{"id":907387,"date":"2026-09-24T03:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907387\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T03:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:58:12","slug":"what-i-said-is-the-way-i-feel-blue-jays-guerrero-jr-addresses-contract-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907387\/","title":{"rendered":"‘What I said is the way I feel’: Blue Jays’ Guerrero Jr. addresses contract comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

BALTIMORE \u2013 On the day the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> were eliminated from post-season contention, clips of a Vladimir Guerrero Jr.<\/a> interview went viral and the star first baseman stepped in a heaping pile of his own making.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Spanish to Veronica Batista of Noticias Telemicro<\/a>,\u00a0the struggling slugger discussed finding comfort in conversations with his Hall-of-Fame father during sleepless nights resulting from angst over his lack of performance, and the on-and-off back injury that he said wasn\u2019t an excuse for his troubles at the plate. But it was a preview clip that circulated online with Guerrero saying he received his $500-million, 14-year contract not \u201cfor what I\u2019m going to do, it was for what I already did, they didn\u2019t pay me because I\u2019m going to hit 40 every year, they paid me for what I already accomplished,\u201d that triggered a social media firestorm that neither he, nor his team, needed.<\/p>\n

Even if the intention behind his comments was somewhat lost in translation \u2014 what he seems to be trying to get across is that he earned the contract, not that he doesn\u2019t need to live up to it \u2014 there was no chance of the message sitting well given the down season he had, and its impact on the Blue Jays\u2019 fortunes.<\/p>\n

Speaking outside the visitors\u2019 clubhouse after the 4-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles that knocked his team out, Guerrero, through interpreter Hector Lebron, sounded a much more appropriate note when he said, \u201cI\u2019m taking big responsibility\u201d for the team\u2019s fate this year and added, \u201cI’ve got to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve got to obviously put up better numbers to help the team win,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut it is what it is. Just go to the off-season and keep working hard, prepare myself again and be ready for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But because of who he is, the impact of his words and actions on the team\u2019s culture and the wider implications of everything he does on the franchise, his explanation of what he meant in the interview with Batista mattered, and wasn\u2019t much better than the initial comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe asked me how I felt about this year, I said, obviously, I feel really bad about the year that I had, I couldn’t help get my team to the post-season,\u201d said Guerrero. \u201cAnd I said that I felt, my personal opinion, that every player gets paid for what they\u2019ve done. That’s what I said. With that said, if you guys remember, I signed my contract at the beginning of last year when I did put up a good year, the kind of playoffs that I had, to help the team get into the World Series. To the fans, I never stopped working very hard. I’m going to go to the off-season again to prepare myself to do the best I can physically, mentally everything that I have, like I always do for my team and my teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later asked if he regretted what he said given the negative fan reaction, Guerrero replied that he doesn\u2019t, adding that, \u201cI’m not lying with what I said. I understand sometimes (fans) don’t understand the way or what I was trying to say, specifically. But what I said was the way I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fair enough, although within the cauldron of emotion surrounding the 4-8 stretch that put the final knife in this disappointing campaign, not showing the awareness that mega deals like his are rooted in what a player has done, but calculated on what a player is going to do, is an unforced error that made nothing into something.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe player, the person that I know in Vlad, by no means is he just saying OK, I got paid and I’m good with that,\u201d manager John Schneider said after another 4-2 loss in the nightcap. \u201cI know the type of worker he is, the type of player he is and the type of teammate he is \u2013 I know that he’s going to continue to work to have a better year than he did personally this year and to be the guy that we saw a lot last year and a lot in the post-season that helped get us to a World Series. \u2026 We know the work isn’t going to stop and we know he’s going to be a big part of our team for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discourse around Guerrero was already heated, of course, given that he\u2019s batting .263\/.335\/.360 with nine homers and 56 RBIs in 142 games, missing 17 contests due to various ailments, one shy of the total of 18 he sat out from 2020 through 2025.<\/p>\n

Despite that, he\u2019s by and large lived up to the non-production ends of the expectations around him, playing elite defence, supporting teammates, not allowing his struggles to bleed into others. In a recent interview with Sportsnet<\/a>,\u00a0Guerrero discussed the toll that\u2019s taken on him, saying\u00a0\u201csometimes we lie a lot, we say we’re good and we’re not good,\u201d adding that he\u2019s learned this year that \u201cif you need help, just ask for help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, he did that with Schneider and on Wednesday, during his discussion with media, said, \u201cevery at-bat that I fail I think about my contract, because I know all these people that go to the games, they pay to see me being successful, to do something good every at-bat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding ways to help him balance those expectations while\u00a0figuring out how to get his body and swing back to where they need to be is the most impactful thing the Blue Jays can do this off-season.<\/p>\n

Asked if he knows what he needs to do to get himself back on track this winter, Guerrero replied:\u00a0\u201cWork. I’ve just got to work hard. I’ve got to get my rest and pretty much it’s physical. I really believe that if I rest and I work the way I work physically, I’ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than anything, that\u2019s what matters.<\/p>\n

Guerrero acknowledges \u201cI didn’t have a good year, it was a bad year for me and I didn’t do my part to help the team win.\u201d After a lost season for him and his team, most relevant is what he\u2019s going to do so that it doesn\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE \u2013 On the day the Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from post-season contention, clips of a Vladimir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-907387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}