Guerrero Jr. crushes solo homer to put Blue Jays back in front
Watch as Toronto Blue Jays All-Star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. delivers in a big moment, crushing a solo home run to put the Jays ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks after blowing a seven-run lead earlier in the game.
PHOENIX — The first half of the season provided lots of answers about who the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays are.
Will they contend for the AL East? No. Maybe the wild card? No. Was it at least a good half season for their prospects and core players? Not particularly.
These weren’t the answers anyone expected or wanted, but here they are for all to see. The first half ends with more losses (52) than wins (44), more walk-off losses (6) than Bo Bichette home runs (4) and more elbow surgeries (2) than all-stars (1).
It’s been bad — and while Kevin Kiermaier and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. powered the Blue Jays to an 8-7 win at Chase Field Sunday, this latest win doesn’t fundamentally change the team’s position. At the same time, reliving the first half doesn’t accomplish much. Now, it’s a question of where the Blue Jays go from here, and with the July 30 trade deadline just a couple of weeks away, clear answers are coming soon.
As for this win, it wouldn’t have been possible without Kiermaier, who hit a fourth-inning grand slam just a few days after he was placed on waivers by the Blue Jays and passed over by MLB’s 29 other teams.
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“He’s a baseball player, a veteran guy who understands the business,” said manager John Schneider, who was ejected for arguing a checked swing call. “He’s been doing that his whole career — overcoming things. The last couple days is another example of that. Really, really big swing.”
Later, Guerrero Jr. broke a 7-7 tie with a homer to right-centre field, his third hit of the day.
For now, the industry expectation is that the Blue Jays will be open to selling their pending free agents while holding onto Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and their veteran pitchers. To this point, there’s been no indication that either team president Mark Shapiro or GM Ross Atkins has interest in entering a serious and immediate rebuild, which means contending in 2025 will likely be the goal.
The uncertainty isn’t lost on the clubhouse — how could it be when Kiermaier’s waiver status was big news just a few days ago — but tuning those distractions out is part of the job description.
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“Right now we’re good,” Guerrero Jr. said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “I mean, that’s not up to us. The only thing we can control is just to go out there and do the best we can to win.”
Now, winning as soon as 2025 is no guarantee considering the Blue Jays have a substantial free agent class including summer trade candidates like Sunday’s starter Yusei Kikuchi, Yimi Garcia, Justin Turner, Danny Jansen, Trevor Richards and Kiermaier. They’d need to augment a bullpen that’s struggled badly and find more power while also acquiring a second catcher.
In theory, it’s doable, but it would require a deft touch — something more akin to the 2020-21 off-season (Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien on uber-productive one-year deals) and less like this past winter (Kiermaier, Turner, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Yariel Rodríguez). This was supposed to be an era of Blue Jays excellence, but it’s given way to a series of missed chances, each more frustrating than the last. Now, the sentiment appears to be ‘give it one more shot.’
At the same time, doing so would come at a cost. Executives around baseball are largely unimpressed by the current state of the Blue Jays’ organization, be it the big-league talent in place or the farm system. Pushing chips in for 2025 could make an eventual rebuild longer and harder.
Some of those questions won’t be answered until the off-season, but having a general sense of future goals is necessary for those in the front office. Whether Atkins has the power to chart the long-term future of the franchise isn’t clear, as executives with other teams privately wonder if Atkins could be fired or reassigned after the season and Shapiro hasn’t taken questions publicly since spring training.
Yet at this point, the evidence points to an attempt to win in 2025, and assuming that’s the case, the Blue Jays’ best trade chips should be their veteran pitchers. Garcia will likely be activated Friday at which point he’ll have ample time to prove to contenders he’s capable of getting outs with the season on the line.
As for Kikuchi, though, Sunday didn’t go according to plan. Though he had allowed just two baserunners through four innings, he unravelled in the fifth after losing his breath chasing an errant throw from Guerrero Jr. down the first base line. The left-hander walked three hitters shortly afterwards and allowed seven earned runs in the inning, four of which came on a Ketel Marte grand slam.
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“I think he was trying a little bit too hard,” Schneider said. “Uncharacteristic walks out of him, which came back and hurt.”
While front office executives are typically measured enough not to over-react to one bad start, this wasn’t how Kikuchi and the Blue Jays would have wanted to wrap up the first half. Instead of building off a dominant start in which he struck out 13 Giants, Kikuchi saw his season ERA climb to 4.42. Now, he likely has two more starts before the trade deadline — games contending teams are sure to monitor closely.
“It’s totally out of my hands,” Kikuchi said through interpreter Yusuke Oshima. “So all I can do is prepare.”
Other notable moments from Sunday had Steward Berroa going hitless while making his first big-league start in right field and Daulton Varsho hitting a triple for the third straight game.
Under other circumstances, this might be considered a big win and clearly, it’s better than getting swept. Yet wins like this were hard to come by in the first half of the 2024 season, so the Blue Jays reach the all-star break worse off than they would have expected when it all began.
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