When Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit that monster home run against the Pawtucket Red Sox — the one that travelled 440 feet and landed in the parking lot — his teammate Bo Bichette was nowhere to be found in the Buffalo Bisons’ dugout.
That’s because he was in the clubhouse. Nature called. “I walked out and he was giving high fives, so I said, ‘Hey, sorry man, I didn’t see it, but good job,’” Bichette said.
Bichette may not have seen that particular home run. But after playing with Guerrero for parts of the last three seasons, the 21-year-old shortstop has seen plenty just like it. In fact, anyone who has called Guerrero a teammate has likely seen him do at least one absurd, mind-bending, rub-your-eyes thing.
And now, at long last, the game’s No. 1 prospect is going to The Show. Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo made it official on Wednesday evening. Guerrero will join the team on Friday and will play at Rogers Centre against the Oakland Athletics.
But before he makes his debut, let’s give the men who shared a baseball field with him through 288 minor league games one more chance to tell us about it.
“I’ve seen him do so many things, obviously,” Bichette said. “He’s incredible — but I’ve seen it so much, nothing surprises me anymore.”
Making the extraordinary look ordinary is, in essence, the true mark of superstar talent. But what the 20-year-old Guerrero brings to a team is more than just raw power and a .943 career OPS. He brings unmatched consistency at the plate, a relentless work ethic, an off-the-charts baseball IQ. If you ask his teammates to describe what makes him stand out at the plate, the answer is, well, a little of everything.
“You don’t often get the combination of aggressiveness and strike zone discipline, power and contact ability,” said Bichette, who also grew up around the game as the son of a longtime major league outfielder, just like his teammate. “He really just has it all. You just don’t see that very often, if ever, honestly. Just he has every single ability and he’s not just good at them – he’s great at every single part of the game offensively. That’s what makes him so good.”
Because of his talent — and his Hall of Fame dad, Vlad Sr. — Guerrero has travelled through the largely anonymous world of minor league baseball as a somebody, yet his teammates often use the word “humble” to describe him. He lights up a clubhouse like he lights up a scoreboard. He loves baseball and just happens to be really, really good at it.
John Schneider managed Guerrero for parts of two seasons in High A and Double A and during that time, he saw plenty of how-did-he-do-that moments. This one sticks out:
Two years ago, near the end of the Florida State League season, the Dunedin Blue Jays were playing the Clearwater Threshers. The game was tied 3-3. Guerrero, then just 18 years old, came to bat in the ninth inning, facing Clearwater’s closer, Seth McGarry, who was throwing 97 mph. Guerrero saw two fastballs; he fouled one off, then took the next for a ball. Then, third pitch, a juicy slider. Guerrero timed it up perfectly, launching it over the tiki bar atop a slope beyond left field to seal the win and send Dunedin into the playoffs.
Afterward, Schneider — now a coach with the Blue Jays — approached Guerrero and asked him how he made it look so easy.
Simple: “I was waiting for him to throw a slider.”
“And he hit it 20,000 feet,” Schneider said. “That was a moment when I realized the physical part is what it is, but the plan and the adjustments on every pitch separates him from a lot of other people.”
Ask any of his teammates, and they’ll say Guerrero’s secret is in his approach. He always steps to the plate with a plan, a good idea of what the pitcher is going to try to do to get him out. Unlike his famous father, he rarely swings at pitches outside the zone. Through three-plus minor league seasons, he has walked more times than he’s struck out (150 to 139), a rarity for a power hitter.
“People see the eye-popping numbers and they’re like, ‘Wow, this kid is just such a good physically gifted hitter,’ but the thing that sets him apart from everybody else is just how intelligent he is in terms of baseball IQ, in terms of what a pitcher’s trying to do to him, in terms of the feel of the game, flow of the game,” Schneider said. “Never seen a kid his age make adjustments pitch-by-pitch when he’s in the batter’s box the way he does, and I think that’s the biggest thing. That’s really the separator for him: He really, really understands the game.”
A month into his Double-A season with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats last year, Guerrero was hitting over .400. Crazy, right?
“I’ve never seen a guy so young and so good at what he does,” said Jordan Romano, now a pitcher for the Bisons. “He hit .400 in our league. He was treating it like it was almost slow-pitch softball.”
Guerrero was so good, in fact, that his potential exploits became the topic of conversation around the clubhouse.“Every game, all of us would get around and be like, ‘Hey, what’s Vladdy going to do today? How’s he going to surprise us today?’” Romano recalled.
On May 7, this is how he surprised them:
Guerrero already had one home run in the game against the Portland Sea Dogs — a three-run shot to left — when he stepped up to the plate in the sixth. On the mound for Portland was Jake Cosart, who can touch 98 mph. From the dugout, Romano and some of his teammates could see Cosart start to challenge Guerrero with his fastball. They knew this was only going to be bad news for the pitcher.
Romano thought: “If he connects here, something crazy might happen.”
On a 3-2 count, Guerrero connected. He hit the ball so far that it ricocheted off the Hilton Garden Inn hotel, which stands just beyond the left field fence of the Fisher Cats’ stadium.
“It was all of 470 to 480 feet,” Romano remembered. “That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s something else.’”
The hotel home run went viral. Before and since, Guerrero’s feats have become social media fodder, but this one remains one of his most memorable.
“I wasn’t sure if anyone could hit it,” Romano said of the hotel. “But if there was a guy to do it, it was him.”
It’s hard to miss Guerrero’s smile. It flashes often. It’s easy to be happy when you are excelling at the game you love, yes. But those who have played with him say even if he’s slumping — a rarity — he’s smiling.
“He’s fun. He’s happy to be here every day,” Bichette said.
During team stretch before games, it’s common to see Guerrero humming and bopping his head along to the music that plays over the loudspeaker. His favourite kind of music, he said, is hip-hop and dembow, a popular genre back home in the Dominican Republic that mixes rap and mambo. His favourite North American artist is Drake, and no, Guerrero has not met him yet. Perhaps he will one day in Toronto. “Maybe!” he said, while smiling, of course.
Guerrero likes to joke around. All his teammates agree he’s a funny guy. But his best prank may have been the one he pulled on the Blue Jays fan base.
Last May, the Blue Jays were in New York, gearing up for a series against the New York Mets. Meanwhile, Guerrero was absolutely raking in Double A. So when the 19-year-old phenom posted a picture of himself at an airport that was geotagged JFK Airport on his Instagram, many Toronto fans flipped out with excitement, assuming he’d been called up.
But the excitement didn’t last. Internet sleuths determined the photo was an old one, and the post was deleted. But not before New Hampshire manager John Schneider’s phone absolutely blew up. He went to the source.
“I said, ‘Hey what’s up with that?’ He said, ‘I just liked the picture.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ And he kind of just smirked at me. We left it at that.”
When his long-awaited promotion to Triple A happened last July, it took all of one inning for the young Guerrero to impress Buffalo Bisons manager Bobby Meacham.
In his first plate appearance, Guerrero stood by and patiently took a walk when the opposing pitcher refused to throw him anything near the zone. He would go on to walk two more times in his Bisons debut.
After that first base on balls, he took his bag, then he took his lead. When Buffalo’s next batter, catcher Danny Jansen, sent a sharp groundball to left field, Guerrero took off. Guerrero’s calling card may be his potent power at the plate – but he’s quick on the base paths, too.
His new manager was about to learn that. Because when Meacham, who also coaches third base, looked out into the outfield he noticed the left fielder was rushing his throw. Why?
Because Guerrero was barrelling toward third base. He slid head-first into the bag. Safe. Both the crowd and the Buffalo bench were going wild.
“That showed me right there, he was excited for the moment, he was ready for anything and he saw that he could take advantage of a guy who was taking a little bit too long in left,” the manager said. “His baseball instincts just go, ‘let’s go to third and fire up this team. Maybe a chance to get us another run.’ That was good, to see him make a difference in a game that he didn’t even get a hit in yet.”
By the way, on that play, Guerrero’s slide into third base was so explosive that his leather belt busted.
Luckily, his veteran manager had a solution. “I just took off mine and gave it to him.”
Guerrero hit a home run last year that Bisons outfielder Anthony Alford vividly remembers. But not for its power or distance, although those were impressive. No, Alford remembers it because Guerrero was downright prescient about it.
Alford knows it was a home game at night, but he can’t recall who Buffalo was facing. He’s certain the ball went to dead centre field, but he forgets who threw the pitch. He can’t remember the exact order of pitches, but the last one was definitely a hanging breaking ball.
The ancillary details aren’t the point. This is what you need to know about this Guerrero home run.
After Guerrero got fooled by the pitcher, he returned to the Bisons’ dugout, went straight to his manager and said, “Bobby, this is what they’re going to do to me.”
He then proceeded to list off a pitch sequence. Alford was standing nearby, listening. He heard Guerrero anticipate that the pitcher was going to throw him a hanging breaking ball. And when he did, Guerrero said, he was going to hit it out of the park.
So next time Guerrero was due up, Alford sat on the dugout railing to watch intently. “I’m like, I’m going to see if they’re really going to — and they did it.”
The outfielder watched as the pitcher threw the exact pitches Guerrero said he would, down to, yes, a hanging breaking ball, which Guerrero launched to deep centre field.
“I was like, this kid is a prophet,” Alford said. “It was very impressive just to see him think along with the game.”
This wasn’t the first case of Guerrero foretelling how a pitcher was going to approach him. On the bench, Guerrero watches his teammates’ at-bats intently, studying the pitcher’s tendencies, filing away vital bits of intel for when he might need them.
“The stuff that he does on the field and the way he’s a student of the game, I really respect that and admire that about him,” Alford said.
Jays fans have anxiously awaited
Guerrero’s call-up since he hit this famous home run more than a year
ago in an exhibition game in Montreal, his dad’s old home park.
His
new manager was about to learn that. Because when Meacham, who also
coaches third base, looked out into the outfield he noticed the left
fielder was rushing his throw. Why?
Because Guerrero was barrelling toward third base. He slid head-first into the bag. Safe. Both the crowd and the Buffalo bench were going wild.
“That showed me right there, he was excited for the moment, he was ready for anything and he saw that he could take advantage of a guy who was taking a little bit too long in left,” the manager said. “His baseball instincts just go, ‘let’s go to third and fire up this team. Maybe a chance to get us another run.’ That was good, to see him make a difference in a game that he didn’t even get a hit in yet.”
By the way, on that play, Guerrero’s slide into third base was so explosive that his leather belt busted.
Luckily, his veteran manager had a solution. “I just took off mine and gave it to him.”
Guerrero hit a home run last year that Bisons outfielder Anthony Alford vividly remembers. But not for its power or distance, although those were impressive. No, Alford remembers it because Guerrero was downright prescient about it.
Alford knows it was a home game at night, but he can’t recall who Buffalo was facing. He’s certain the ball went to dead centre field, but he forgets who threw the pitch. He can’t remember the exact order of pitches, but the last one was definitely a hanging breaking ball.
The ancillary details aren’t the point. This is what you need to know about this Guerrero home run.
After Guerrero got fooled by the pitcher, he returned to the Bisons’ dugout, went straight to his manager and said, “Bobby, this is what they’re going to do to me.”
He then proceeded to list off a pitch sequence. Alford was standing nearby, listening. He heard Guerrero anticipate that the pitcher was going to throw him a hanging breaking ball. And when he did, Guerrero said, he was going to hit it out of the park.
So next time Guerrero was due up, Alford sat on the dugout railing to watch intently. “I’m like, I’m going to see if they’re really going to — and they did it.”
The outfielder watched as the pitcher threw the exact pitches Guerrero said he would, down to, yes, a hanging breaking ball, which Guerrero launched to deep centre field.
“I was like, this kid is a prophet,” Alford said. “It was very impressive just to see him think along with the game.”
This wasn’t the first case of Guerrero foretelling how a pitcher was going to approach him. On the bench, Guerrero watches his teammates’ at-bats intently, studying the pitcher’s tendencies, filing away vital bits of intel for when he might need them.
“The stuff that he does on the field and the way he’s a student of the game, I really respect that and admire that about him,” Alford said.
Guerrero doesn’t keep all that intel for himself.
“He’s always going to look to help guys when they need help, and help everybody around him get better,” Alford said.
“He’s definitely someone people seem to gravitate towards to talk to about certain things — approaches with hitting, what his mindset is, everyone tries to pick his brain here and there,” Bisons catcher Reese McGuire said. “He’s definitely open to helping guys if he sees something. From experience, I know he’ll come up and say something that he sees. He’s definitely in tune.”
“He’s really good at watching the game, watching other players, his own teammates, looking for things that they’re doing, things they may be doing well,” Schneider said. “He’ll say, ‘Keep doing it’ – or he’ll talk to them about something he sees as an area of opportunity. And it’s quick. It’s not like, ‘I’m better than you.’ It’s, ‘Here’s what I see. Take it for what it’s worth.’ He’s awesome that way.”
Last season, early on, Guerrero noticed Bichette was pulling the ball a lot during batting practice. At the time, Bichette didn’t think too much about the observation. It was practice. He was just working on things, he reasoned. But in games, Bichette was also pulling the ball more than usual. He was slumping, too. About two months later, Bichette made an adjustment at the plate. When he made the change, Guerrero’s words played back through his mind.
“I was like, ‘Man, maybe he was right.’ And I started making adjustments and it worked out pretty quick.”
Everywhere Guerrero goes, there are cameras, reporters, autograph seekers, all looking for him. It would be easy for the hype to get to his head. He’s barely past his teenage years. A little immaturity could be forgiven.
“What impresses me the most with him is just how nice of a guy and great of a teammate he is,” Romano said. “Honestly, I’m 25, and him as a 19-, 20-year-old who has a lot of hype around him — just how grounded and humble he is, that’s what’s honestly impressed me the most. Not even baseball-wise, just him as a person.”
So how do we sum up this person, who has lived and breathed baseball since practically the very beginning, on the verge of his big breakthrough?
He was born in Montreal when his father, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., was an Expo. He grew up spending time in major-league clubhouses. He has memories of his time as a boy in and around the big leagues. When he was 6, his uncle, Wilton, also a former big-leaguer, started to teach him the game in the Dominican Republic. Ever since, he has worked to perfect his craft.
He was still a boy when scouts began clamoring to see him. By 16, he had signed as an international free agent with the Blue Jays organization for $3.9 million. Four years and three minor-league seasons later, he was the consensus No. 1 prospect in all of baseball.
Guerrero is no doubt happiest on a baseball field. It is his sanctuary. And it’s no wonder. During his 20 years on planet Earth, he has experienced many great joys on a baseball field.
But what about when he wants to just get away from the game, just for a bit? Go home, kick his feet up and relax? What does Vladimir Guerrero Jr. do then?
“Play video games,” he said, proudly, in English, bypassing his translator just this once.
Oh? Right. You’re 20, of course, you love video games. Which one is your favourite to play?
Big smile.
“MLB The Show.”
Because Guerrero was barrelling toward third base. He slid head-first into the bag. Safe. Both the crowd and the Buffalo bench were going wild.
“That showed me right there, he was excited for the moment, he was ready for anything and he saw that he could take advantage of a guy who was taking a little bit too long in left,” the manager said. “His baseball instincts just go, ‘let’s go to third and fire up this team. Maybe a chance to get us another run.’ That was good, to see him make a difference in a game that he didn’t even get a hit in yet.”
By the way, on that play, Guerrero’s slide into third base was so explosive that his leather belt busted.
Luckily, his veteran manager had a solution. “I just took off mine and gave it to him.”
Guerrero hit a home run last year that Bisons outfielder Anthony Alford vividly remembers. But not for its power or distance, although those were impressive. No, Alford remembers it because Guerrero was downright prescient about it.
Alford knows it was a home game at night, but he can’t recall who Buffalo was facing. He’s certain the ball went to dead centre field, but he forgets who threw the pitch. He can’t remember the exact order of pitches, but the last one was definitely a hanging breaking ball.
The ancillary details aren’t the point. This is what you need to know about this Guerrero home run.
After Guerrero got fooled by the pitcher, he returned to the Bisons’ dugout, went straight to his manager and said, “Bobby, this is what they’re going to do to me.”
He then proceeded to list off a pitch sequence. Alford was standing nearby, listening. He heard Guerrero anticipate that the pitcher was going to throw him a hanging breaking ball. And when he did, Guerrero said, he was going to hit it out of the park.
So next time Guerrero was due up, Alford sat on the dugout railing to watch intently. “I’m like, I’m going to see if they’re really going to — and they did it.”
The outfielder watched as the pitcher threw the exact pitches Guerrero said he would, down to, yes, a hanging breaking ball, which Guerrero launched to deep centre field.
“I was like, this kid is a prophet,” Alford said. “It was very impressive just to see him think along with the game.”
This wasn’t the first case of Guerrero foretelling how a pitcher was going to approach him. On the bench, Guerrero watches his teammates’ at-bats intently, studying the pitcher’s tendencies, filing away vital bits of intel for when he might need them.
“The stuff that he does on the field and the way he’s a student of the game, I really respect that and admire that about him,” Alford said.
Jays fans have anxiously awaited
Guerrero’s call-up since he hit this famous home run more than a year
ago in an exhibition game in Montreal, his dad’s old home park. (Minas
Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
“He’s always going to look to help guys when they need help, and help everybody around him get better,” Alford said.
“He’s definitely someone people seem to gravitate towards to talk to about certain things — approaches with hitting, what his mindset is, everyone tries to pick his brain here and there,” Bisons catcher Reese McGuire said. “He’s definitely open to helping guys if he sees something. From experience, I know he’ll come up and say something that he sees. He’s definitely in tune.”
“He’s really good at watching the game, watching other players, his own teammates, looking for things that they’re doing, things they may be doing well,” Schneider said. “He’ll say, ‘Keep doing it’ – or he’ll talk to them about something he sees as an area of opportunity. And it’s quick. It’s not like, ‘I’m better than you.’ It’s, ‘Here’s what I see. Take it for what it’s worth.’ He’s awesome that way.”
Last season, early on, Guerrero noticed Bichette was pulling the ball a lot during batting practice. At the time, Bichette didn’t think too much about the observation. It was practice. He was just working on things, he reasoned. But in games, Bichette was also pulling the ball more than usual. He was slumping, too. About two months later, Bichette made an adjustment at the plate. When he made the change, Guerrero’s words played back through his mind.
“I was like, ‘Man, maybe he was right.’ And I started making adjustments and it worked out pretty quick.”
Everywhere Guerrero goes, there are cameras, reporters, autograph seekers, all looking for him. It would be easy for the hype to get to his head. He’s barely past his teenage years. A little immaturity could be forgiven.
“What impresses me the most with him is just how nice of a guy and great of a teammate he is,” Romano said. “Honestly, I’m 25, and him as a 19-, 20-year-old who has a lot of hype around him — just how grounded and humble he is, that’s what’s honestly impressed me the most. Not even baseball-wise, just him as a person.”
So how do we sum up this person, who has lived and breathed baseball since practically the very beginning, on the verge of his big breakthrough?
He was born in Montreal when his father, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., was an Expo. He grew up spending time in major-league clubhouses. He has memories of his time as a boy in and around the big leagues. When he was 6, his uncle, Wilton, also a former big-leaguer, started to teach him the game in the Dominican Republic. Ever since, he has worked to perfect his craft.
He was still a boy when scouts began clamoring to see him. By 16, he had signed as an international free agent with the Blue Jays organization for $3.9 million. Four years and three minor-league seasons later, he was the consensus No. 1 prospect in all of baseball.
Guerrero is no doubt happiest on a baseball field. It is his sanctuary. And it’s no wonder. During his 20 years on planet Earth, he has experienced many great joys on a baseball field.
But what about when he wants to just get away from the game, just for a bit? Go home, kick his feet up and relax? What does Vladimir Guerrero Jr. do then?
“Play video games,” he said, proudly, in English, bypassing his translator just this once.
Oh? Right. You’re 20, of course, you love video games. Which one is your favourite to play?
Big smile.
“MLB The Show.”
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