Swings and Takes: Hearts and Shadows
Aug 27 2024
As the season winds toward October this will be the last Swings and Takes column of the season. I want to thank all of you for reading this column in its inaugural season. Writing this column has made me think about the game in different ways than I did coming in, and I hope that you learned something along the way, as well. On to the column, where we are wrapping up with a special edition, as we are digging into one of the best hitters in the world who has not always been viewed that way throughout his career. Hitting, like hitting analysis, is hard and involves ups and downs, and this hitter has personified this throughout his career, even though at times he has made it look effortless and natural.
Guerrero Living Up To His Name
It is not easy being a prodigy, as the weight of expectations set by absurd performance at a young age can weigh heavily on the mind and soul. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has experienced this as much as any baseball player to come before him, as his name alone would have been enough to elevate expectations, but his talent blew even those lofty familial expectations out of the water as a prospect.
Predictably, he did not live up to these expectations right away. In his first two MLB seasons at ages 20-21 he combined for a 107 wRC+, driven largely by a proclivity to hammer the ball into the ground, with a combined 51.3 GB%. Then at age 22 in 2021 he put it all together, as he dropped his GB% to 44.8% en route to a .311/.401/.601 season, and 166 wRC+ that earned him 2nd in the AL MVP voting behind our newest $700 million dollar man in LA. The path to long-term stardom seemed inevitable, as even if he needed to be a DH soon his bat looked like one of the surest bets in baseball. Alas, baseball is often not that easy, and Vlad, while still averaging a well-above average 125 wRC+ from 2022-2023, no longer looked a generational superstar, especially with a weaker 118 mark in 2023.
That is the context Guerrero lived in heading into 2024, and he has done everything in his power to shift the narrative once again, as his .318/.393/.555 triple slash line and 166 wRC+ may take him back from non-tender whispers to once again in the $300 million contract discussion. He has not done it by elevating consistently like he did in 2021, as his 49.2 GB% is almost 5% higher than 2021 and well-above league average, but by exploring his Heart and avoiding the Shadow Realm.
Along with high expectations, one of the burdens that can rear its ugly head upon top hitting prospects once they reach the Major Leagues is that just because you can hit a pitch, doesn't mean you should. Vladito’s dad defied this piece of baseball wisdom as most of us remember, but others, such as Maikel Franco (with Keibert Ruiz currently on a similar path) saw once promising careers flame out in large part because of this issue.
Junior is a very different hitter than his dad was, but there are some similarities. For one thing, he hits the cover off the ball, as he had the best max exit velocity, best thought of as power potential, in the league. As a 20-year-old he never dipped below 98th percentile in this metric. His average exit velocity almost caught up to his max as a 21-year-old, at 93rd percentile in the shortened 2020 season, and has not dipped below 91st percentile since. A lot of words to say he hits the ball very hard and always has. Just look at this rocket he hit off Tyler Glasnow on April 27th at 117.6 MPH:
Guerrero Jr. Double
