Vlad Jr. Makes History With Derby Win, but He’s Coming Up Short Elsewhere

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. wasn’t exactly the forgotten man at the 2023 Home Run Derby at T-Mobile Park; this scribe was hardly alone in predicting he’d win. But the 24-year-old slugger didn’t put up an astronomical total of dingers the way hometown favorite Julio Rodríguez did in the first round (breaking Guerrero’s own 2019 record of 40 homers, at that). Nor did he cruise into the finals by a lopsided score the way Randy Arozarena did in knocking off the top-seeded Luis Robert Jr. in the semifinals. Guerrero did start his night by steamrolling Mookie Betts, then narrowly eked out wins over both Rodríguez and Arozarena to take home the championship that eluded him in 2019, when he was runner-up to Pete Alonso. In victory, he joined his father, who won in 2007, as the first father-son duo to win the Derby. Congrats to Vlad and Dad.

With Blue Jays manager John Schneider serving as his pitcher, Guerrero — one of just three contestants who had participated in a previous Derby, along with Alonso and Rodríguez — needed until his fifth swing to get on the board, but once he did, with a 453-footer, he found his groove. He beat Betts handily, 26–11, then walked off against Rodríguez, needing just one homer in bonus time to win, 21–20. He hit 25 in the finals, a record for the shorter round (two minutes instead of three), then had to wait out Arozarena, who finished regulation with 20. Crucially, Arozarena only had the standard 30 seconds of extra time because he hadn’t gotten the distance bonus, unlocked when a player hit two homers with projected distances of at least 440 feet — something Guerrero managed in all three rounds. Arozarena ran out of both gas and time as his final fly balls fell short; he finished with 23 homers to make Guerrero the champion, the second-youngest in history by a day (1993 winner Juan Gonzalez was younger).

Guerrero will serve as a reserve for Tuesday night’s All-Star Game after starting at first base in each of the past two seasons. Yandy Díaz was voted to start for the AL, and it’s tough to complain when he’s hitting .323/.408/.515 for a 165 wRC+, the highest of any first baseman in either league by 10 points (NL starter Freddie Freeman is second at 155) and the second-highest of any qualified hitter behind only Shohei Ohtani.

Diaz’s 165 wRC+ is reminiscent of the league-leading 166 Guerrero put up during his 2021 season. We’re now two years removed from that breakout campaign, when at age 22, Vladito made a run at the Triple Crown, falling short but still hitting an impressive .311/.401/.601 with 48 homers and 6.3 WAR. His home run total led the league, as did his on-base percentage, a small consolation for finishing “only” third in batting average; likewise, he led in total bases and slugging percentage and was second in WAR, a pretty good offset for finishing “only” fifth in RBIs.

When you’re 22 years old and the son of a Hall of Famer, a season like that sends expectations into the stratosphere, so it’s come as something of a disappointment that Guerrero’s follow-up seasons have not been up to that standard. He hit .274/.339/.480 with 32 homers, a 132 wRC+, and 2.8 WAR last year, and arrived at the All-Star break batting .274/.344/.443 with 13 homers, a 120 wRC+, and (gulp) 0.4 WAR this year. A good — or not-so-good, actually — part of that decline in value is Guerrero’s defense, which has gone downhill quickly. I’ll get to that below, but what everyone is wondering is what’s happened to his offense. In looking at his numbers, a few things stand out.

For one, despite the early-season indications to the contrary, Guerrero has gotten less selective. In 2021, he chased just 28.3% of pitches outside the zone, but in each of the past two seasons, he’s up to 34.2%. As you can see from these heat maps, last year it was especially a matter of chasing high, and this year, he’s chasing high and low as well:

Guerrero doesn’t strike out much for a power hitter; in fact, his 15.6% rate is 0.2 points lower than in 2021 and 0.8 points lower than last year. The problem is that his results when chasing pitches outside haven’t been as good as they once were. Here’s a look at his results when chasing high pitches, those in Gameday zones 11 and 12:

The decline hasn’t been uniform, but his AVG and SLG are lower than in 2021, though his exit velo and xSLG are actually higher. He’s swinging and missing a lot more often when he chases high, with both his whiff and swinging-strike rates in those areas much higher than in 2021. Including the pitches he’s chasing in zones 13 and 14, outside and below the strike zone, his .130 batting average and .190 slugging percentage are down from 2021’s .171/.240 and last year’s .148/.230.

While Guerrero is swinging and missing more at pitches outside the zone, he’s offset that somewhat by making more contact in the zone; this year’s 86.4% rate is down 1.4 points from last year but up 2.4 points relative to 2021. He’s hitting the ball incredibly hard but also on the ground more often than in 2021:

Guerrero is scalding the ball, ranking sixth in the majors in average exit velocity and seventh in hard-hit rate and landing in the 88th percentile in barrel rate. He’s even more impressive in terms of Best Speed (the average exit velo of his top 50% of batted ball events, a more useful measure than the easier-to-find average EV because it filters out the noise), ranking third in the majors, and yet he’s even below both 2021 and ’22 in that metric.

For as hard as Guerrero is hitting the ball, he’s just not getting the results that should accompany it:

Guerrero’s xBA is the same as it was two years ago, only this time he’s 33 points short instead of four points over. His SLG is 37 points below last year, but his xSLG is 88 points higher, and that pattern carries over to his wOBA (nine points below last year) and xwOBA (49 points higher). His SLG-xSLG differential is the majors’ second-largest, and his wOBA-xwOBA differential is the fourth-largest. Here’s the ranking by the former category:

I highlighted the three other players with wOBA-xwOBA differentials as low or lower than Guerrero’s; you can see their rankings by sorting the table. Beyond them, the rest didn’t make the cut; see here instead.

Digging a little deeper, it’s Guerrero’s results on fly balls that are particularly out of whack:

Though his fly balls are being hit as hard, they’re at a steeper angle than before, but even the shorter carry isn’t enough to explain his shortfalls of 527 points of slugging percentage and 272 points of wOBA. As it turns out, those are the largest shortfalls on fly balls of any player in the entire Statcast era, from 2015 onward! He’s got a 77-point “lead” in slugging differential:

As an aside, how scary is it that for as great as Acuña’s season is, he’s here as well? So are Swanson and Grisham from this season, and if I’d expanded the table, Guerrero’s teammate Matt Chapman would be shown at 16th, with a -319-point gap (.851 SLG, 1.170 xSLG). Guerrero additionally has a 34-point “lead” over Cruz in wOBA differential, with Swanson third and Acuña fourth, and everybody else through eighth present in the table above.

During the Statcast broadcast of the Derby on ESPN2 (featuring Jessica Mendoza and FanGraphs alum Mike Petriello), someone noted that Guerrero didn’t hit his first homer at the Rogers Centre this year until June 23 and has hit just three of his 13 homers there, all coming within a seven-day span. Digging into the data, his slugging differentials for home and away are similar in scale, but the underlying numbers are way apart:

What is going on with that exchange rate? Guerrero is falling over 500 points short in the slugging department on both splits, but where he’s slugging only .406 on his Canadian fly balls, he’s at .906 on his American ones. Even given that he’s not hitting his fly balls as hard at home as on the road, producing a 15-foot difference in distance, that still doesn’t account for how lopsided his split is.

The issue may be his Guerrero’s pull-rate splits. This year he’s pulling 36.1% of his batted balls at home and 43.3% on the road, compared to 43.6% at home and 35.6% on the road last year and 39.7% at home and 40.2% on the road in 2021. Note that those are Sports Info Solution classifications; Statcast’s pull percentages differ, generally with higher center rates, which makes the single-season pull samples small enough that I don’t think they mean much when we start looking at actual and expected numbers. For illustrative purposes, I’ll note that via Baseball Savant, Guerrero has slugged .667 on six pulled flies at home, compared to a 1.439 xSLG; on 15 such balls last year and 18 the year before, he slugged over 2.000, so it’s fair to say that he does seem to be losing out not pulling the ball as consistently at home.

While the Rogers Centre did undergo renovations this past offseason, to my knowledge all of those pertained to the fan experience, not the field of play. The fence distances and heights stayed the same. Update: Contrary to the assertion I just crossed out, the Blue Jays did adjust the fence distances and heights, though they made the announcement at a different time than that of the ballpark’s interior. Score that E-6 on my part [looks at webbing of glove, shakes head sheepishly]. Here’s what the changes look like:

Here are the new Rogers Centre dimensions LCF now 368 (was 375) with a wall that's higher. RCF now 359 (was 375) with a wall that's much higher. pic.twitter.com/dgM7DbkZE2

— Ben Nicholson-Smith (@bnicholsonsmith) January 27, 2023

To both sides, the Blue Jays have shortened distances while raising fence heights, though it’s not symmetrical. The distances changes are less extreme on the left side, Guerrero’s pull side, and likewise with the height changes, but those may be canceled out by his less pull-happiness this year. In short, I’m not sure this is enough to explain what’s going on with Guerrero’s fly balls at home, particularly given that the closer fences were more likely to increase offense. But when coupled with the stadium’s capacity being reduced by about 7%, down to 41,500, it’s possible the renovations had an impact on air flow as well. It does seem worth noting that the average distance of hard-hit fly balls (95 mph or higher) has decreased from 363 feet to 357, that while the MLB-wide average has increased by one foot, from 365 to 366. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays’ overall SLG-xSLG differential of -.015 (.415 SLG, .430 xSLG) is tied for the sixth-lowest in the majors, but the venue’s -.028 gap on fly balls (.836 SLG, .861 xSLG) is in the middle of the pack, ranking as the 13th-lowest of the 30 ballparks.

For whatever reason, Guerrero isn’t hitting the ball as hard at home, and he’s getting the shaft at an historical level on his fly balls both home and away, which may or may not have something to do with the changes. Other than the pull splits, I can’t identify any specific issues as to why that would be, but Still, I do think it’s fair to figure that some positive regression is probably in store.

As noted, one other thing that stands out about Guerrero is his defensive decline. Recall that in 2021, he moved from third base to become a full-timer at first base, where he was a very pleasant surprise. Now, he’s suddenly become DH-caliber:

Yikes. To the right of the divider, I’ve broken out Guererro’s Outs Above Average splits, and as you can see, he’s been especially poor; he’s the majors’ worst first baseman at coming in and at moving to his right, toward third base. Whether he’s lacking in focus, carrying his offensive shortcomings (such as they are) into the field, or lacking in mobility relative to two years ago, he has to clean that up. Over the course of a full season, the difference between good Vlad and bad Vlad in the field amounts to more than a win, and for a team that’s in the thick of the AL Wild Card race — at 50–41, the Jays are tied for the second spot but just a game ahead of the Yankees (49–42) and two games ahead of the Red Sox (48–43) — every win counts. Still, I would expect that we’ll see a more productive Guerrero at the plate in the second half, and while some will credit his Derby win at having jump-started his season, you and I will know better.