MLB.com has big projections for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s 2024 season

MLB.com has big projections for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s upcoming season and seem to think he's going to turn back the clock to 2021 Vladdy.

Guerrero's struggles over the past two seasons have been well documented and a big talking point among baseball fans in this city. After his incredible 2021 season, where he finished runner-up in the MVP race to two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, fans thought Guerrero was this club's next superstar. Guerrero has struggled mightily to get back to that form though, as his 2022 and 2023 season were very disappointing to his standards.

MLB.com has high hopes for Vlad Jr's 2024 season, though, projecting him to hit 36 homeruns, have a WRC+ of 144 and only strike out 99 times. He's the only batter projected to hit more than 30 homeruns and have less than 100 strikeouts. His 36 homeruns also puts him in the top 10 projected home run hitters for this season.

Guerrero has been training back home in the Dominican Republic during this offseason, and videos he's posted to his Instagram story of what looks to be a new batting stance has given fans reason for optimism as the stance looks eerily similar to that of his 2021 stance.

Guerrero has two more years left on his current deal, meaning he will become an unrestricted free agent after the 2025 season -- the same year as Bo Bichette. If you were to have asked a Blue Jays fan after the 2021 season what they would have been comfortable giving Guerrero in free agency, a $300M deal over, maybe, 10 years likely would have been a pretty common answer. But nowadays, I'm not sure there's many fans that would be comfortable giving him anything more than $20M annually.

This 2024 season is a big one for Guerrero for a multitude of reasons -- his upcoming contract being one of them, and this also seems to be the year that will determine if his name still belongs in the conversation regarding the league's best players.