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.
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)
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.”
