Blue Jays pass on opportunity to promote Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

The Toronto Blue Jays passed on the opportunity to promote the young phenom Vladimir Guerrero Jr. following an injury to third baseman Yangervis Solarte yesterday afternoon.

The Blue Jays in all likelihood will place Solarte on the disabled list with an oblique injury later today to make room for catcher Danny Jansen. Instead of promoting Vladimir Guerrero Jr. who is a third baseman, the Jays opted for the rookie catcher in Jansen. Presumably, Russell Martin will assume the role of backup third baseman behind Richard Urena in Solarte’s absence.

Guerrero is making short work of Triple-A pitching in his first 11 games with the herd. Vladdy is batting .441/.535/.853 and has homered in four consecutive games during his brief stint in Buffalo. There is no questioning that Vladdy can compete at the major league level, however, the Jays seem poised to stall his MLB service time clock as long as they can.

For the season Guerrero is hitting .406/.460/.690 with 114 hits, 24 doubles, 18 home runs and just 31 strikeouts in 323 plate appearances between mostly Double-A and Triple-A. The young slugger has also played four rehab games in the lower minor league ranks.

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There are obviously two schools of thought when discussing promoting a player over keeping him in the minors due to service time concerns. Some feel a player should be rewarded once they are ready to play in the majors and in this case, would be in favour of calling up Valddy in a meaningless season where the Jays sit 30.5 games out of first place in the AL East.

While others agree that baseball is a business and would rather delay the call-up in order to stall Vladdy’s service time so he remains in the organization longer before being free agent eligible.

I see both sides to the argument however if the Blue Jays plan on locking Vladdy up long term than the service time debate is null and void. The Jays should be planning on keeping Guerrero around for a decade or more, show him the money.

Regardless it would have been pretty exciting to wake up this morning and hear that Vladdy was headed north of the border to play with the big club. In would have been a ray of sunshine in a rather dark and cloudy depressing season.

Oh well, let’s just enjoy Danny Jansen and Sean Reid-Foley for the moment as the youth movement is in full effect.