What is wrong with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.? Digging into the Blue Jays star's stunning slump

When we last checked in with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on May 19, he had hit three home runs. We're now more than halfway through the season, and he has hit four. Back then, he projected like a hitter who was struggling but not necessarily one to freak out about. I mean, this is still Vladdy we’re talking about: contact-quality king, the high-average, low-strikeout, $500 million man. He was, as I concluded back then, due for a course-correct.

I really did not think I’d be titling a second Google Doc “Vlad Guerrero Struggles 2” before July. But here we are.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s first-half decline

• Home runs: 4 (after hitting 38 last season)
• June batting average: .198
• Slugging percentage: .348
• Batting run value: Lowest of his career
• Barrel rate: Lowest since Statcast began tracking

If it isn't clear from the above stats, we are now due to freak out. Guerrero’s batting average has been nose-diving: .351 in April, .232 in May and below the Mendoza Line at .198 for June. His slugging percentage, I kid you not, is down to .348. That is lower than the career slugging percentage of Steven Kwan, who literally does not hit for power ever. It is lower than the current slugging percentage of Caleb Durbin, a guy I called inarguably the worst hitter in baseball just one month ago. 

This is a DEFCON 1 crisis. Vladdy’s batting run value, per Statcast, is the lowest of his entire career, even lower than his pedestrian rookie season in 2019. He is not barrelling the ball at all. He is not creating high-quality contact. In fact, since I wrote about his rare “power outage,” the outage reports have spread and we don’t have enough trucks to respond.

I could bombard everyone with stats demonstrating his struggles, but we prefer a growth mindset around here. We're solutions-focused. Guerrero’s main problem are his hard-hit numbers, which have just completely cratered for no apparent reason. I really do mean no apparent reason, as there is nothing I could find in any of the weeds of bat tracking or attack angle or any of the fancy-schmancy underlying tracking stuff we baseball nerds love to point to.

Guys, I busted out the swing path visualizer. I watched Guerrero’s swing from last year to this year and tried to detect visual differences as well. That is where we’re at; that’s the energy we’re bringing to this analysis.

The numbers don't explain what's happening

The lone explanation, and the one that we landed on last time around, was that Guerrero is seeing fewer fastballs, the pitch on which he traditionally does most of his damage. But looking at the rates of other common pitches thrown at him (as well as a league-wide decline in four-seam usage), I have a hard time believing this is anything other than noise. It would also be profoundly stupid if the solution to Vlad Guerrero Jr. was “throw seven percent fewer fastballs” and nobody did it until now.

The reality is that Vladdy is just ice-cold. Sometimes, it’s not about all the things you are or are not doing under the table; it’s just about real-life hitting struggles. Seeing the ball, making the right decisions. Not trying to overcompensate or chase your failures and remaining consistent with the approach that got you where you are today.

Blue Jays Manager John Schneider isn’t worried, at least about Guerrero’s mentality, saying this in a recent interview with local press: “He's actually good (mentally). You want some players to be good liars to a manager in terms of how they're feeling. Vlad's been an open book with me, so I've pressed him a few times in the last couple of weeks, and he's good.”

Why betting against Vladdy is still risky

Vladdy’s positive mental state may explain why some of the underlying metrics are so dumbfounding. He hasn’t changed his approach at all, his spray chart is functionally identical, and while he’s chasing more out of the zone, he’s actually whiffing less than last season.

He actually is playing like a guy who isn’t bothered by his struggles, and one who is committed to his system. That system isn’t working at the moment, but it’s worked for years. It’s really unlikely that it will continue not to work.

And that’s … kinda it. Every results-based metric in the books tells me he’s struggling, but very little about his approach or physical tools explains why that’s happening. You could take that as a negative, in that we have nothing to fix and oh gosh will this just go on forever. Or you could take it as a positive, in that if it’s so hard to explain, it probably won’t continue. I lean the latter.

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