Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is staying in the middle of the Toronto Blue Jays order, at least for now. John Schneider said Wednesday the team has thought about moving him down, but decided against it and planned to keep him in the heart of the lineup against the Kansas City Royals.
The decision matters because Guerrero Jr. has spent 940 games in that part of the order, and 87 percent of his career MLB starts have come hitting second or third. Even in a season that has fallen far short of his usual standard, the Blue Jays are still asking him to carry a premium spot in the lineup rather than hand it to someone else.
Schneider’s reasoning was plain. “I don’t want to punish him,” he said, adding that if other hitters were “tearing the cover off the ball,” the choice would be easier, but the Blue Jays are built for Guerrero Jr. to be a focal point of the offence. That leaves him exactly where he has long been: near the top, where every at-bat is magnified and every slump becomes public.
The numbers behind the slump are hard to miss. Guerrero Jr.’s OPS remains more than 150 points below his career average, and he is on pace for his fewest homers in a full season by 14. His career.886 OPS when hitting third explains why the Blue Jays are reluctant to move him, but it does not erase how out of sync his season has been.
Schneider also said moving Guerrero Jr. down would not change how he is pitched or fill his plate appearances with any less pressure. That is the practical bind for the Blue Jays: the lineup spot may change the optics, but not necessarily the workload. For Wednesday, the order around him already showed how much the team is leaning on its best hitters, with Alejandro Kirk batting second, Kazuma Okamoto fifth and Jesús Sánchez sixth.
There is also a memory of what lineup shuffling can look like when Schneider decides a message is needed. He moved Bo Bichette down to seventh in August 2022 after the Blue Jays managed just one run in their previous two games, and he texted Bichette the night before to warn him. Bichette replied with a few choice words after seeing the card, but Schneider said Guerrero Jr. is different. “I think Bo is different than Vlad to where you can strategically try to piss him off to get him going,” he said. “But I don’t think strategically pissing off Vlad is going to change much.”
That is why this feels like a holding pattern, not a final judgment. The Blue Jays have not ruled out a move later, but for now they are betting that the answer is not less responsibility for Guerrero Jr., even if his worst professional season keeps making the same question impossible to avoid.
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