in early April, any talk of him departing as a free agent at the end of the season stopped. The players saw management was committed to winning, not just for the present, but also the future. The entire team, including Guerrero, could relax. The fan base could, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt freed a lot of people up because not only did it take the pressure off the daily narrative, but it shows everyone what our intentions are every single year \u2014 to be competitive and try to win it,\u201d manager John Schneider said in August on the Starkville podcast. \u201cYou don\u2019t lock up a player like Vlad for 14 years if you\u2019re not trying to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or, as Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt put it, \u201cIt stabilizes everything. It stabilizes your entire future as a franchise.\u201d<\/p>\n
How do you place a value on that? A value on this type of postseason run? A value to Guerrero playing his entire career in Toronto and possibly becoming the first lifetime Blue Jay to enter the Hall of Fame?<\/p>\n
Jays general manager Ross Atkins said, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to quantify. It\u2019s definitely a positive to have extended him, for the organization, for him, for the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, Guerrero is unlikely to be as productive in his late 30s as he is in his late 20s. He is 6-foot-2, 250 pounds, and one day no longer will be as nimble at first base. Nor will he run the bases with the same abandon he has in this postseason, diving headfirst into home plate to score from second in Game 3 of the DS, taking third on a wild pitch Sunday night and racing home on a throwing error by Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh.<\/p>\n
Still . . .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way he hits, he\u2019s always going to hit,\u201d Bassitt said. \u201cIt may get to the point where he\u2019s not a first baseman. But he\u2019s still going to be able to hit. His swing is that good. His approach is that good. He\u2019s going to hit for a long time. And that\u2019s not going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
To think, Guerrero entered the postseason without a home run in his last 89 regular-season at-bats. Was he simply off with his timing? Did he miss the cleanup hitter behind him, shortstop Bo Bichette, who has been out since Sept. 6 with a sprained left knee? Or, as Guerrero suggested early in the DS, did he just need the rest the Jays earned with their first-round bye?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been a lot of different things,\u201d Bichette said. \u201cMaybe he just didn\u2019t feel good. Maybe he was looking forward to this moment too much. But he\u2019s a gamer. He rises to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero had not done that previously in the postseason, batting a combined .136 with no homers and a .422 OPS. But his entire experience consisted of only 22 at-bats, spread over three two-game defeats in the wild-card round. Not enough of a sample to pass judgment.<\/p>\n
And now?<\/p>\n
Guerrero has nine hits in his last 15 at-bats. One of his outs was a 116-mph forceout. Of his six homers, two have come on changeups, one on a four-seam fastball, one on a slider, one on a sinker and one on a curve. He is hitting every pitch in every location, raising the question of how the Mariners will deal with him in Game 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, the second half of last season, it felt like he hit a double or home run every single time he was up there,\u201d said Blue Jays third baseman Ernie Clement, referring to Guerrero\u2019s .376 batting average and 1.127 OPS after the 2024 All-Star break. \u201cThat was a couple of months of him just being unconscious. But I think this is a whole \u2018nother level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mariners center fielder Julio Rodr\u00edguez, who signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2017, two years after Guerrero, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve known Vladdy since his tryout days; I used to watch him hit bombs and all that,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez said. \u201cI just feel like he\u2019s really locked in. He\u2019s a tremendous player and he\u2019s definitely put it together this postseason. He\u2019s just doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero\u2019s extension kicks in next season. It will pay him an average of $35.7 million per year. According to Fangraphs\u2019 dollars metric, which estimates 1 WAR at about $8 million, he exceeded that value only in 2021 ($50.6) million and \u201824 ($42.2 million). This season, Guerrero finished at $31.1 million. But some in the industry believe the value of 1 WAR is greater than $8 million. And the estimate is for regular-season production only.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to be a prisoner of the moment, and get caught up in Guerrero making like former stars Barry Bonds, Carlos Beltr\u00e1n and David Ortiz did in their own spectacular Octobers. But this moment, and all it encompasses, is why a franchise player\u2019s value often transcends his on-field production.<\/p>\n
A win Monday night, and the Jays will generate additional revenue from reaching the World Series. If they win the Series, they will make even more money. Yet even that is only a partial measure. Teams create lasting memories in seasons like this. And gain fans for life.<\/p>\n
Vlad Jr. is making it all happen, as only a superstar can. Find a formula for that.<\/p>\n
-The Athletic\u2019s Tyler Kepner contributed to this story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 I can almost guarantee that when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. signed his 14-year, $500 million extension with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":318293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,62,1290,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-318292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115405959093414290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}