The Blue Jays' patience pays off: This is how it looks when a half-billion-dollar slugger peaks
At the Toronto Blue Jays spring training home of Dunedin, Fla., almost nine years ago, a teenaged prospect walked into the front reception area of the team’s minor-league complex to meet a reporter.
He had medium-length dreadlocks poking out from under his Jays cap, didn’t look the least bit capable of growing a beard and was a little on the chubby side. But he was already one of the most fearsome would-be sluggers in the sport.
“Hello,” said Vladimir Guerrero Jr., in rehearsed English. “Nice to meet you.”
The Blue Jays of spring 2017 were in a bit of an odd spot. Two years earlier, a good Toronto team had exploded into a great one down the stretch, making baseball fans again out of a generation of lapsed supporters, who had lost interest over two moribund decades, and who now were bringing their kids along for the ride.
But while that team made it to the American League Championship Series twice, it couldn’t get back to the World Series, couldn’t add to the two championship banners, from 1992 and 1993, that hung in the Rogers Centre. The roster was also a little old and creaky, and the competitive window was closing fast, if it hadn’t slammed shut already.
Vladdy, as he has been known around baseball since he was toddling around the Olympic Stadium turf when his Hall of Fame-bound father was playing for the Montreal Expos, was the Blue Jays’ next big hope. An added bonus: he was Canadian, although as suggested by his halting English he grew up in the Dominican Republic.
Before he had even turned 18 he had gained a reputation for belting monster home runs. His coaches raved about his natural talent, the way he rarely swung and missed, the sound the ball made when it cracked off his bat.
A year later, still just 19, Guerrero ended a pre-season game in Montreal with a walk-off home run, circling the bases at Olympic Stadium, just like his dad did so many times during his playing career. Vladdy otherwise spent that year in the minors, where he would play one more season before getting called up to the big club in 2019.
The next era of Blue Jays baseball had arrived. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., the north star of a roster that also included second-generation major leaguers like Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio, would be the guy to lead the club, finally, back to the World Series.
It would take a little longer than expected. Game One is Friday night.
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On Monday night, tears streamed down Guerrero’s face soon after the Blue Jays clinched the American League pennant after a truly preposterous Game 7 victory over the Seattle Mariners.
Guerrero had been relatively quiet on the night, ceding the spotlight to George Springer, whose three-run home run in the seventh-inning instantly became the stuff of franchise lore on the way to a 4-3 Toronto win. But it was one of the few nights in the 2025 playoffs where the Blue Jays offence wasn’t powered by Guerrero’s mighty, controlled hacks.
The story of Toronto’s postseason success has been similar to their regular-season success in many ways. They are a team that puts a lot of balls in play and gets contributions from the entire lineup; two home runs from Andres Gimenez, the ninth hitter in the lineup, sparked crucial wins in Seattle.
The big difference is that Guerrero has exploded. He hit six home runs against New York and Seattle, tying him with Joe Carter and Jose Bautista as Toronto’s franchise leader in playoff home runs — with all of his coming in the past 11 games. Guerrero’s numbers in 2025 are the stuff of video games: a .442 batting average and 1.440 OPS. In his seven playoff seasons with the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth hit .347 with a 1.285 OPS.
The Vlad-splosion, though, has been a long time coming. Guerrero’s time with the Blue Jays has mostly been a story of promise unfulfilled, for both player and team. He had a huge 2021 season, with 48 home runs, but hasn’t come close to that total since. The Jays made the playoffs three times with him before this season, but lost all six games to exit quickly each time. In 2024, the team sagged to a last-place finish in the AL East, even as Guerrero got back some of his old swagger at the plate.
By the team the 2025 season dawned, there were legitimate questions over whether Toronto’s baseball team would end up following the lead of its hockey team, failing to do much of anything with a crop of generational talent.
The front-office duo of president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins, brought in by Rogers to replace Paul Beeston, the last link to the World Series years, and Alex Anthopoulos, the (Canadian) architect of those fun 2015/16 teams, still couldn’t point to any playoff success, and were best known around the league for trying and failing to land big free-agent targets like Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto over previous summers. Guerrero and Bichette were also entering the final years of their contracts, raising the possibility that they could leave in free agency. It was a disaster in the making.
But then the team announced in early April that it had signed Guerrero to a monster contract extension of US$500-million over 14 years. Manager John Schneider has said that the deal lifted the mood around the team, as it showed that ownership intended to field a competitive team well into the future. The doomsday scenario of a Vladdy departure had been avoided, and the team wouldn’t have to spend the season listening to questions about where he might go.
And then they started winning. A lot. After trailing the Yankees by 5.5 games on June 1, they were up by 3.5 games two months later, keyed by a four-game sweep of New York over Canada Day weekend. Former bit players like Ernie Clement, Nathan Lukes and Addison Barger were playing significant roles, while several players who had rough 2024 seasons — Bichette, Alejandro Kirk and especially Springer — had bounced back at the plate.
As the Jays ripped through the summer months, the vibes of 2015 returned. For the first time in the Vladdy era, the team was leading its division, having a bunch of fun, and packing the Rogers Centre with multi-generational crowds. Dreams of a long playoff run no longer sounded crazy.
But first they had to win a playoff game.
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The road to that long-awaited postseason victory began even before October, as the Jays won the last four games of their regular season to hold off the hard-charging Yankees and secure the AL East crown.
That gave them a first-round playoff bye, and allowed them to open the American League Division Series at home, where they hosted New York. And the Jays, who had built their success on steady offensive performance, suddenly exploded, scoring 23 runs over two games. Guerrero homered in his first at-bat, the first home run of his playoff career, which now seems like a signal of intent.
Toronto dispatched New York relatively easily, and moved on to the ALCS against Seattle. That series gave Jays fans a lesson in one of the realities of playoff baseball, which is that it often makes you want to throw up.
Toronto lost two at home as the offence cooled off, then won two after it came alive in Seattle. The Mariners struck what seemed like it might be a death blow in Game 5, hitting a pair of late home runs in a comeback win, but the Jays’ bats woke up again in Game 6, another Guerrero home run included. Cue Game 7, and the Springer dinger that takes its place among the Blue Jays other immortal swats: Jose Bautista’s 2015 bat-flip homer against Texas and Joe Carter’s World Series-winning shot against Philadelphia in 1993.
The Blue Jays will return to the World Series on Friday night, at home, against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s their first time getting that far since “touch-‘em-all-Joe” Carter sent what was then called SkyDome into pandemonium 32 years ago. Back then, the Jays were a model franchise, and few would have imagined it would take this long to make the final series again.
But that is the thing about team sports: this stuff isn’t easy. Toronto is the only Canadian city with more than one franchise in the big four North American leagues. The Raptors have made the NBA Finals once in their 30 seasons. The Maple Leafs, infamously, haven’t been to the Stanley Cup Final in 58 years. And now the Jays are back in the Fall Classic for just the third time in their 48-year history.
For some, it will bring back memories of Carter, and guys like Devon White and John Olerud. Older fans will think back to those first great teams — Dave Stieb, Jesse Barfield, George Bell — who never made it this far.
But for many more, all of this will be new. The final stage of baseball’s terrifying playoff high-wire act.
As he wiped the tears from his eyes on Monday night, Guerrero told a delirious Rogers Centre what he was thinking about: “Four more,” he said.
Wins, that is.
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