Give us your grade for Guerrero’s first half of the season.
Vladimir Guerrero is in his seventh season with the Jays. I’m always going to like him because I feel that, if somehow I were an MLB player, I’d be happy all the time, cause who wouldn’t want to be a baseball player? Vlad has that smile and that look, and he’s so glad to be there. I don’t remember his dad being that way.
This year, like last year, he started slow and has improved:
- April: .763 OPS.
- May: .869 OPS.
- June: .857 OPS.
Baseball Reference has him at a 2.2 WAR, FanGraphs 1.9.
He’s been good, but not the type of good we expect. Halfway through the season, he has 10 home runs; we expect more than that. But then, last year, he had 13 home runs at about the same point, so there is time for him to put up a good number of homers, but wouldn’t it be nice if he started the season hitting homers?
He’s at the 100 percentile for expected batting average (.325), which suggests he’s been unlucky. He’s in the 94th percentile for average exit velocity and 95th percentile for hard hit percentage.
On defence, Baseball Savant has him at the 71st percentile in range and 43rd percentile in arm strength, which seems backwards. Fangraphs has him at +1 runs above average at first, which seems right. I think he’s a little better than average at first base, but not ‘top of the league’.
He also has 6 errors, the worst in baseball for first basemen. Some of that is because he’ll try for plays that most first basemen wouldn’t.
We often discuss the number of times he hits into double plays. His 4 GIDP puts him back at 7th on the team (Springer has 9).
Vlad has been great with RISP, .338/.458/.569 and excellent with RISP and two out, .357/.455/.679.
Let’s have the poll.