The Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from postseason contention with a loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday and following the game, first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was asked about comments he previously made in an interview with Veronica Batista about the 14-year, $500 million contract he signed in 2025.
In comments that have been translated from Spanish, Guerrero Jr. told Batista that the contract the Jays gave him is for what he’s already done for the team, not for anything he will do in the future.
MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson was among the reporters that questioned Guerrero Jr. after the game and he says the 27-year-old, through his interpreter Hector LeBron, stood by his initial statements. “He doubled down, essentially, ” Matheson said on TSN 1050’s OverDrive. “I think the most important quote he had was when he was asked if he regretted the comment, this is via his interpreter as well, so there is a couple layers of interpretation, but he said, ‘no, I don’t regret myself, I’m not lying with what I say. I understand some fans they don’t understand the way and what I was trying to say, but what I said is the way I feel.’”
Guerrero Jr. has struggled through the 2026 campaign with his worst production over any 162-game MLB season of his career, including just nine home runs - with only one coming at his home ballpark.
According to Matheson, Guerrero Jr. continued to point to the past.
“One of his other quotes was, ‘you guys have got to remember that I signed my contract at the beginning of last year, then I did put up a good year. Then the kind of playoffs that I had to help the team get into the World Series.’” Matheson said. “In baseball or any other sport, you’re paid for the person you’re about to be, you’re not paid for who you’ve been. And he continued to point back to a couple of these things.”
Last season, Guerrero Jr. finished the regular season with 23 home runs, 84 RBIs and a .292 average before catching fire in the postseason and capturing the ALCS MVP Award on the way to leading the Jays to within one game of a World Series title.
The 2026 Blue Jays will return home to finish their season on the weekend in a series against the Cincinnati Reds. It will be the first time Guerrero Jr. will play in front of the home fans since both the team was eliminated from the playoff race and his most recent comments went public.
Matheson believes that if Guerrero Jr. is healthy enough to play, he should take the field with the team to finish the year.
“I’m of two minds. Number one, yeah there will be boos, and he’s clearly not playing at 100 per cent right now. Number two, guys, I grew up on the east coast when going to the Jays game was your big trip of the summer and I’m sure there are a few thousand people doing that every day this weekend. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, folks that are coming from Nova Scotia, from Manitoba, from BC, this is their trip of the summer. Ideally they were going to watch a playoff clinch, that isn’t going to happen. But, if Vladdy can play whatsoever, I think the part of being the face of the franchise is holding a standard.
We’ve talked about this a bit before, where this is not hockey or football. Where you can give a rah, rah speech and let’s go punch somebody in the mouth. It’s not a contact sport, it doesn’t work like that. In baseball you need to be the guy that holds the standard extremely high. Because if you slip up, if you get lazy, if you give an inch, it gives everyone else an excuse to show up a bit later, to do a bit less. I would love to see Vladdy in there every day because people pay to see him. I would love to see him busting it down the line and playing his full game and using the last three or four games as a launching pad into the offseason.”
As far as Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and the front office’s views of Guerrero Jr.’s comments about his contract. Matheson sees them taking a very even-keeled view of the entire situation.
“I think in the front office, they will look at this as, Vladdy isn’t going anywhere, he’s here for a long time. Let’s talk to him, let’s get inside his head and not react. It’s the same reason (Blue Jays manager) John Schneider has not made Vladdy hit seventh this year. It doesn’t seem like their reaction is to tick him off and to push his buttons. I think the reaction should be, let’s figure out Vladdy and what’s going to work. The end result here is him playing well. If you’re hitting 40 home runs, I don’t care what you’re doing. Stay out of jail, but I don’t care what you’re doing. You can make some weird comments if you’re hitting 40.”
“Without Vladdy at his best, everything else you do is watered down. Every move they need to make this offseason comes under the assumption that they are going to get Vladdy back. If that doesn’t happen, you have a really steep hill to climb.”
