The Age-Old Question: Where’s Vladdy’s Power This Year?

The Toronto Blue Jays have been floating around the .500 mark, and a big part of that stems from their franchise player not swinging as hot of a bat as he usually does. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., fresh off a historic postseason and incredible 2025 regular season, has seemingly lost his power — or has he?

The Blue Jays are 28-29 so far this season, and they’ve been enduring several injuries to their star players, including a recent injury to Guerrero that stemmed from being hit by a Sandy Alcántara fastball. He didn’t spend any time on the injured list, but rather just sat out for a few games to recover.

Toronto currently has the 22nd-best team slugging percentage mark (.375) and they’ve hit the 20th-most home runs in baseball (52) through play on May 28. Guerrero has hit at least 20 home runs in each of his last five seasons and hasn’t posted a slugging rate lower than .460 since his rookie season, but in 2026 he’s on pace to break both of these streaks. This brings out the question: where has Vladdy’s power gone?

Stats were taken prior to play on May 29.

Incredible 2025 Performance

In 2025, Guerrero was undoubtedly one of the best hitters in baseball, finishing 13th in AL MVP voting and receiving his fifth consecutive All-Star nod. He slashed .292/.381/.467 with 23 home runs, 84 RBI, 34 doubles, 3.9 fWAR, and a 137 wRC+. Although these weren’t career highs by any stretch, he was still one of the most feared and productive hitters at the plate on any given day.

In the postseason, however, a new beast awakened inside Guerrero, who proceeded to rip the cover off every baseball he saw for the entire month of October. Vlad slashed .397/.494/.795 in the postseason with eight home runs, 15 RBI, twice as many walks as he had strikeouts. He notched a total of 29 hits while leading the Blue Jays to Game 7 of the World Series.

His 29 hits ranked second in postseason history behind his teammate Ernie Clement (30 hits), and he set Blue Jays franchise records in home runs (8), hits (29), total bases (58), runs (18), RBI (15), and walks (14). Without a doubt, Guerrero etched his name in the record books as one of the best playoff hitters in MLB history.

Prior to the 2025 season, the Blue Jays and Guerrero had come to terms on a 14-year, $500 million contract to keep him in Toronto for the rest of his career, and while this move was met with skepticism at first, his production in the playoffs cemented this as an all-time great deal with Blue Jays fans.

He’s been a leader for his entire time in Toronto, and he’ll continue to be a leader until the day he retires. In 2026, however, he hasn’t been leading with his bat as much as he normally does.

Lack of Barrels

Guerrero’s groundball rate is the highest it’s been since 2022, a season in which he still managed to slug 32 home runs, drive in 97 RBI, and take home an All-Star bid. He’s in the top 50 among qualified MLB hitters in groundball rate (48.8%) this season, and the dialogue around his lack of success is often attributed to him hitting too many groundballs and not lifting the ball high enough. This isn’t an entirely incorrect observation, just a little misguided.

The real culprit is Guerrero’s lack of barrels this season. In each of the last five seasons, Guerrero has maintained a barrel rate of at least 11% and has always ranked among the top 30% of MLB hitters in this field. In 2026, however, Guerrero has just 12 barrels on the season for a rate of just 7.1%, which ranks him in the 38th percentile of hitters.

With some of their most powerful hitters sitting on the IL, Guerrero really needs to pick up the slack in this area to make up for their absence.

A Statcast barrel needs to be hit at least 98 mph and have a launch angle between 26-30º, and Guerrero simply hasn’t been hitting line drives with as much consistency as usual. His line drive rate is 25.6%, the lowest it’s been since 2022, and he’s been hitting either the top or bottom of the ball with more frequency.

According to Baseball Savant, 37.5% of Guerrero’s balls in play have been ‘topped,’ meaning they have a negative launch angle because he hit the top of the ball, and 21.4% of them have been ‘under,’ alluding to him popping the ball up at a very high launch angle.

This explains why Guerrero hasn’t been hitting many home runs, as he’s simply not been barreling up the ball as often as we’re used to.

Still a Productive Hitter

Despite all these qualities of his plate appearances that aren’t contributing to success at the plate, Guerrero is still slashing .287/.390/.371 on the season with 10 extra-base hits, 22 RBI, and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 24/30.

He’s tied for the 14th-best on-base percentage in all of baseball this season, and he’s still hardly hitting any home runs. It goes without saying that the easiest way to make sure you don’t get out is to hit the ball over the fence, and Vlad’s not doing that very often.

Some might say that it appears as though the Monstars from Disney’s Space Jam have drained Guerrero of his hitting abilities, but that would be ignorant of the fact that he’s still got a 118 wRC+, the sixth-lowest strikeout rate among qualified hitters (10.4%, a career best), and five three-hit games already this season.

His 0.47 WPA (Win Probability Added) is the third-highest among Blue Jays hitters this season, and he’s actually been quite clutch in the big moments.

With runners in scoring position, Guerrero is slashing .282/.426/.308. He also hit over .350 in March/April, so he’s still one of the best pure hitters in the game. In fact, his strikeout rate of just 10.4% combined with his 76.3-mph bat speed makes him one of the most unique hitters in the entire league.

When looking at a leaderboard of qualified hitters based on their strikeout rate, the next closest hitter on the board with a similarly-elite ranking average bat speed (80th percentile or higher) is Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays, who has a 79.9-mph average bat speed (best in MLB). However, he strikes out nearly 6% more often than Guerrero.

Again, the main difference between these two hitters is their barrel rate, as Caminero nearly doubles Guerrero in this category (13% vs. 6.9%). They’re both franchise players, but the Rays have already gotten 13 home runs this season from Caminero after he slugged 45 last season. Toronto would love that production from Guerrero this season.

Closing Thoughts

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been an elite hitter this season in many ways, but not necessarily in the ways that we’ve grown accustomed to. Whereas he used to be a massive power-first bat in Toronto’s lineup that slugged 48 home runs in 2021 and reached the 30-homer mark in two other seasons, Guerrero has simply produced in other ways in 2026.

A little more pop in his bat certainly wouldn’t hurt, however, as Toronto’s experienced a sharp decline in power numbers this season, going from the seventh-best team by slugging percentage in 2025 (.427) to just the 22nd-best this season (.376).

If Guerrero had hit around least five to 10 home runs so far this season, this wouldn’t be as much of a talking point, but without his performance being what it has in the past, Toronto’s run production takes a big hit.

Guerrero is currently being out-homered by Kazuma Okamoto, Jesús Sánchez, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Andrés Giménez, Ernie Clement, and Brandon Valenzuela this season. This simply isn’t acceptable from your franchise cornerstone who now makes over $35 million a season, so things need to change soon.

He might be producing in other ways, but Toronto desperately needs his bat to wake up in the power department. If he keeps up like this, the Jays might not be able to overcome their injury woes this season, so Vladdy needs to find himself at the plate sooner rather than later.