When the Toronto Blue Jays granted Vladimir Guerrero his release on Monday, they did so with some reluctance on their part..
While Toronto liked much of what they had seen out of the 37-year-old slugger during his brief stints with the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays and to a lesser extent, with the triple-A Las Vegas 51s, it hasn’t been enough to earn to 2004 AL MVP a crack with the big league club.
Feeling major league ready himself, but with no call on the horizon and the Blue Jays set to embark on another tour of National League ballparks beginning next Monday in Milwaukee, Guerrero saw the writing on the wall and decided his best chance to return to the majors in the near future would be with another organization.
“It was just one of those things where I think Vlad felt he was prepared to come up here now and our staff didn’t necessarily see it that way and felt he needed a few more games,” is how Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos explained the decision. “That was his right. We went into this with our eyes wide open, when there was no guarantees he was going to come up here, no promises. We were going to continue to evaluate him.”
Anthopulos said he had been receiving reports that Guerrero was slowly improving, but that he wasn’t necessarily all the way there yet.
In four games with single-A Dunedin, Guerrero hit .450/.450/1.100/1.550 with four home runs and eight RBIs.
In eight games with Las Vegas, he hit .303/.314/.424/.739, including a 4 for 5 performance Monday, his final game in Toronto’s organization.
On Tuesday, Jesus Alou, one of Guerrero’s representatives, told ESPN.com Guerrero intends to continue his pursuit of 500 home runs with another organization.
“Vladdy did all he could do to show that he is ready to play in the major leagues,” Alou said. “We believe that another team will appreciate that.”
Other reports suggested Guerrero was upset with how the Blue Jays treated him, and that promises had been broken.
Anthopoulos, who never spoke directly with Guerrero, said he spoke with Guerrero’s agent Bean Stringfellow last week and the two agreed to ‘re-evaluate’ Guerrero on Sunday at the conclusion of Las Vegas’ road trip.
On Saturday, Guerrero was hit on the hand by a pitch and as a result did not play Sunday.
On Monday morning, Anthopoulos and Stingfellow spoke again about Guerrero’s future in Toronto, this time with a greater sense of urgecny.
“I told him, ‘look, we talked about re-evaluating on Sunday,” Anthopoulos explained. “If we re-evaluate, if we have to make the decision right now, considering he had to miss two games, we’re not prepared to call him up. So if he wants his release we’ll certainly hold up to our end of the bargain.”
Anthopoulos added that he gave Stringfellow and Guerrero the option to take things “day-to-day.”
“He played (Monday) night and he decided that was going to be enough for him,” said Anthopoulos. “He felt he was certainly worthy of a call-up and we’re just not prepared to do that right now.”
And while Guerrero didn’t have a future with Toronto, the Montreal native Anthopoulos said he wouldn’t be suprised to see one of his favourites players growing up, suit up in the majors in 2012.
“Oh sure, no doubt about it,” he said. “He started to play well, play a lot better. For us, we needed some more at-bats, but I would never count him out, (the) guy’s a Hall of Famer, great teammate, great guy. There’s no question. I think he definitely is going to have opportunities, there’s no doubt about it.”
