Guerrero Jr. All-Star nod pours more salt in the wounds of Yankees fans

For the fourth time in five years, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be the American League’s starting first baseman at the All-Star game. The 2025 event takes place at Truist park in Atlanta on July 15. It’s the fifth straight trip to the All-Star game for the 26-year-old who signed a 14-year $500 million extension with the Blue Jays earlier this season.

While Guerrero hasn’t been elite yet during the 2025 campaign, he has at least been better than league average in a lot of categories and by all accounts he is still having a “good” season by slashing .278/.380/.447 with a team leading .828 OPS. While he doesn’t have eye popping numbers in the power department, with just 12 home runs on the year, he his making hard solid contact as his bat speed sits in the 98th percentile and his hard hit percentage is in the 94th percentile. Guerrero’s average exit velocity sits at 92.9 m.p.h., which ranks in the 92nd percentile.   

He’s also seeing the ball well this season as evidence by his great walk-to-strikeout rate of 47:50. Both his walk percentage of 12.8 and strikeout percentage of 13.6 rank in the 89th percentile. Meanwhile, his chase rate is in the 82nd percentile.

Guerrero Jr. All-Star nod pours more salt in the wounds of Yankees fans

And just like his teammates who have been beating New York all week, Guerrero beat out a Yankee to get the starting nod at first. He earned 75 percent of the vote to win the job over Yankees first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.

Goldschmidt had a really hot start to the season slashing .338/.394/.495 with an .889 OPS through the end of May. But since June 1 he’s hit just .159 in 25 games with 22 strikeouts and just two home runs with a .235 on-base percentage.  

Guerrero who is a former All-Star Game MVP and a Home Run Derby Champion has also made it a goal of his to play in more All-Star games than his Hall of Fame father Vladimir Guerrero Sr. He’s more than halfway toward that total, with the elder Guerrero getting to the mid-summer classic nine times. However, Guerrero Sr. didn’t make it to his fifth All-Star game until he was 29 years old.

Guerrero Jr. is one of the biggest stars in the game today and deserves to play on a big stage like this. It makes it even sweeter knowing he’ll get to start over a divisional rival on the same day that the Blue Jays tied the Yankees for the lead at the top of the AL East.