Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s Gold Glove bid can’t hide a frustrating offensive season

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. may be in the middle of one of the most frustrating offensive seasons in Toronto Blue Jays history, let alone of his career. However, that hasn’t stopped him from putting himself back in the Gold Glove conversation.

In a recent MLB.com poll of experts looking ahead to this year’s award races, writers Jason Foster, Jared Greenspan and Brian Murphy noted that several Gold Glove competitions remain wide open, with familiar elite defenders joined by some newer names making an impression around the league. That included Guerrero, who was listed as MLB.com’s American League pick at first base.

As MLB.com wrote, "Guerrero, who won the Gold Glove here in 2022, remains a strong defender at first base. He leads all AL first basemen with eight Defensive Runs Saved and a plus-6 Fielding Run Value. Meanwhile, his four Outs Above Average rank second among his AL positional peers.”

Blue Jays fans may look at that and possibly shrug. Look, it’s great they are getting Gold Glove-level defense from Vladdy, but when they are paying a guy $500 million-dollars, you need him to produce on both sides of the field. Especially when the team’s entire offensive identity has been built around Guerrero being the anchor. Instead, this season, all he’s done at the plate is drag down the ship.

In 130 games, he’s hit eight home runs, with an incredibly pedestrian career-low .094 ISO and 93 wRC+. He’s been worth -5.7 offensive fWAR according to FanGraphs, terrible numbers compared to his 27.2 offensive fWAR last year or his 45.9 mark in 2024, when he finished with 30 home runs and 103 RBIs.

Plus, there’s the fact that it is September and he still hasn’t hit a home run at Rogers Centre this year.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s results at the plate are mystifying since the process hasn't really changed

Maybe the most frustrating part is that it’s the results, and not necessarily the approach, that seem to be messing everything up for Vladdy in 2026. He’s not swinging and missing a ton. In fact, he could set a new benchmark for himself in terms of strikeouts. He’s currently sitting at 70 on the year, going into Tuesday, Sept. 8. His previous low was 91 in 2019, when he played 123 games in his rookie season. He only struck out 94 times last year and 96 times the year before.

His average exit velocity is down to the 74th percentile and his barrel percentage is in the 40th percentile. So while he’s still showing a good eye at the plate, he’s just not getting the bat on the ball in a spot where he can do actual damage, and he’s pounding balls into the ground far too often.

His line drive percentage is at 17.8 percent, the lowest it’s been since 2022, when it sat at 17.3 percent. His groundball percentage of 48.4 percent is also the highest it has been since he had a 52.1 percent groundball rate in 2022. He’s only squaring up balls in the 63rd percentile, and he’s chasing more this year as well, sitting in the 45th percentile.

Gold Gloves are grand, but not when you’re a $500 million-dollar man and it’s all you’ve brought to the table. If Guerrero gets hot for the next three weeks and carries this team into the playoffs, all will be forgotten and forgiven. Until then, his Gold Glove candidacy feels less like a celebration of a complete season and more like a reminder of how strange and frustrating this Blue Jays campaign has become.

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