CHICAGO -- What can you really tell from four baseball games? What conclusions can you reach about a player, about a team, about a budding superstar? The answer to both of these rhetorical questions: not much, if you're being honest.
Still, that was the assignment: Hang around Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Toronto Blue Jays during their four days in Chicago. Watch. Observe. Share what you have watched and what you have observed. That assignment was gladly accepted.
WHY WE CARE
You're no doubt aware that Guerrero's father is a Hall of Famer who from now forward will be known as Vladimir Guerrero Sr. That's what happens when you've got a famous namesake son. Just ask Ken Griffey Sr., who during his Big Red Machine days was just Ken Griffey. But Vlad Sr. also bore one of the coolest nicknames of all time -- Vlad the Impaler -- so he's good on the name front.
It's a grisly reference, to be sure. Vlad Sr. never did to baseballs with his bats what the actual Vlad the Impaler did to human beings with his spears. Strictly speaking, though, the original Impaler was a prince, the son of the ruler of Wallachia. We can safely say that Vladimir Guerrero Sr. is baseball royalty -- the description fits anyone enshrined in Cooperstown. That being the case, wouldn't Vladdy Jr. be a kind of baseball prince?
Well, Prince Vlad is extraordinary in many ways in his own right. He has been the Blue Jays' No. 1 prospect in each of the past three years in both the prospect rankings by ESPN's Keith Law and Baseball America Prospect Handbooks. BA marked him as the No. 1 overall prospect before this season, and Law had him No. 2 behind Fernando Tatis Jr. (yes, another Junior). Guerrero rocketed through the minors with a .331 average, .945 OPS and a cadre of viral social media clips because of his propensity for hitting baseballs really, really far. This is all very princelike.
The best part, though, is that Guerrero seems to carry just the right amount of obliviousness to it all.
"I'm just trying to make contact," Guerrero said. "The ball comes out that way, with a lot of exit velo. But it's all good."
When Guerrero smashed his first big league homer last week at San Francisco -- a 438-foot shot off Nick Vincent -- he became the youngest player to hit a home run in Toronto franchise history. He broke the record of Danny Ainge, the guy who helped the Boston Celtics win NBA titles as both a player and an executive, and also once bit Tree Rollins' finger.
OBVIOUS THING NO. 1: HE'S REALLY YOUNG
Really, that's the first thing you notice about Guerrero. As Robin Williams said to Matt Damon, "You're just a kid." He is a big, strapping kid, at that, but has a young man's face and mannerisms, and the body that produces so much violence at the plate is not as chiseled as it's likely to become. And, like any kid these days, he looks as if he came into this world with a smartphone embedded in the palm of his hand.
So, before the series opener, while Prince Vlad sits in front of his locker and scrolls through whatever is on the screen of his phone, all of the action in the Blue Jays' clubhouse is happening directly across from him, where pitcher Edwin Jackson is fielding all manner of inquiry about being the first player ever to play for 14 major league teams. Fourteen!
If Guerrero ends up challenging that mark someday, things will have gone very awry. But there are still lessons he, or any player, can learn from baseball's ultimate journeyman. Jackson, still smiling after all these years, is a joy to be around. I urge him to write a book about his experiences, and he tells me I'm far from the first to make that suggestion.
"Maybe someday I'll just take out the recorder and start telling stories," Jackson says. And I really hope he does. Part of his story could certainly be that he once served up a home run to Vlad Sr. (during an Angels-Dodgers interleague clash on July 3, 2004) and many years later was teammates with his son while he was hitting homers.
After everyone decides to give Jackson some peace, I check in on Vlad and he's still looking at his phone, but he's also chatting with teammate Richard Urena, an infielder he came up with through the Toronto system and with whom he seems to be tight. They locker next to each other and, during games, can often be seen next to each other on the bench.
There's a smallish group of media stragglers hanging around the Blue Jays' clubhouse, so it's decided that Vlad Jr. will do a little news conference in the dugout. The Chicago connection is a semirelevant one because Guerrero is friends with White Sox rookie Eloy Jimenez, another fierce young hitter with whom he might end up battling for this season's American League Rookie of the Year honors, though both have some catching up to do. The Jimenez angle is tempered a bit by his absence; he's working through a rehab stint with Triple-A Charlotte, trying to come back from an ankle sprain. Jimenez, like Guerrero, is a bedrock piece for the future of his team and, in his case, landed a contract extension before he debuted in the majors.
"I've known him for a long time, since the Dominican [Republic]," Guerrero said. "I texted him when he signed that contract. You guys know he's a great hitter."
We were huddled around the bat rack in the Toronto dugout, and when Guerrero appeared, he was smiling in an infectious sort of way as he shook everybody's hand. He listened as everyone introduced themselves, though there is no possibility he will remember any of the names from that initial pass. Guerrero uses the services of interpreter Hector Lebron in his dealings with the media, though he seems to generate a passable English when conversing with non-Latin teammates.
That Guerrero still uses an interpreter isn't unusual -- a casual clubhouse conversation is a different animal from facing a huddle of eager journalists shoving recorders, microphones and cameras in your face. Many young Latin players prefer the safety net of an interpreter. You don't want the wrong phrase going viral when it's simply a matter of linguistics.
For now, Guerrero keeps his answers short and pat. For instance, after his homer Sunday was the big blow in a Toronto victory, he said, "I feel very happy that I can keep improving to help the team win."
Crash Davis-approved media responses or not, the language in which Guerrero, or any player, chooses to converse should not matter. Spanish is a beautiful language and one that is omnipresent in every big league clubhouse. Baseball America recently published a demographic breakdown of the majors and its affiliated leagues, noting that around one in five players in professional baseball right now is, like Guerrero, from the Dominican Republic. It's a staggering figure.
Let's face it, though: The language in which Vladdy Jr. addressed the media shouldn't matter, but to many it does. For MLB, Guerrero's ability to communicate directly with most American fans is meaningful. It has ramifications for Guerrero's brand -- and he's good enough to have one. And that brand could occupy an important place in an industry trying very hard to turn its best young players into stars of the zeitgeist.
Whatever direction Guerrero's language skills take, it's up to him and he shouldn't be judged for it either way. Supposedly, he is eager to improve his English. It would be huge for baseball if he's able to make a transition at some point to being publicly bilingual. But if he doesn't, fans will adore him anyway.
OBVIOUS THING NO. 2: HE HITS THE BALL REALLY HARD
There are other signs that Guerrero is still ramping up to an adult existence. One game, for instance, he was a tad late getting onto the field for the singing of "O Canada." He came springing sheepishly out of the dugout and joined the row of Jays on the field. But when Prince Vlad barrels up ball with bat, that side of the business is all grown up.
Guerrero's prodigious power is the biggest thing that revved up the hype machine during his rise to the major leagues. Those social media clips played into it, fantastic homemade shots taken from the stands as Prince Vlad hit baseballs to where they should not be hit. However, from a pure scouting standpoint, the raw power is only a part of the reason he's generated so much interest at such a young age.
Baseball America gave Guerrero an 80 grade on the 20/80 scouting scale for his hitting tool in each of its past two handbooks. You don't earn that grade because you hit the ball far. You earn that grade because you can rake, and you can rake like almost no one else.
Guerrero didn't turn 20 until spring training of this year, yet his approach is already beyond mature -- it's better than most hitters can ever hope to attain. He walked more than he struck out as a minor leaguer, and among the batting averages that led to that .331 overall mark was the .381 he posted last season across two levels, Double-A and Triple-A. His power is immense, often jaw-dropping. But he also just flat-out hits.
"Definitely," Guerrero said, when asked about his emphasis on using the middle of the field. "My thought is always to hit the ball back through the middle."
This early in his career, there are many who can mark this kind of occasion: The first time I saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. bat in a game, he ... and you fill in the blank. Chance are, it'll be something easy to remember. For me, it was the series opener Thursday. The White Sox had righty Dylan Covey on the mound. It turned out, Covey was lucky to still be on the mound after his first big league encounter with Guerrero. Vladdy ripped a liner right over his head that settled into the glove of second baseman Yolmer Sanchez, who was positioned fortuitously.
A quick check of the StatCast counter showed that the screamer registered at 115.5 mph. It was Guerrero's hardest-hit ball as a big leaguer and is tied for the 12th-hardest-hit ball of any player all season. He added a 115.1 mph exit velo later in the series, so Guerrero already has two of the 20 loudest screamers of the season.
"He's everything that everybody wanted him to be," Blue Jays starter Trent Thornton said. Vladdy has hit three of his four homers during Thornton's two most recent starts. "Awesome bat, awesome defender."
OBVIOUS THING NO. 3: HE HAS A FLAIR FOR THE DRAMATIC
Interesting things just seem to follow Prince Vlad around, stories and connections, big and small. Of course, a lot of that has to do with having a Hall of Famer for a father. The perfect example was the walk-off homer Vladdy Jr. hit in an exhibition game in Montreal, where his father first made a name for himself in the 1990s.
Another good story from the weekend was the Toronto debut of Ryan Feierabend, who was called up from Buffalo to start Saturday's game. Feierabend was making his first big league start since Sept. 23, 2008 -- when Vladdy Jr. was just 9 years old.
Feierabend is a great story not because of that, though. He's a great story because he features a bona fide knuckleball, and he throws it with his left hand. There have been only six lefty knuckleball artists in big league history, depending on how you set the definition. There have been only two of real consequence in the majors. One was Gene Bearden, a swingman who, as a rookie in 1948, won 20 games, led the AL in ERA and helped lead the Indians to their most recent World Series crown.
The other pertinent knuckling southpaw was Wilbur Wood, who spent most of his career with the White Sox, throwing his wafty offerings across the street in the ancient environs of old Comiskey Park. Wood's name was all over the place before the game, and he ended up calling into the White Sox broadcast to talk to play-by-play ace Jason Benetti and Wood's former rotation mate Steve Stone.
The Feierabend story was good, but it stopped short of being fairy-tale-esque right off the bat when the first knuckler he threw -- the first by any big league pitcher this season, in fact -- was hit into the left-field seats by Chicago's Leury Garcia.
What does any of this have to do with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.? Well, in that long-ago previous start for Feierabend, in which he took the mound for the Seattle Mariners, he faced the Angels, whose designated hitter that day was Vladimir Guerrero Sr. -- though back then we didn't call him Sr.
It's a nice bit of trivia for Feierabend's scrapbook and, in the near term, it gives him a topic of conversation with Jackson, his new teammate.
OK, so that's not tremendously dramatic. The real drama came the night before, when Guerrero poked a fly ball to dead center field off Chicago's Ivan Nova. Garcia, playing center field, had a bead on it and leaped at the fence, only to see the ball fly out of his glove when he hit the wall. The ball settled on the wrong side of the wall like a wilding, and Guerrero bounded around the bases with his third career home run while Garcia pounded the padding in frustration.
"I never thought the ball was going to travel so far," Guerrero said. "I knew did make good contact."
It's hard to say if Guerrero's ball would have left the yard without Garcia's unintended assist, but the play made the usual rounds on the highlight shows. And why not? It was unusual, and it happened to involve Prince Vlad -- one of baseball's newest stars. But here's the crazy thing: It had happened to Guerrero before.
"My fourth home run in Triple-A was like that," Guerrero said. "It happened just like that."
You haven't even heard the nuttiest part of the glove ball. As soon as Guerrero finished rounding the bases, out of nowhere, the skies opened up and a torrential downpour pelted the players and fans at new Comiskey. The sight was so surreal that in the press box, I exclaimed, "What is this guy, the Natural?"
A couple of days later, in the series finale, Guerrero provided a more pedestrian version of dramatics, golfing a home run over the bullpen in left off Kelvin Herrera that broke a 1-1 tie in an eventual 5-2 Toronto victory. Despite his arrival, wins have been tough to come by for a Blue Jays squad in transition, so the clubhouse was a little peppier after Sunday's game.
"You're hoping the guy in front of him gets on," Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said, sounding very much like a manager. "He might do something. He's got a chance to do something every time he goes to the plate. It's fun to have a guy like that in the lineup."
These are relatively small moments in the course of a baseball season and, certainly, in what promises to be the long career of an extremely talented player. But small moments are what Jays fans have right now, and Prince Vlad promises to provide plenty of them, and some big ones, too. Perhaps it's not the most analytical observation, but the kid has a knack for being in the middle of everything.
OBVIOUS THING NO. 4: HE'S NO BROOKS ROBINSON
As I said to start this story: You really can't draw any great conclusions about a player based on four days, but there are things you can make a pretty good guess about. Guerrero's ability to crush a baseball is obvious and concrete. We can measure that, and the ability to generate the bat speed to propel a pitch 115 mph in the other direction is not something every player possesses. That he's been able to keep doing this against big league pitchers, at his age, is impressive, to say the least.
"It's pretty much location," Guerrero said, when asked about the difference between minor league and big league pitchers. "It's not much different other than that. It's location -- they hit the spots."
You have to love Guerrero's approach. The homer off Garcia's glove and the line shot that nearly took off the top of Covey's dome both were right up the middle. You can see Guerrero work at using the middle of the field during batting practice, even though the temptation to see what kinds of things he can hit beyond the outfield fence has to be tempting. When you know his numbers, see his approach and see him in action for even a couple of games, it's apparent that he checks so many boxes as a hitter.
"I mean, I never try to hit homers," Guerrero insisted. "I just try to put good contact on the ball, and we'll see what happens."
Guerrero's advanced approach also shows up in his ability to spoil pitches by fouling them off, something that was evident a couple of times over the weekend. As a 20-year-old, he's fouled off 37.1 percent of the pitches he's swung at so far, according to TruMedia, which is a tick below the big league average. The same holds true for his ability to foul off two-strike offerings.
Guerrero's defense, however, will remain a work in progress for a while. His arm from the hot corner is pretty good. It doesn't jump out at you when he throws, but StatCast has him ranked third among third basemen with an average of 76.8 mph on his throws. The better measure of arm strength in this regard is the maximum measure, and here he ranks eighth at 85.6. Not bad.
His hands are good, too. However, Guerrero is awkward coming in on balls, both in terms of picking up the ball and transitioning to a throw, and throwing on the run with accuracy. In an era when there were actually good bunters around, he might have gotten bunted on to death. But it's not likely something many players in the league right now are going to bludgeon him with.
Overall, a survey of the leading defensive metrics rates Guerrero about neutral with the glove so far, perhaps a tick below that. That's good enough. He doesn't have to win a Gold Glove to become an MVP.
FINAL OBVIOUS THING: YOU SHOULD GO SEE HIM PLAY
Some players just have presence, and Prince Vlad has it. He's the player you keep track of in the Blue Jays' lineup, whether you're watching the game from the stands, the press box or the dugout. He's the guy who, if you notice he's up, you switch to the game even if you're watching something else.
"Any time he's at the plate, you feel like he's got a chance to hit a bomb," Montoyo said. "Not just a home run."
Still, for all the hype, Guerrero is just a ballplayer like the rest. He scrolls on his smartphone. He dines with his teammates in the back room, patting his belly as he emerges. He bobs his head when Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" comes over the sound system. When a highlight show plays a clip of Mike Trout hitting a monstrous home run, he stops and watches, wide-eyed.
"So far I think I'm doing pretty good," Guerrero said, and you just knew he wasn't about to start pounding his chest. "I'm just going to keep working to get better every day."
And yet, he never seems to go very long without reminding us of why we got so excited about him in the first place, why he topped all those prospect lists and why his big league debut became such a ballyhooed event. Guerrero is up to four homers, all on the road, so his first Rogers Centre dinger lies in the future. The champion Red Sox are up next, and that's the perfect foil to draw out Prince Vlad's sense for the dramatic.
After his heroics Sunday, the numbers continue to round into shape; he's hitting .235/.325/.441. After his slow early start, he's hit .260/.339/.520 over 14 games with almost as many walks (six) as strikeouts (seven). If you tighten the window even more, he's at .370/.469/.852 with all four of his home runs and nine RBIs over his past eight games.
"I feel very good right now, and I've been working very hard in the cage with hitting coach Guillermo Martinez," Guerrero said. "That's the plan."
What are Guerrero's numbers going to end up at this season? For his career? Who knows? What we can already say is that stories about him, directly and indirectly, are already piling up with each city he blazes through. The journey has just begun. Born into baseball royalty, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has the ability to rise to whatever throne it is that ballplayers can rise to, including that as baseball's newest prince. It's going to be a joy to watch, for him and for us.
"I'm enjoying every moment, every at-bat, every game," Guerrero said. "Everywhere I go so far, I'm enjoying every game."