The heroic image of Toronto Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has not carried over from the American League Division Series.
Through two games of the championship series against the Seattle Mariners, Guerrero is 0-for-7 with a walk. He’s yet to strike out, but ground balls rarely work in the playoffs, and some of Guerrero’s have come in big spots where the Blue Jays had opportunities to seize control of games.
Guerrero’s best opportunity on Monday came as early as the second inning. He stepped to bat with two outs and runners at the corners, as the Blue Jays had seized back momentum by scoring the tying run earlier in the frame after Seattle was up 3-0 early. But he pounded a harmless groundout to second baseman Jorge Polanco, ending the threat.
The Blue Jays didn’t put another runner on third until the bottom of the eighth inning, when the Mariners had already built the 10-3 lead that would soon become the final score.
Guerrero and his Blue Jays teammates are nowhere close to capitulating, down 2-0 in a best-of-seven format. But the 26-year-old star admitted Monday night that Toronto isn’t pulling its weight offensively, and that starts with himself, the team’s best hitter.
“We need to get better offensively. For example, myself, I had a big at-bat and I couldn’t come through,” Guerrero said through an interpreter, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com. “That’s baseball. We need to go out there and win games.”
Guerrero went 9-for-17 in the series against the New York Yankees last week, hitting monster home runs in each of the first three games. He’s still got a 1.179 OPS in this postseason as a result of that early success. But he’s cooling off at the wrong time.
Plus, he’s hardly the Blue Jays’ only slumper, as Addison Barger, Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho, Ernie Clement, and Andrés Giménez have combined for just two hits in the series.
If the Blue Jays want to turn things around, as Guerrero says, the bats will have to heat up quickly. And they’ll have to do so in Seattle, a notorious pitcher’s park, against a lockdown pitching staff and a stadium full of rabid fans salivating over the Mariners’ potential first World Series appearance.
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