Guillermo Martínez had been thinking it for a while, so about a month ago he just came out and said it: Man, you’re way too good for this! Stop thinking so much. Just start thinking about hitting the ball hard.
That alone probably did not turn around Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s season. But it seems to have helped.
Perhaps the most remarkable element of the Blue Jays’ playoff push this year is that they’ve largely made it without their most talented player. Two years ago, at 22, Guerrero finished second in American League Most Valuable Player Award voting by slugging .601 with a 1.002 OPS, and he showed flashes of that player last year. But over his first 120 games this season, he was slugging .432, the worst mark of his career. Since then, that figure is .496; since Sept. 14, it’s .677. It’s come at the right time for his team: Over the past two weeks, Toronto has gone 7–4 to climb from a game out of the playoffs to tied with the Astros, a game and a half up on the Mariners, for the last two wild-card slots.
