Everybody knows that Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., is, as he would say in his native language, en fuego.
The Toronto Blue Jays first baseman is, in baseball parlance, mashing. He is raking.
But, how much is he mashing and raking? How much fuego are we talking about?
Baseball has a statistic, OPS, that combines a player’s ability to get on base and hit for power.
It’s a catch-all stat for a batter’s production at the plate.
The best postseason OPS in major league history belongs to New York Yankees immortals Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who are tied at 1.214.
Vladdy Junior’s OPS this postseason: 1.337.
He has more home runs (8) than he has strikeouts (5), a fact that seems impossible but is, in fact, true. He’s the first player in MLB history with 25 hits, eight home runs and 15 RBI in a single playoff year.
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It is, simply, one of the all-time great postseasons in the history of baseball.
The Toronto Blue Jays have a 3-2 lead in the World Series for a host of reasons, but the performance of their 26-year-old next-gen superstar is at the top of the list. He won the ALCS MVP in the last round against the Seattle Mariners.
And now he’s doing it all over again.
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The craziest thing about this offensive explosion is that it is coming at the end of Guerrero’s seventh year in the big leagues.
It might seem strange to say it now, but the power surge is something of an outlier.
Did he discover something with his swing? Did he just need the rest that came with a week off after Toronto clinched a first-round playoff bye? Is he swept up in the narrative of leading a team that is collectively playing a little out of its mind?
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He’s had some good seasons, and a couple of great ones, but he’s also had a lot of long stretches where he hasn’t looked anything like the kid who was once the hottest hitting prospect in baseball, the baby-faced teenager with the Hall of Fame father who had a freakishly powerful bat.
It’s not that Guerrero had a poor year — his OPS of .848 was ninth in the AL — but it had to make the Blue Jays executives who signed him to a 14-year, US$500-million contract extension in April just a little bit nervous. Had they paid Ferrari prices for what was more like a high-end sedan?
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Those questions have been blown away by furious playoff hack after furious hack, like the one that resulted in a laser of a first-inning home run in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Guerrero is delivering the kind of devastating offensive performance of which Blue Jays fans — and executives — have long dreamed, only he’s doing it on baseball’s biggest stage, and against the toughest pitchers in the sport.
If nothing else, his timing is impeccable.
The funny thing about this run is that it’s probably less surprising to casual baseball fans who don’t closely follow the Blue Jays. Guerrero has long carried a high profile.
There is his famous lineage, but also the joyful way he plays the game, all big smiles and childhood recklessness, the kind of player who will leap into a diving slide to home plate simply because it’s fun.
There’s also his knack for big moments. As a teenager in the minor leagues, he hit a walk-off homer in a spring-training game at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, where he was born during his father’s time with the Expos.
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As a 20-year-old, he placed second in the Home Run Derby during All-Star Weekend, where he hit a record-breaking 29 homers in the first round. (He would win the event four years later.)
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Two years later, he smashed 48 home runs and led the American League in OPS, seemingly having arrived as one of the premier power hitters in the sport.
But his development was not linear.
He hit 32 home runs the following year, and 26 the year after that. He was still an elite hitter with exceptional contact skills, but that prodigious power was no longer on frequent display.
Theories abounded as to what had happened.
Had he sacrificed some of his natural power to be a better all-around player? Did his efforts to lose weight rob him of some of that juice?
He could still absolutely murder a baseball, but he didn’t hit them in the air as often. Over 156 games in the 2025 regular season, Guerrero hit 23 home runs, tied for 34th in the American League in that category.
One point of comparison: Andy Pages, the ninth hitter in the Dodgers lineup before he was benched in the World Series for lack of production, hit 27 home runs this season.
And now, this. Kaboom. Vladdy in Full. He hit a home run in his first at-bat of the playoffs, at home against the Yankees.
It would turn out to be an incredible statement of intent.
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He still takes walks, still gets on base, but that power that once made his minor-league coaches speak of him in hushed tones has come roaring back.
Throw a mistake to Guerrero now, and he will send it to the moon.
The kid who has been the Jays’ next big thing for the better part of a decade is at the peak of his powers.
There are no second thoughts about that contract anymore.
There’s just anticipation about what Guerrero might do at the Rogers Centre on Friday night, the next time he’s at the plate.
