Into the gap: Vlad Jr.'s value vs. expectations

There are many confounding things about the Toronto Blue Jays' season so far.

How did the entire bullpen get hurt? Are the hitters trying to avoid hitting home runs? Why would people spend all that money to sit in the fancy new seats behind home plate and then spend the game looking at their phones?

But the biggest puzzle might be the Vlad Paradox. He's an elite hitter, but he's also kind of a disappointment. He plays the game with obvious joy, which is generally ideal but can come off as a little tone-deaf when the team struggles this much. And while he's long been expected to exit his years of team contractual control having signed a massive long-term extension, likely one that sets a franchise record, that's no longer an undoubtedly great idea.

So what to make of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.?

First, the good: After an awful April, Guerrero has largely been excellent at the plate, an improvement that's been somewhat masked by the general malaise around the Blue Jays. His OPS in April (.629) was only good enough for 48th in the American League, but he ranked 11th in May (.917) and 10th in June (.962).

His underlying numbers are even more impressive, with an average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage near the very top of the American League and in the 98th percentile per Statcast data. Those statistics aren't far off his career highs.

But, and there is a but: He simply hasn't approached the home-run totals that were imagined for him, especially relative to his big-hitting peers. When he was a still a teenager - and one of the best prospects in baseball - coaches in the Blue Jays system spoke about the way the ball jumped off his bat like they had found religion. This kid had the tools of his Hall of Fame father, but he also had plate discipline. His ceiling was way up there.

He's only delivered on that promise once over a full season: in 2021, when the Blue Jays split their home games between Dunedin, Buffalo, and Toronto on the heels of the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. He hit 48 home runs with a 1.002 OPS and would have been AL MVP in any world that did not also contain Shohei Ohtani. Then he hit 32 home runs in 2022, 26 last season, and 14 through 95 games in 2024. Will he crack 30 this season? Maybe.

Putting aside the freakishness of Aaron Judge and his 34 homers so far, Vladdy isn't close to joining the AL's bomber class. That group includes eight other hitters with at least 20 home runs, four of whom play in the AL East. Guerrero is tied for 25th in the AL (with, among others, wee Jose Altuve).

Studying the loss of his home-run pop - so rare for a hitter between their age-22 and age-25 seasons - has become a cottage industry in Toronto, but it hasn't produced a clear consensus. Jays coaches suggested that Guerrero was trying to elevate the ball coming out of spring training, which led to his poor April. By focusing instead on making hard contact, his natural power has returned. Basically, he's hitting more home runs by not trying to hit home runs.

But the wait for Guerrero to turn into the masher of 2021, to fulfill the fearsome promise of his teenage years, has become interminable. In his sixth major-league season, there's much more evidence to suggest that the rest of his prime will be something like what he has shown this year: above-average power to all fields, excellent on-base percentage, and good run production if the guys ahead of him in the lineup are getting on base (which hasn't been the case for much of 2024). He's a 30-homer, 100-RBI player if things are going well. That's highly desirable, and if it was coming from Davis Schneider, the Jays would feel as though they had struck gold. If it was coming from George Springer, they would feel they were getting their money's worth. Coming from Guerrero, it feels like a consolation prize; not the dream home in Muskoka, but a washer-dryer set.

And that is, again, quite good. But is it worth the $300-million-and-up mega-contracts that players like Rafael Devers, Corey Seager, and Trea Turner have landed in recent years? Not that long ago, the answer about Vlad would have been "yes" before the question was even finished. Now, it is at least a question, and one Jays general manager Ross Atkins would probably answer with a string of bafflegab that doesn't come close to a firm yes or no. If management was enthusiastic about giving such a deal to the key piece of what was supposed to be a championship-contending team by now, they would have done it already. Instead, there are reports that the Jays and Camp Vlad are far apart in contract talks.

All that makes the remaining year-plus before Guerrero is eligible for free agency fraught for Blue Jays fans. The player's side must assume that some team out there will give him the motherlode. The Jays have almost certainly been adjusting their spreadsheets from what they had mapped out a couple of seasons ago. Will they find common ground?

It would help all sides if he just socked a few more dingers.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.