TORONTO — Three-and-a-half hours before game time Friday, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stood before the media backdrop outside the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse and tried to make amends. For roughly 12 minutes, as teammates glanced over on their way to or from the adjacent gym, he sounded a different note than he did Wednesday, when the tone-deaf comments he made to Veronica Batista of Noticias Telemicro about receiving his $500-million deal for what he’d already done first went viral, apologizing before a throng of media, explaining that it wasn’t what he’d meant to say, even if he didn’t clarify what he meant to get across, and vowing “to make my contract a great one.”
In a season gone horribly sour for him and his team, the whole scene was one more swig of vinegar, sitting uneasily amid all the accumulated bile. How this all gets digested depends on how Guerrero performs in the years to come, but during Friday’s 6-5 win over the Cincinnati Reds, a crowd of 42,535 gave him a lukewarm welcome each time he stepped up to the plate: mostly cheers, some boos. Fans jeered in the first inning when he beat a ball into the ground two feet from the plate and was tagged by catcher Jose Trevino, and again in the fifth when Nick Lodolo caught him looking, but they chanted his name in the seventh before he chopped a ball through the right side for an RBI single.
When you get the bag and make a sloppy unforced error, especially amid a dreadful offensive season as the Blue Jays were eliminated from post-season contention, all of it is part of the package.
“I was surprised (at the reaction to his interview comments), but that’s the reason that I’m here, because I probably didn’t understand what I was trying to say, or maybe I didn’t explain what I wanted to say,” Guerrero said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “I’m here to apologize to everyone and letting them know that I am going to go into the off-season, I’m going to work very hard, I am going to be ready, I will be focused to make that contract a great one.”
Given the scale of the club’s financial investment in him and the commitment to building around him for the next 13 years, Guerrero’s attempt to pay penance is significant, well beyond trying to quell an especially tumultuous turn through the content-creation cycle.
The Blue Jays’ leadership group is in transition — Chris Bassitt left last off-season, Kevin Gausman, Daulton Varsho and Jeff Hoffman were all dealt at the trade deadline, and this is likely the last weekend of George Springer’s time with the club, if not his career — and Guerrero is the most obvious candidate to help fill the void.
In posting the way he has, playing through a back issue that first popped up in mid-June, not pouting his way through or making excuses for personal struggles at the plate and continuing to pour into his teammates, the 27-year-old has helped set important internal standards.
Still, he needs to resume delivering the level of performance expected of and needed from him, and there simply can’t be the type of public discourse around his commitment created by his sloppy comments.
Guerrero seemed to recognize that, driving the decision to address media with the apology, since the Blue Jays hadn’t planned on holding a formal availability with him. During Thursday’s off-day, he discussed the entire situation with people close to him, including his Hall of Fame father, and “he basically told me that what I did was wrong and to make sure to do what I’m doing right now, to give all my fans an apology.”
Manager John Schneider also said that he and the first baseman “had proactive conversations … and I know he has with his teammates, too.” Guerrero also called his teammates together to apologize, an internal accountability that really matters in the moment, but even more so moving forward, given the wider circumstances.
“What matters most to all of us are the people in the building,” said Schneider, adding later that “he’s one of the best teammates that I’ve ever seen and he definitely puts in the work to post every day.”
Anyone who’s seen Guerrero behind the scenes grinding in the batting cage hours before first pitch or well after the lights are turned out won’t doubt that. But because of who he is, what he means, how much is invested in him and all that’s riding on his success, every single thing he says will be scrutinized and everything he does matters in a way it doesn’t for anyone else.
So Guerrero, at the tail end of a terrible year, said something dumb and created noise his team didn’t need in the final week of a season that can’t end soon enough. Showing contrition for that was the right thing to do, and everything else rests on Guerrero once again performing like the superstar he should be.