The Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. says it’s too early for MVP talk, so we’ll have the conversation for him

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This article was published 03/06/2021 (1625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BUFFALO—In the split-second when the ball emerges from the pitcher’s hand, every part of Vladimir Guerrero’s body is moving. Both instinctively, reactively, and with aforethought.

Knees slightly bent, hands on the handle of the bat, cocked behind his right ear. As the ball travels from delivery towards the strike zone — maybe four-tenths of a second — in that flick of an eyelash, Guerrero’s front foot raises slightly off the ground, his hands drop a couple of inches, the bat moving behind his helmet, perpendicular to the plate, the foot touching down as his weight is loaded onto his right hip, then the torso thrust forward with the torque of the swing, his hands extended up and away from his chest, his head staying locked in position, and his eyes, as he takes his first step out of the box, fixed on the ball’s trajectory.

The scorching liner will clear the left-field wall.

That was the second pitch, a slider, Guerrero saw from Sandy Alcantara in Tuesday’s game against Miami at Buffalo’s Sahlen Field. On the first pitch in his first at-bat, he merely laced his 11th double of the season. There were a pair of singles to come yet in his first career four-hit game, accomplished on just seven pitches seen off two moundsmen, with his paternal grandparents in the stands. By his third amble to the batter’s box, the crowd was chanting “MVP! MVP! MVP!”

Well, a glance at the stats and you can see why. Heading into the Blue Jays’ off day Thursday, Guerrero led the majors in OPS (1.105) and slugging percentage (.665), was tied for first in homers (17), was second in RBIs (45) and fifth in hits (65).

For all his joyful exuberance on the field, his playful pranks, amber-tipped dreadlocks bouncing, his complex cellies with teammates in the dugout — these skits are orchestrated to the finest hop and fist-bump detail — Guerrero is rather stolid and quite impassive in his Zoom exchanges with journalists, albeit it’s a stilted circumstance and always relayed through Spanish interpreter Tito Lebron.

So it was a dry and boilerplate response when Guillermo was asked about his four-hit performance Tuesday. “I’m just trusting the plan, the routine, my coaches. Keep working hard. That’s basically it, just the plan. Not every day I’m going to get a day like this, I’m going to get a base hit every time. But I’m pleased with my routine before every game.’’

It’s obvious, however, that Guerrero understands questions put to him in English and, away from the media, certainly has no problem communicating with unilingual teammates. He can even tell jokes in what is not his mother tongue.

During a day-after one-on-one with a reporter at the fence behind the batting cage — as close as the media can get to players at this time — Guerrero was quick to correct, before the question had been translated, when the dumbass journo asked about being tied with Fernando Tatis Jr. in home runs.

“No, Acuna.”

Duh. Right, Ronald Acuna Jr., the Atlanta Braves star from Venezuela, not Tatis, a fellow Dominican with the Padres. Four Latin players were straddling the home run apex, actually: Guerrero and Acuna with 17, Tatis and the Cuban-born Adolis Garcia, of Texas, with 16, as of this writing. Where would baseball be without its salsa-flavored sluggers?

TV Viewers might recall the lighthearted exchanges Guerrero seemed to be having at first base with Acuna across five games between their teams last month. Mostly they talked about families and stuff. “Acuna and I have a great relationship. We don’t see it as a competition.”

He sniffles, wipes his nose. “Allergies,” he explains, in English.

But Tatis, also son of a major-leaguer with high public celebrity in the Dominican Republic, is a friend. “Since we were kids,” says Guerrero. “His father and my father, of course they know each other very well. So Fernando and I have known each other since we were little.”

All have put themselves in the target hairs of early MVP conversations. Guerrero has even been promoted for a Gold Glove, though admittedly that comes from the endlessly rah-rah skipper, Charlie Montoyo. If this keeps up, though, Guerrero might make a run for the triple crown, so staggering are the numbers after the first two months. Just spitballing here, but he would be the youngest triple crown winner since Ty Cobb pulled it off at the same age, 22, in 1909. Nobody has copped the triple in either league since Miguel Cabrera in 2012.

Guerrero is well aware of the jibber-jabber, which he mostly ignores. “It’s good and everything but, like I always said, I don’t really want to pay attention to that. It’s early in the season still. So I just come in early every day, go about my routine, try to help the team win in any way I can.”

That routine is a much-cited factor in Guerrero’s breakthrough season, the prep work put in each day with hitting coach Guillermo Martinez and bench coach Dave Hudgens, both on the field and pouring over opposing pitcher data. With Alcantara on Tuesday, Guerrero actually eschewed the plate patience that has defined his season. “I would say the key to patience is adjustments. That’s the name of this game. You’ve really got to make adjustments every day, every game, every at-bat. And, of course, trusting my hands.”

His baseball smarts haven’t been given full due, as if all this audacious output is more nature than nurture, and Guerrero a kind of homer savant, doing what comes naturally. There’s nothing natural about belting a ball 117 miles per hour off the bat or 456 feet.

Stepping into batter’s box against Alcantara, Guerrero’s instincts told him to expect a fastball; yet he pivoted in a microsecond to the slider coming at him. “He’s one of those pitchers who likes to attack the zone, especially when he’s ahead in the count. I’m also that kind of hitter, especially when I’m looking for my pitch. I will be aggressive.”

It was a seamless transition in his first two at-bats, and he was still in the groove for the next two.

In Wednesday’s 6-5 comeback, walk-off win by the Jays, Guerrero opened with a triple, struck out twice — he actually has a low whiff ratio for a slugger, 34 versus 33 walks, again evidence of his patience — and was intentionally walked in the ninth, bounding across the plate with the winning run on Joe Panik’s sacrifice fly, which was booted by Starling Marte anyway.

So Guerrero is well into the meat of a breakout season, thus far slump-proof, following two years when he did well enough but not well enough for a few — not many — baseball assessors, who’d anticipated a huge splash, shades of his gobsmacking minor-league output.

Note that he totalled only nine home runs through 60 games in pandemic-abbreviated 2020. He has already nearly doubled that, with opposite-field power.

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“Ever since the minors I’ve used the entire field,” Guerrero insists. “This year I prepared myself for that, made adjustments to go the other way with power.”

Defensively, he’s also, kinda, frankly, fallen in love with first base, deftly saving poor throws from infielders, digging them out of a potential E4, E5, E6, while frequently executing balletic splits — both the side version, extending one leg to the left, one to the right of the torso, and the front splits, one leg forward of and other leg to the rear of the torso.

Ask him whence the hell this trick and he simply smiles, shrugs. “I don’t know. It just happened. When I see the throw coming in short maybe, or I’m trying to keep one foot on the bag and stretching, I just split.”

Split ’n’ polish: Vladdy, circa 2021.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno