SEATTLE — The beast has awoken.
It took two duds and a trip to the West Coast, but the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. who booted the Yankees from the postseason and blew them a kiss is back. He’s the Mariners’ problem now.
He nearly made history, too. Guerrero was a triple shy of the cycle when he sliced a ball into the right-center gap late in the game, an opportunity to join Brock Holt (2018) as just the second player in MLB history to hit for the cycle in the postseason. Guerrero had an awkward step rounding first, though, and even though his eyes got big for a moment, he decided to pile on the brakes at second. Standing there, shaking his head and laughing, Guerrero had to settle for a 4-for-4 night, a superstar performance from the face of the franchise.
“I just looked at the third-base coach and he stopped me and you know, you have to listen to your coach,” Guerrero said, grinning as he spoke to Derek Jeter on the postgame show. “To me, when I hit it, I was just trying to go to third when I looked to third and [Carlos] Febles stopped me.”
With the Blue Jays finally on the board in the ALCS, now down only 2-1 in the series after Wednesday’s 13-4 win at T-Mobile Park, it’s easy to believe in this team again. That feeling had almost disappeared after Guerrero went 0-for-7 in a pair of losses to open the series at home, but when Vladdy’s hot, anything is possible.
Coming back from down 2-0 isn’t easy, but what about this Blue Jays season has been easy? The cool sense of calm around this team Tuesday and early Wednesday was telling. Down 2-0? They didn’t care.
“No one expected us to win the division. No one expected us to be here,” manager John Schneider said. “I think the guys take that to heart. I couldn’t be prouder of the way they went about today. We talked today about normalcy. It’s one thing to say it and force it, but it’s another to do it and live it. I’m proud of the way they did it.”
Guerrero’s fourth home run of the postseason soared out to dead center, almost teasing Julio Rodríguez with how long it hung up in the air before falling an inch beyond his glove. This tied him with José Bautista (2015) for the most home runs in a single postseason in franchise history, but if the Blue Jays are going to make a series of this, Bautista won’t own a share of that for long.
“I feel great,” Guerrero said, then repeated what we all knew was coming next, “but my focus is only on winning. I want to win.”
That home run was not when Guerrero woke up, though. Vladdy jolted back to life two innings prior, in the third, when he ripped a double off the left-field wall as part of the five-run inning that pulled this series out of the ditch.
Standing on second base, Guerrero slammed his mighty hands together and gestured to his dugout twice, yelling “¡Vamos! ¡Vamos!” He wasn’t just celebrating with his teammates, he was demanding more from them. They listened.
After George Springer launched one of his own to straightaway centre, a 431-footer that Rodríguez had no chance to reach, Alejandro Kirk put the game to bed in the sixth with an opposite-field three-run shot. Standing on first base when Kirk went yard? It was Vladdy, who’d just been intentionally walked. These things tend to snowball, you see.
Kirk is the other bat Toronto has been waiting on. When Guerrero is clicking on top of the rest of this lineup, the Blue Jays still need that “something else” to put them over the top, and Kirk fits the role so well. He’s a contact machine when this team needs him to be, but when Kirk is driving the ball, he’s such a unique offensive threat, one whose game is perfectly built for the postseason with his ability to stay calm in any storm.
There’s just something about Vladdy wins, though, that feel different from your average, run-of-the-mill wins. Guerrero, like we saw in that ALDS win over the Yankees, is a force unlike any other on this roster, capable of taking over a series and putting an entire organization on his back. The climb is still uphill, but it’s not as steep now.
In the history of best-of-seven postseason series, teams that have won Game 3 when facing a 2-0 deficit have gone on to win the series 14 of 53 times (26.4%).
Don’t tell the Blue Jays the odds, though. Guerrero is back, and the Mariners officially have a problem on their hands.
