HOUSTON — As the Toronto Blue Jays wrapped up an emotional three days deep in the heart of Texas with a 5-4, 10-inning victory over the Houston Astros, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. missed his seventh game of the season to establish an unwanted career high.
Appearing in 108 of his team’s 115 games — 94 per cent — so far in this trying 2026 is by no means a poor number. But it needs to be contextualized against the franchise player’s history — from 2020 through 2025, he appeared in 852 of the Blue Jays’ 870 regular-season games, with 156 being his previous low — and there must be some link between the physical issues that have caused him to miss more games than ever and his stunning lack of production.
Guerrero looked very uncomfortable running out a groundball in the eighth inning of Tuesday night’s 7-2 win, slowing as he hit the bag and then bending over in discomfort before hobbling off.
Manager John Schneider acknowledged Wednesday that his first baseman “has had some hamstring tightness and other stuff,” but explained sitting him by saying “with 17 in a row, today's kind of just a day off, just watching him (Tuesday) and just giving him a blow against a really good starting pitcher (in Hunter Brown), trying to get as many lefties in there as we can.”
Guerrero’s previous missed games this year were all directly tied to acute ailments.
He missed games May 25 and 26 after a 92.1 m.p.h. sinker from Mitch Keller struck the inside of his right elbow.
Lower back tightness cost him games June 13, 14 and 30 while he sat July 29 due to some right hamstring tightness suffered the previous nights. With the Blue Jays not only in the middle of 17 games in 17 days, but also on the back half of 30 outings in 31 days, there are precious few days for him, or others, to do any sort of healing.
Asked if another day off Thursday afternoon in Chicago, when the Blue Jays play a makeup game against the Cubs, might make some sense for Guerrero, Schneider hedged.
"Everyone, but especially him, he wants to be out there, he wants to be contributing more than he is. I'll talk to him (Wednesday) as the day goes and when we get into Chicago," Schneider said.
Guerrero’s determination to stay on the field is important from a wider perspective, as his actions in many ways set the standard. By showing up, good or bad, no matter that he’s struggling through easily the worst season of his career, it establishes that as the norm for others.
But players of his ilk also sometimes need to be saved from themselves and the way he moved Tuesday, on the heels of his back and hamstring issues, make it at least reasonable for him to miss a few days to put him on steadier footing, especially given the extra work he’s doing to pull out of his funk at the plate.
The balance there “is a delicate one,” said Schneider. “We're talking about one of the most important guys on our team. I always feel good with him in the lineup, his presence and what he can do, what he has done for a long time. I'll just continue to talk to him and see what he thinks is best for him. He's got a pretty good feel for what's best for him and what's the best for the team. But this is a big boy league, you know what I mean? If you're feeling good enough to go and you can go help us, we want you to do that. But I'll continue to talk to him and see how he's doing.”
Without him Wednesday, before a crowd of 27,751, Jameson Taillon navigated through four innings in his Blue Jays debut, allowing three runs in the third on a Jose Altuve home run, a Christian Walker RBI double and run-scoring Lamonte Wade Jr. single, but otherwise held the game in check.
The Blue Jays erased that 3-0 deficit in the sixth when Myles Straw broke up Brown’s no-hit bid with a double and scored on Kazuma Okamoto’s RBI single, which was followed by Jesus Sanchez’s two-run homer.
Critically, Spencer Miles worked out of a second-and-third, none-out jam in the bottom half to keep the game tied and it stayed there until the 10th, when Ernie Clement hammered Bennett Sousa’s first pitch 391 feet to left field.
It was just the third time since the all-star break the Blue Jays have had multiple homers in the same game.
With the bullpen thinned out by both the lack of recent off-days and Tuesday’s two-inning outing by Trey Yesavage, who was placed on the injured list with left knee inflammation, closer Louis Varland was needed in the ninth, which left Chase Lee, recalled with Lazaro Estrada, to handle the 10th.
Yordan Alvarez opened the inning by ripping a ball down the right-field line to cut the Blue Jays lead down to one but Nathan Lukes made a strong relay to Andres Gimenez, who put a quick tag on the MVP-candidate slugger to steal an out.
Altuve followed with a drive to the left-field wall for the second out before Daulton Varsho flew out to centre for the final out, a wild ending that left the Blue Jays 54-61.
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