Article: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Hits the Ground(er) Running

[Davy Andrews]

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette came into their first spring training game ready to hit the ball hard. And on the ground. Always on the ground.

The Blue Jays and Tigers were rained out on Monday, but after just one spring training game, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is 1-for-2, for a tidy .500 batting average. It's hard to think of something less surprising than Guerrero getting off to a good start at the plate. Since his debut in 2019, no one in baseball has hit the ball hard as many times as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That's not hyperbole; Statcast, which classifies any ball with an exit velocity over 95 mph as hard-hit, tells the tale very clearly. Guerrero's 1,313 hard-hit balls lead all players.

The bad news? Guerrero gets surprisingly little production from all that loud contact. Among players who have seen at least 2,000 pitches over that period, his .612 wOBA on hard-hit balls ranks 328th. There's a very simple reason for that, and I doubt it's a surprise to you: Over his career, Guerrero has hit 615 hard-hit groundballs. No other player is within 100 of that total. He led the league in both 2022 and 2020, and has never finished lower than third in any of the past five seasons.

Guerrero just doesn't launch the ball the way other sluggers do, so even though he hits the ball harder than just about anyone on earth, he doesn't make the most of it. He's still an excellent hitter because he's excellent at just about every other part of the craft, but that one missing piece can get frustrating. It sometimes seems like it should be a simple thing to fix, but it's not. Swings are complicated, and Guerrero is so preternaturally talented that it would be downright irresponsible to attempt to mess with his. All the same, there's no question as to whether it affects who Guerrero is on the field.

That's a graph that shows his wRC+ and groundball rate in every season of his career. With the exception of 2023, the pattern couldn't be more clear. When Guerrero's groundball rate is high, his offensive output is low (relatively speaking). That's just who he is. Coming into the 2025 season, we don't need to ask ourselves whether Guerrero will hit well; he always hits well. We need to ask ourselves whether he'll be one of the game's best hitters, and that depends to a great extent on his launch angle.

All of this is preamble for Guerrero's first spring training performance on Saturday. Would you care to take a guess as to what Guerrero did during his two trips to the plate? Here's the hit from his first at-bat, an absolute rocket that left his bat at 105.5 mph and drove in a run.

 

Yup, an absolute rocket that just barely made it past the glove of the diving first baseman. Classic Guerrero. And just for good measure, here's how his second at-bat ended. In case you're wondering, this was also a hard-hit ball, with an exit velocity of 96.5 mph.

Guerrero is already in midseason form: Two crushed baseballs, launch angles of 2 and -12 degrees, a groundout and a single. To be clear, two spring training at-bats don't mean anything at all. But they are allowed to trigger us just a little bit.

Before I go, I should mention one more thing. As you might be aware, Guerrero isn't the only culprit in this particular department. Bo Bichette has a higher career groundball rate than Guerrero. He led the league in hard-hit grounders in 2021 and finished in third in 2022. (Yes, that means that a Blue Jay has led the league in hard-hit groundballs three times, with six top-five finishes, in the last five seasons.) Remember when I told you Guerrero had a .612 wOBA on hard-hit grounders? Bichette was right behind him at .611. Every concern I've ascribed to Guerrero in the preceding paragraphs also applies to Bichette to some degree, and they also showed up on Saturday. Bichette came to the plate three times and ripped three hard-hit balls. He went 2-for-3 with a double (although the single was very much a gift from the official scorer). Although one was categorized as a line drive, none of them traveled as far as 150 feet, and all three had launch angles below 10 degrees. Here's the liner:

At the very least, it's encouraging that Guerrero and Bichette have come into spring training mashing from day one. But hopefully they remember what a fly ball looks like at some point.

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[Eat My Shatkins]

Hard to believe folks are mad at the FO for not caving to Vladdy Groundballo Jr's ridiculous contract demands.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

23 minutes ago, Eat My Shatkins said:

Hard to believe folks are mad at the FO for not caving to Vladdy Groundballo Jr's ridiculous contract demands.

I find it more interesting why Vlad, after all these years, is still putting the ball on the ground so often. Does he refuse to listen to coaching? Is coaching just not addressing this? Or is there something inherent in his swing that prevents it?

William Contreras of the Brewers has a very similar problem and tracking the progress (or lack thereof) of both these players is interesting.

[Eat My Shatkins]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I find it more interesting why Vlad, after all these years, is still putting the ball on the ground so often. Does he refuse to listen to coaching? Is coaching just not addressing this? Or is there something inherent in his swing that prevents it?

William Contreras of the Brewers has a very similar problem and tracking the progress (or lack thereof) of both these players is interesting.

I've been saying it for years, he's an all natural talent with a low IQ and unable to make and sustain the proper adjustments he needs to make in order to improve. He doesn't want to "think" he just wants to go and hit and play the game.

[Laika]

GB tendencies are seemingly very hard to get rid of permanently 

Remember Christian Yelich, perhaps MLB's biggest groundball loser of the last 10 years, seemingly fixed his woes for one year in 2019, hit 44 homers, but then went right back to slapping everything on the ground?

I doubt he has ever really tried to "fix" it though. He probably thinks there is nothing wrong with his approach.  

[Laika]

Speaking of Yelich, there's another good "don't extend Vlad" data point 

[Brock Beauchamp]

58 minutes ago, Laika said:

GB tendencies are seemingly very hard to get rid of permanently 

Remember Christian Yelich, perhaps MLB's biggest groundball loser of the last 10 years, seemingly fixed his woes for one year in 2019, hit 44 homers, but then went right back to slapping everything on the ground?

I doubt he has ever really tried to "fix" it though. He probably thinks there is nothing wrong with his approach.  

Yelich is an interesting case. He had a run where he hit 80 home runs over two seasons. But at the end of that second season, his knee exploded off a foul tip. He hasn't been the same player since and while the knee has healed, it seemed there were some lingering mental effects of the injury and then he started fighting back problems constantly, undergoing back surgery in 2024.

So were those homers a blip in Yelich's production or was he derailed by other factors? Dunno, I can make a solid case for either argument.

But you're right that guys who hit a lot of grounders tend to just keep hitting lots of grounders for eternity. But with the technology and knowledge we have now, even bumping those grounders down a few ticks can pay off big over a season.

[Orgfiller]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Yelich is an interesting case. He had a run where he hit 80 home runs over two seasons. But at the end of that second season, his knee exploded off a foul tip. He hasn't been the same player since and while the knee has healed, it seemed there were some lingering mental effects of the injury and then he started fighting back problems constantly, undergoing back surgery in 2024.

So were those homers a blip in Yelich's production or was he derailed by other factors? Dunno, I can make a solid case for either argument.

But you're right that guys who hit a lot of grounders tend to just keep hitting lots of grounders for eternity. But with the technology and knowledge we have now, even bumping those grounders down a few ticks can pay off big over a season.

Wasn't back issues the main cause of Yelich's performance decline? Almost wonder if him selling out for power more - extremely successfully of course - took a toll on his body.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Just now, Orgfiller said:

Wasn't back issues the main cause of Yelich's performance decline? Almost wonder if him selling out for power more - extremely successfully of course - took a toll on his body.

Possibly? But with back problems, they just seem so random. You never know what guy is going to suffer from them and once back issues appear, it seems to be really hard to get rid of them entirely.

2025 will be interesting for Yelich. He claims he feels good, we'll see if the back surgery paid off. He was having a REALLY good year in 2024 before the injury, on pace for 6-ish wins.

[JaysAllMighty]

They took him out today after only 2 ABs,  Possibly trading him?

[Stangstag]

8 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I find it more interesting why Vlad, after all these years, is still putting the ball on the ground so often. Does he refuse to listen to coaching? Is coaching just not addressing this? Or is there something inherent in his swing that prevents it?

William Contreras of the Brewers has a very similar problem and tracking the progress (or lack thereof) of both these players is interesting.

I think it has to do with his knees being messed up and he can’t get underneath the ball like he used to

[Spanky99]

5 hours ago, JaysAllMighty said:

They took him out today after only 2 ABs,  Possibly trading him?

I was worried he'd done something to himself. He isn't getting traded, who's looking for his bat at this point in the season, and the Jays are trying to win? 

[John_Havok]

2 hours ago, Stangstag said:

I think it has to do with his knees being messed up and he can’t get underneath the ball like he used to

Contreras or Vlad?

[Spanky99]

1 minute ago, John_Havok said:

Contreras or Vlad?

 I read that as Willy, fwiw. 

[Brownie19]

8 hours ago, Spanky99 said:

 I read that as Willy, fwiw. 

I think he means Vlad.

Man - William Contreras is so good.  One of the few big misses by AA.

[Stangstag]

On 2/26/2025 at 12:56 AM, John_Havok said:

Contreras or Vlad?

Vlad. Seems he doesn’t have the flexibility to get the swing plane right. Possibly has to do with his recurring knee issues

[Spanky99]

17 minutes ago, Stangstag said:

Vlad. Seems he doesn’t have the flexibility to get the swing plane right. Possibly has to do with his recurring knee issues

There's no worry with Vlad and injury history, he's like the opposite, very durable so far.

[Stangstag]

11 minutes ago, Spanky99 said:

There's no worry with Vlad and injury history, he's like the opposite, very durable so far.

Ok… its still known he has wrist/knee issues. He plays through it, but its likeya factor as to why we don’t see those godly numbers each year like we expected 

[Laika]

14 minutes ago, Stangstag said:

Ok… its still known he has wrist/knee issues. He plays through it, but its likeya factor as to why we don’t see those godly numbers each year like we expected 

probably true