Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is crushing it, and New Hampshire has never seen anything like him
It's too early to compare the 19-year-old to his Hall of Fame father. Or is it?
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sure, the Red Sox have gotten off to an exciting start this season. But perhaps the most tantalizing player in baseball is a short drive up I-93.
“I’ve done more interviews this year than I’ve done in my entire baseball career,” says John Schneider, the manager of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
The reason is Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Guerrero is the son of former Montreal Expos and Anaheim Angels fan favorite Vladimir Guerrero, who will officially be inducted into the Hall of Fame this July. If his presence in Manchester along with the sons of fellow former MLB stars Craig Biggio and Dante Bichette wasn’t already a story, the fact that the 19-year-old third baseman is putting up the most impressive stats in the minor league system has certainly put him on the national map.
Through 46 games with the Toronto Blue Jays Double-A affiliate, Guerrero was batting .433 with 10 home runs and an on-base percentage of .481. He had nearly the same number of double and triples (19) as strikeouts (20).
In Tuesday’s game against the Portland Sea Dogs, he added an 11th dinger. The blast to deep center-left field drew the loudest cheers of the night from the sparse weeknight crowd at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium.
Vlad. Number 11. 4-2 New Hampshire. pic.twitter.com/zmsB8iVsTA
— New Hampshire Fisher Cats (@FisherCats) May 29, 2018
“He’s a really special player,” Schneider told reporters before the game.
And, again, he’s only 19.
Before the season, Guerrero, who is a stocky 6-foot-1, was ranked only behind Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuna as the top prospect in baseball by Fangraphs and MLB.com. Ohtani and Acuna are now in the majors, and Guerreo is living up to, if not surpassing, the hype in the minors.
Like his dad, Guerrero’s long swing and towering homers have already developed something of a cult following.
Wow!! Vlad Jr. did it again. Second home run of the night, this one off the hotel! 💪🏨 https://t.co/XV4W7L4U70 pic.twitter.com/j5ImMhl8uq
— Ben Badler (@BenBadler) May 8, 2018
The highlights and stats have enamored both the baseball nerd and more general sports writing communities. Deadspin, for example, has published five separate blog posts on him since the beginning of May (during which Guerrero is putting up unprecedented hitting splits, especially for a teenager).
Fisher Cats staffers say they’ve never seen this level of interest in a player since the team came to Manchester in 2004. The pregame media scrum Tuesday attracted a half-dozen reporters. Schneider, who lives in an apartment complex near the downtown stadium, says he watches as small crowds of “Vladi” fans regularly form around the players’ entrance the morning before home games.
“We show up at hotels at midnight, and there’s like 50 people waiting for our bus,” he said. “It’s like a boy band.”
Tyler Murray, a broadcaster and spokesman for the Fisher Cats, says attendance is up more than 25 percent compared to last season and that the team has seen “a major increase” in the number of fans getting tickets on the day of the game.
Guerrero himself is keeping his head down and taking all the attention in stride.
Rather than paying attention to the ritual celebrations of his near-daily highlights on social media, Guerrero says he’s more focused on improving his game.
“[I] just come over here and try to work hard every day, and control what [I] can control, and try to get better every day,” he said through a Spanish translator Tuesday.
Even though he was born in Montreal when his dad was with the Expos, Guerrero grew up in the Dominican Republic, the family’s home country. That’s where — under the tutelage of his uncle Wilton, another former major-league player — he developed his baseball skills, according to USA Today. In 2015, he signed with the Blue Jays for $3.9 million as a 16-year-old and went on to put up impressive statistics for Toronto’s rookie and Single-A teams.
I am happy and proud that my son Vladimir Guerrero Jr has signed with @BlueJays. Thank God for the blessings!!! pic.twitter.com/1fDyozDV6h
— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) July 2, 2015
Guerrero says he got advice from his dad over the offseason on adjusting his batting stance when he’s down in the count. While the looping swing and the way the ball jumps off the bat look similar, he isn’t quite as unsparing in his selection as his dad.
“They’re both very aggressive hitters, but you don’t see Vladi hitting balls on one bounce for a double,” Schneider said, noting that the teenager had far more walks than strikeouts last season in Single-A.
The strong family support continues to this day. Now in Manchester, the teenage prodigy has his grandmother living with him and cooking for him, like she did for his father. The former mill city feels almost like “home,” Guerrero said.
That said, it is increasingly a question why he’s still here, and not say Buffalo, where the Blue Jays’ Triple-A affiliate plays, or even Toronto.
The Blue Jays do already have an established third baseman in Josh Donaldson, a three-time All-Star and former MVP. But when the 32-year-old, in the midst of a slow start to the season, left Monday’s game against the Red Sox with a seemingly minor calf injury, Blue Jays fans on social media (and baseball fans in general) were outwardly pleading for the team to call up Guerrero.
“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when,'” Schneider said Tuesday.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
While a direct jump from Double-A to the majors would require a significant adjustment, the 38-year-old coach thinks Guerrero could handle it, both at the plate and in the field. In another point of comparison to his dad, Guerrero has a “cannon arm,” according to Schneider.
“It’s not that, ‘Hey, you’re stuck here because of your defense,'” he said. “It’s not that. He’s a great third baseman with a plus arm. … People say his glove is behind his bat, but, when his bat is so good, his glove is going to be behind it no matter what.”
Asked what skills he needs to improve on, Guerrero simply says, “Everything.”
Guerrero did get a few major-league at bats during Toronto’s traditional spring training series in Montreal, his father’s former stomping grounds and his own place of birth. In a poetic and somewhat surreal finish to the series, Guerrero clobbered a bottom-of-the-ninth, walk-off home run in front of the ecstatic Olympic Stadium crowd.
As his father, who was watching from the dugout, put it: “Priceless.”
“Knowing my dad is a Hall of Famer, I want to be just like him, or even better than him,” Guerrero told reporters in Montreal at the time.
Blue Jays fans can hardly wait. For now, the Fisher Cats are happy to have him.
“He’s a fun kid, man,” Schneider said. “He comes to the field every day and he’s just like, ‘Let’s go.’ It’s easy to do when he’s having the success he’s having, but he’s just ready to roll every day, and he’s just a lot of fun.”
Whether it’s another bank shot off the Hilton hotel behind the left-field wall or just Guerrero fooling around with a catcher’s mask on during fielding practice, the first-year manager says he can only laugh. On Tuesday, Guerrero contributed his one home run and three RBIs in the Fisher Cats’ 11-2 win, boosting their Eastern Division-leading record to 32-18.
“Until I get that call, I’m going to enjoy writing him into the three-hole every night,” Schneider said.
