{"id":216942,"date":"2025-10-16T09:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T09:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216942\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T09:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T09:18:09","slug":"how-vladdy-guerrero-and-the-blue-jays-got-their-groove-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216942\/","title":{"rendered":"How Vladdy Guerrero and the Blue Jays Got Their Groove Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEATTLE \u2013 Six ground balls do not make a national crisis, unless you happen to be the recently minted franchise player<\/a> of Canada\u2019s only Major League Baseball team staring at the eighth level of Dante\u2019s version of Hell, which is to say not quite as low as it gets but just about there. In Dante\u2019s nine levels of Hell, the penultimate level is Fraud. In the American League Championship Series, it is a near-must win in Game 3, having lost the first two games at home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Blue Jays were descending fast, marked most absurdly by going 1-for-42 in the third through ninth innings of the opening two games. Almost as troubling was how their bedrock hitting star, Vlad Guerrero Jr., after terrorizing the Yankees in the ALDS, suddenly had devolved into a ground ball out machine. Guerrero was 0-for-7, including six groundouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cVlad can hit anybody\u2019s fastball,\u201d said Blue Jays bench coach Don Mattingly. \u201cAnybody\u2019s. He\u2019s a great hitter with power, not the other way around. But sometimes, like when the crowd is really loud and the moment gets big, you can see by his body language he wants to do so well he gets out front a little bit. That\u2019s when the pull-side grounders happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hell apparently hath no fury like the best hitting team in baseball and its $500 million slugger getting shut down at home. The Blue Jays got back into the series with a 13\u20134 bombardment<\/a> of the Mariners Wednesday. All Guerrero did was become just the second player in postseason history to get on base in all five plate appearances while racking up three extra-base hits and nine total bases with his team trailing in the series. The other was Babe Ruth in Game 4 of the 1926 World Series with the Yankees trailing St. Louis, two games to one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Game 3 was seismic. Toronto walloped Seattle pitches with percussive loudness never seen in the postseason, at least in this decade of recording how hard baseballs get hit. The Jays smashed 11 hits at 100 mph or more, breaking the record of 10 by the 2018 Red Sox and 2020 Dodgers.<\/p>\n

Guerrero accounted for four of those hits at more than 102 mph, joining Kerry Carpenter (2025 ALDS Game 5) as the only players to smash four hits so hard in a postseason game. The tally of Guerrero\u2019s night of whistling baseballs throughout T-Mobile Park read like someone fiddling with the FM radio dial looking for a decent tune: 102.8 (single), 104.9 (double), 106.4 (home run), 108.0 (double).<\/p>\n

VLADIMIR GUERRERO JR. WITH A BLAST OF HIS OWN! #ALCS<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/cSLgLywe1V<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 MLB (@MLB) October 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a whiplash of a turnaround in this series. It was not, however, any surprise to David Popkins, the Toronto hitting coach who, after getting dumped by the Twins last October, helped transform the Blue Jays from 19th in batting average last year to first this year, as well as from 23rd in runs to fourth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt good about today,\u201d Popkins said about the Game 3 matchup. \u201cThe guys have been resilient all year. Our back was against the wall and that\u2019s when this team plays really well. I always like to compare hitting to fighting. And when guys get a little paralyzed in the ring, sometimes the only thing to do is put your head down and start throwing some haymakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inside story of how the Jays and Vlad turned it around begins with how Mariners pitchers, who take pride in throwing strikes and controlling counts<\/a>, shoved with impunity against Toronto in Games 1 and 2. Seattle flooded the strike zone with 57% of their pitches, well above the MLB average of 50.7%. Popkins knew the attack rate would remain high in Game 3 with Seattle starting George Kirby, a fastball-pumping sharpshooter who broke the record for the best strikeout-to-walk rate through a pitcher\u2019s first four seasons that had stood for 148 years.<\/p>\n

Popkins took inventory of those first two games and came up with a plan to counterpunch. It would mean being even more aggressive on the offensive side than the Mariners had been on the pitching side.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about trying to scare them out of the zone,\u201d Popkins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All 18 hits for Toronto came three or fewer pitches into an at-bat, an amazing display of dictating a game. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

Feeling 22 \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n

George Springer mashes his 22nd career #Postseason<\/a> homer! pic.twitter.com\/wgi2ImqonT<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 MLB (@MLB) October 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Popkins said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been attacking us in the zone, trying to induce weak contact. So, they want to fill it up. \u2026 The counter to that is to punish ’em when they do that. So that was the goal tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just ready to do damage on something. We knew they were going to fill it up. They do a good job attacking the zone and they were getting really comfortable with filling it up on the halves [of the plate] and not nibbling. We had to make sure that they are a little more careful next time and attack one of the edges and it\u2019ll get us into better counts in the future.<\/p>\n

\u200a\u201cBut yeah, we were just looking to put things in play early and today we were looking to do some damage on something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guerrero needed to make his own adjustment. Guerrero has the flattest swing in the game. He comes at the baseball with an attack angle of just 1\u00b0. The major league average is 10\u00b0, right in the middle of the ideal window espoused by Ted Williams (between 5\u00b0 and 15\u00b0).\u00a0 In ALCS Games 1 and 2 it was down to -6\u00b0 for his seven outs. He was swinging down on the baseball. Baseball\u2019s second-best hitter against fastballs in the zone (.370; only Aaron Judge was better) went 0-for-4 against 14 heaters in the zone in the first two games.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Guerrero\u2019s contact point on his outs was five inches deeper than his regular season average, mostly because the Mariners were getting him out on pitches away. Here are the pitch locations for his seven outs:<\/p>\n

Before Game 3, Popkins and Guerrero had to find a way to get the ball off the ground. I asked Popkins if Guerrero made an adjustment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d Popkins said. \u201cHe made an adjustment, not necessarily with his swing at all. His swing was the same, just kind of some of the stuff he was exposing to himself before the game to give him a little bit \u2026 you know, [make it] a little bit easier for him to elevate the ball. And he was able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it was not a swing adjustment?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it wasn\u2019t,\u201d Popkins said. \u201cIt .. you know \u2026 the swing is adjusted by that, but he wasn\u2019t thinking about his swing there. It was more so just what he was exposed to before the game. I\u2019ll keep that private. But yeah, it was a good adjustment that he made and it worked today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guerrero\u2019s four hits all came on pitches middle\/down and in the zone (two fastballs and two curveballs).<\/p>\n

Vladdy smokes a double and the Jays are set up to take the lead! He’s PUMPED pic.twitter.com\/WKUtIkIqnO<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Talkin\u2019 Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels great, obviously,\u201d Guerrero said about his night, \u201cbut for me, it\u2019s just about winning. I\u2019m very happy that we won the game. I never think about myself. I think about the whole thing, and we just win the game, and I\u2019m very happy for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mariners, especially after Julio Rodriguez sent the place into a frenzy with a two-run first inning homer, missed an opportunity to get within one game of their first pennant for the first time in franchise history. They have played five ALCS games in franchise history while two wins from the World Series. They have lost them all.<\/p>\n

Seattle still leads the series, two games to one, but the ALCS has a whole new look with Guerrero untethered from that two-game groundball festival that caused such national angst. Back in 1992, before World Series Game 2, with the Blue Jays one game down to the Braves, a Marine Corps color guard accidently displayed the Canadian flag upside down, an international symbol of distress. After much uproar and bruised national pride, the Blue Jays restored order by winning that night with a ninth-inning rally. They took the series in six games.<\/p>\n

Guerrero\u2019s ground balls may have been an international sign of distress in baseball protocol. But at least for one night, the crisis has passed. And Treachery, the ninth level of Hell, has been averted.<\/p>\n

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