Vlad in a Year

[Matthew Creally]

June is upon us. The days are at their longest, and it's sort of a sweet spot in the year where we here at Jays Centre no longer have to litter every article with the words "it's still early," but it also isn't quite crunch time either. The Blue Jays have yet to consistently start winning, but the AL is still terrible, the weather in southern Ontario has been nothing short of spectacular, and there's lots to learn about the remainder of the season.

Like many of you, I began the month of June by letting out a tremendous cackle after hearing that Louis Varland somehow didn't win Reliever of the Month. Just before that, though, I was checking in on some 365-day leaderboards over at FanGraphs. The calendar turning reminded me that looking at player stats at the season level can be considered arbitrary. It's also worth noting that it has now been a full calendar year since the Jays started to get hot and begin their glorious march to the AL pennant. 365-day leaderboards tell us about the best players in the league over the past year, something that multi-season leaderboards don't quite capture.

As I was scanning the batting leaders since June 2 of last year, I found something that I had to stare at for a while just to make sure I was seeing it properly. Before I go any further, I'll emphasize that I'd like to consider myself a rational baseball fan who gathers facts and uses logic, rather than reactive emotion, to form opinions. As such, I've grown to detest things like the blind side-by-side player stat comparisons that are often seen on social media. They lack context and are mostly posted to get a reaction. However, after looking at these leaderboards, I just couldn't resist despite my best efforts. I apologize profusely. Below is a comparison of offensive stats since June 2, 2025, for two position players.

Hopefully the Only Blind Player Comparison I Will Ever Share

Player	GP	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	wRC+	K%	BB%
Player A	156	668	.297	.380	.448	18	132	11.8%	11.1%
Player B	149	564	.282	.372	.455	17	131	15.1%	12.2%

As you likely surmised by the title, one of these guys is Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

He is player A.

Player B is Spencer Horwitz.

I'll be the first to admit this is narrative-ball at its finest. Like I said before, context matters. Guerrero has proven to be an above-average hitter against lefties and righties, but the former Blue Jay Horwitz, a lefty, has historically been pretty bad against left-handed pitching, and while he isn't in a strict platoon role, he doesn't always start when a lefty pitcher is on the mound. 

Guerrero is also blessed with more physical gifts. He hits the ball very hard and almost never strikes out. His raw talent means he'll likely begin his physical downturn later in his career, and it'll probably be a more graceful decline than Horwitz's. Another aspect of this that's hard to quantify is Guerrero's reputation internationally, especially in his native Dominican Republic. The Blue Jays owe a considerable portion of their fanbase, as well as their status in the eyes of future free agents, to #27. He does more for the organization than you might think just by being here.

This is all a long-winded way of saying yes, I'd rather have Vladimir Guerrero Jr. than Spencer Horwitz. But I also don't think I'm crazy to suggest there should be more separation between him and Horwitz in their most recent full-season sample of non-playoff games. According to Spotrac, Guerrero is making a little more than $40M this year, the first season of his record-breaking 14-year, $500M extension. Meanwhile, Horwitz is still a year away from being eligible for arbitration, so he's only making $802K.

There is, though, the elephant in the room. The playoffs. As my editor Leo Morgenstern rightfully pointed out to me, if you include the postseason, Guerrero ranks among the top 15 in wOBA and OPS among all MLB hitters over the past 365 days (min. 500 PA). That's what you want out of your franchise cornerstone, plain and simple. Anyone's one-year performance will look worse if you omit their best stretch from consideration, and for him, that came in October. He shouldn't be punished for that, but the fact remains that for an entire year, his regular-season offensive performance has been nearly indistinguishable from the guy he was blocking on the depth chart not too long ago.

Why is that the case? Well, Guerrero's worst regular-season stretch of the past year was, by a mile, his most recent: May 2026. As I write this, his pristine .390 OBP exceeds his mind-boggling .387 SLG. Where he has gone astray this year is a perfect encapsulation of the Jays' offensive regression from last year: He's chasing more. The 2025 squad was famous for their ability to get bat on ball, but make no mistake, their true standout quality was hitting for enough power to make that mean something. When you chase more, you're in worse counts. When you're in worse counts, you get less to hit.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s Power Outage Is a Byproduct of His Swing Decisions

Year	Chase%	Chase Contact%	Early-Count Swing%	% Ahead in Count	% Behind in Count	Hard-Hit%	Barrel%
2025	21.5%	61.7%	33.0%	26.1%	31.4%	50.7%	12.2%
2026	31.2%	73.7%	40.7%	22.4%	36.4%	44.2%	6.8%

Sure, it would be great if he started lifting the ball all of a sudden, but he's now in his eighth full season in the majors with over 1,000 games of experience. If he hasn't figured out how to push his attack angle above 3° by now, when will it happen? The relative lack of patience is the more prudent issue here. He has managed great seasons with a high groundball rate before. 

There are many ways to digest this, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that this is all a prime example of how baseball progresses over time. If you look at the same 365-day leaderboard but shifted back one year, from June 2024 to June 2025 instead, Guerrero's 164 wRC+ is third in all of baseball, behind only Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. He went nuclear in the second half of 2024 for the retooling Jays after a sluggish first month and a half. In any given three-year window, these are simply the ups and downs of the game.

Were we wrong to expect so much of Guerrero after his magical October? He has shown that his ceiling is in that range before. 2021. Most of 2024. October 2025. We all know it's in there somewhere, which is what makes his recent struggles frustrating or not as bad as they seem, depending on how you take it. At this point, though it's fun to dream on, I don't think it makes sense to expect he'll ever pair his exit velocities with truly optimal launch angles. He's chasing more than we've ever seen and has proven that can lower his floor, but if a .290 AVG and .390 OBP with no power is what that looks like, it could be worse. The fact that he makes so much contact and hits the ball so hard to all fields means his floor will never be that of a squarely unproductive player over the course of a full season.

Baseball reminds us all the time that it moves in waves. Sometimes those reminders are pleasant, and sometimes they aren't. Relatively speaking, Guerrero's monster final two-thirds of 2024 ended up being a peak in between the two valleys of his 2023-into-slow-start-to-2024 and the much less severe 2025 regular season. Similarly, his 2025 postseason was another peak in between the two valleys of the preceding regular season and what he's going through now. If the rough cadence of this cycle continues, he's in for better days not too far from now. The Blue Jays paid him $500M for a lot of reasons. The postseason he gave them was one. The fact that his absolute floor is an above-average hitter is another. Shoutout Spencer Horwitz for not falling too far behind.

All stats entering June 3, 2026.

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