BALTIMORE – On the day the Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from post-season contention, clips of a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. interview went viral and the star first baseman stepped in a heaping pile of his own making.
Speaking in Spanish to Veronica Batista of Noticias Telemicro, the struggling slugger discussed finding comfort in conversations with his Hall-of-Fame father during sleepless nights resulting from angst over his lack of performance, and the on-and-off back injury that he said wasn’t an excuse for his troubles at the plate. But it was a preview clip that circulated online with Guerrero saying he received his $500-million, 14-year contract not “for what I’m going to do, it was for what I already did, they didn’t pay me because I’m going to hit 40 every year, they paid me for what I already accomplished,” that triggered a social media firestorm that neither he, nor his team, needed.
Even if the intention behind his comments was somewhat lost in translation — what he seems to be trying to get across is that he earned the contract, not that he doesn’t need to live up to it — there was no chance of the message sitting well given the down season he had, and its impact on the Blue Jays’ fortunes.
Speaking outside the visitors’ clubhouse after the 4-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles that knocked his team out, Guerrero, through interpreter Hector Lebron, sounded a much more appropriate note when he said, “I’m taking big responsibility” for the team’s fate this year and added, “I've got to get better.”
“I've got to obviously put up better numbers to help the team win,” he continued. “But it is what it is. Just go to the off-season and keep working hard, prepare myself again and be ready for next year.”
But because of who he is, the impact of his words and actions on the team’s culture and the wider implications of everything he does on the franchise, his explanation of what he meant in the interview with Batista mattered, and wasn’t much better than the initial comment.
“She asked me how I felt about this year, I said, obviously, I feel really bad about the year that I had, I couldn't help get my team to the post-season,” said Guerrero. “And I said that I felt, my personal opinion, that every player gets paid for what they’ve done. That's what I said. With that said, if you guys remember, I signed my contract at the beginning of last year when I did put up a good year, the kind of playoffs that I had, to help the team get into the World Series. To the fans, I never stopped working very hard. I'm going to go to the off-season again to prepare myself to do the best I can physically, mentally everything that I have, like I always do for my team and my teammates.”
Later asked if he regretted what he said given the negative fan reaction, Guerrero replied that he doesn’t, adding that, “I'm not lying with what I said. I understand sometimes (fans) don't understand the way or what I was trying to say, specifically. But what I said was the way I felt.”
Fair enough, although within the cauldron of emotion surrounding the 4-8 stretch that put the final knife in this disappointing campaign, not showing the awareness that mega deals like his are rooted in what a player has done, but calculated on what a player is going to do, is an unforced error that made nothing into something.
“The player, the person that I know in Vlad, by no means is he just saying OK, I got paid and I'm good with that,” manager John Schneider said after another 4-2 loss in the nightcap. “I know the type of worker he is, the type of player he is and the type of teammate he is – I know that he's going to continue to work to have a better year than he did personally this year and to be the guy that we saw a lot last year and a lot in the post-season that helped get us to a World Series. … We know the work isn't going to stop and we know he's going to be a big part of our team for a long time.”
The discourse around Guerrero was already heated, of course, given that he’s batting .263/.335/.360 with nine homers and 56 RBIs in 142 games, missing 17 contests due to various ailments, one shy of the total of 18 he sat out from 2020 through 2025.
Despite that, he’s by and large lived up to the non-production ends of the expectations around him, playing elite defence, supporting teammates, not allowing his struggles to bleed into others. In a recent interview with Sportsnet, Guerrero discussed the toll that’s taken on him, saying “sometimes we lie a lot, we say we're good and we're not good,” adding that he’s learned this year that “if you need help, just ask for help.”
Earlier this month, he did that with Schneider and on Wednesday, during his discussion with media, said, “every at-bat that I fail I think about my contract, because I know all these people that go to the games, they pay to see me being successful, to do something good every at-bat.”
Finding ways to help him balance those expectations while figuring out how to get his body and swing back to where they need to be is the most impactful thing the Blue Jays can do this off-season.
Asked if he knows what he needs to do to get himself back on track this winter, Guerrero replied: “Work. I've just got to work hard. I've got to get my rest and pretty much it's physical. I really believe that if I rest and I work the way I work physically, I'll be fine.”
More than anything, that’s what matters.
Guerrero acknowledges “I didn't have a good year, it was a bad year for me and I didn't do my part to help the team win.” After a lost season for him and his team, most relevant is what he’s going to do so that it doesn’t happen again.
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