How Vlad Jr. and the Blue Jays bet on each other…and won
Just when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. seemed destined for free agency, Toronto made him an irresistible offer. Now the Jays are in the American League Championship Series.
SIX MONTHS AGO after just seven games of the 2025 season, the Toronto Blue Jays arrived in Queens with uncertainty about the future of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The New York Mets fans, hopeful that their team could sign the imminent free agent and partner him with Juan Soto, received the first baseman with a notable ovation at Citi Field to open the weekend series. Guerrero and the Blue Jays had not come to an agreement on a contract extension before the arbitrary mid-February deadline, and the drama was non-stop.
Then, suddenly, he did it, hours after the Mets completed their weekend sweep. The agreement was historic: 14 years, $500 million with no deferrals, the third largest contract in the history of the Major Leagues. Guerrero, born in Canada with a famous name and signed in the Dominican Republic at age 16, would be a Blue Jay for life. Guerrero bet on himself by turning down smaller offers and bet on the Blue Jays by agreeing not to test free agency. And the Blue Jays bet on the local star at an exorbitant price, after having wasted other renowned talents in recent years. The impact was immediate.
“We didn’t start playing our best baseball until May,” Blue Jays starter Max Scherzer said. “But if that wasn’t resolved, it would be a cloud hanging over our season all the time. The fact that it was resolved just calmed everything down. The outside attention dissipated. It’s no longer about ‘what’s going to happen here?’ “It kind of took the elephant out of the room.”
Guerrero, 26, responded with his fifth All-Star season, batting .292 with 23 home runs and an .848 OPS in 156 games. His play, coupled with the bounce-back seasons of George Springer and Bo Bichette and a deep roster of contributors, fueled the Blue Jays’ rise from 74 wins and last place in 2024 to 94 wins, a championship title. American League East Division and, now, the third game of the American League Championship Series.
The Blue Jays can point to some potential turning points on their path to their fourth playoff appearance in six years. In early May, they swept three games in Seattle. That same month, Bichette hit the go-ahead home run as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning at Texas. But Guerrero’s deal a week into the season helped pave the way for where the Blue Jays find themselves on Wednesday: four wins away from their first appearance in the World Series in 32 years.
Trailing 0-2 after the Mariners dominated the first two games in Toronto is no easy task. But the goal Guerrero has set for himself has not changed.
“For me, my goal has always been to win a World Series, to bring the World Series here,” Guerrero said earlier this postseason. “My father never had the opportunity to win a World Series. That’s one of my goals, it always has been, to do that for me, for him.”
THE ROAD TOWARDS This postseason revelation for Guerrero and the Blue Jays began more than a decade ago. In January 2015, months before Guerrero was eligible to sign as an international free agent, Edwin Encarnación received a call from Alex Anthopoulosthen Toronto general manager: The Blue Jays wanted to see the 15-year-old Guerrero, their top target that year, train again in the Dominican Republic, and they needed to find a stadium.
Encarnación, who was coming off an All-Star season with Toronto in 2014, reached out to his contacts and a workout was set up for Guerrero to face older Cuban free agents. With Encarnación and the Blue Jays officials, including Anthopoulos and the director of international scout Ismael CruzGuerrero convinced those responsible for the decision.
“It was something special,” Encarnación said in Spanish on the Rogers Center field Monday before the second game of the American League Championship Series. Vladdy was better than the Cubans. This boy, at 15 years old, shined against them. It was special.
That July, the Blue Jays used their entire international bonus fund to sign Guerrero for $3.9 million. Worried about the commotion that came with being the son of a future Hall of Fame memberAnthopoulos asked the team’s media department to organize a low-key event when Guerrero, born in Montreal during his father’s time in the Exposwas brought to Toronto for the first time. There was no press conference on the podium. Just batting practice on the field.
“I was worried about the last name, the publicity and the expectations were going to be exorbitant,” said Anthopoulos, now general manager of the Atlanta Braves. “And they were anyway, no matter how much we tried to downplay it.”
Guerrero was not immune to the pressure as he arrived for his major league debut in 2019 as baseball’s top prospect at just 20 years old. The following years were not a linear progression. After a runner-up season in the American League MVPin which he hit 48 home runs with a 1.002 OPS in 2021, his first year as a full-time first baseman, Guerrero hit 58 home runs with a .804 OPS over the next two years. Then last season, he had another great performance: a .323/.396/.544 offensive line with 30 home runs in 159 games, which raised his value heading into his platform year.
“He’s not easily distracted,” said the Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins. “He’s still very human, and I think the hardest thing, from my perspective, that Vladdy has had to deal with is the expectations. Not the off-field distractions or the attention. And he accepted the expectations.”
This year, the pressure was on Guerrero to finally live up to those expectations in the postseason. He arrived at the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees batting 3 for 22, two walks, five strikeouts and no home runs in six playoff games in his career (all losses), spread over three wild card series.
Guerrero quickly put that story behind him in the first game, hitting a solo home run in his first plate appearance of the postseason. In the second game, he hit a grand slam that will long be replayed in Rogers Center highlight videos. He finished the series 9-for-17, with three home runs and nine RBIs, and the Blue Jays eliminated New York in four games.
“I think he’s improved a lot in every aspect,” Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk said. “The experience, how he has matured as a person. He is no longer the 20-year-old Vladimir who debuted. Now he is Vladimir.”
VLADIMIR VASQUEZ He watched the Blue Jays beat the Yankees last Wednesday from his restaurant, five miles north of the Rogers Centre. Born in the Dominican Republic, Vásquez moved to Toronto at age 11 in 1990 and quickly became a fan of the Blue Jays’ championship teams in the early ’90s. He opened Cabacoa, a Dominican restaurant, a year and a half ago, a sign of the growth of the Dominican community in the city.
“I’ve followed Vladimir Guerrero Jr. since he was in the minors,” Vasquez said. “It’s funny because his father was the only older Dominican Vladimir I knew growing up. But it’s important for the community, for the Dominican community, to have someone so good stay here for the long term.”
It is part of the responsibility that Guerrero assumes beyond playing first base and hitting third. He is the only Canadian citizen on Canada’s only MLB team. His number 27 jersey is the one worn by Blue Jays fans from British Columbia to Newfoundland. He’s the player the Blue Jays have vowed to keep as their mainstay through his age-40 season in 2039, 20 years after his debut, in hopes that he’ll cap off his own Hall of Fame career.
“I see Vladdy in the long term because I’ve played with the greats,” said Scherzer, an 18-year veteran and three-time Cy Young Award winner. “I’ve played with so many great and different players throughout my career. For me, he fits the mold of Prince Fielder-Miguel Cabrera. “It’s kind of a hybrid between the two.”
In the short term, the agreement was a respite. Perhaps, as Atkins said he would like to think, the Blue Jays would have found their footing without Guerrero signing the extension. The pieces were in place two years after an 89-win season. But that variable, which had persisted since the day Guerrero reported to spring training, was eliminated.
Six months later, the Blue Jays, with the support of their franchise cornerstone, are taking off.
“I think it kind of showed our fans and the league what we’re trying to do in the short and long term,” he said. Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “And this, in a way, takes away some of the uncertainty that surrounded a really good player and allows the team to say, ‘Okay, this is our player, this is what we’re going to do.’ I think, in a way, it gave us all freedom.”
