The Yankees may not have to think about the Blue Jays for much longer, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s own words are a big part of why.
Toronto has already been knocked out of playoff contention, which means the team that helped keep New York out of October last year is no longer in the way this season. But the bigger story out of Toronto is Guerrero, whose 2026 campaign has gone sideways in a hurry. He’s sitting on a .695 OPS, and he didn’t hit his first home run at Rogers Centre until September 13.
That rough season has only made the contract chatter louder, especially with Yankees fans taking shots at a player making a whole lot more than trade-deadline pickup Luis Garcia Jr., who has looked much more Guerrero-like while earning about a fifth of the money this year. Asked about the criticism in an interview with Veronica Batista of Noticias Telemicro in the Dominican Republic, Guerrero offered a defense that was every bit as strange as it was revealing.
"I want people to understand one thing. The money they gave me wasn’t for what I’m going to do.
It was for what I already did. They didn’t pay me because I’m going to hit 40 every year.
They paid me for what I already accomplished. People are confused about that, but I think the same way they do.
Like, sometimes I even say to myself: bro, they gave you all that money and you’re out here doing nothing. I try," Guerrero said in Spanish, as translated by Phillip Feliz, also known as @Masterflip_ on Twitter/X.
When reporters later asked him to clarify whether he regretted saying it, Guerrero didn’t back off.
"No, I don't regret myself. I'm not lying with what I say. I understand some fans, they don't understant the way and what I was trying to say specifically, but what I said is the way I feel."
It’s a bizarre line for a player on a 14-year, $500 million deal, and it’s especially hard to square with the way Toronto handed him that contract after his production over the first six years of his career. He’s 27, still in what should be the heart of his prime, and the expectation was never that the Blue Jays were paying only for his past. They were paying for what they believed was still coming.
Guerrero could have made a more convincing point about how long players spend underpaid early in their careers, when pre-arbitration and arbitration suppress earnings. That’s a real issue, and it’s one that figures to come up in offseason labor talks. But that wasn’t the question he was asked, and it wasn’t the answer he gave.
Instead, he seemed to shrug off any responsibility to deliver on the deal as it stands now.
That matters in Toronto, where Guerrero could end up being a massive burden on the books for years. The Blue Jays spent heavily this past offseason on players like Dylan Cease, Kazuma Okamoto, Cody Ponce, and others, but the club is still owned by Canadian conglomerate Rogers Communications Inc., a corporation with profitability on its mind. There’s money there, sure, but there’s also a limit, and Guerrero takes up a huge slice of the payroll.
For the Yankees, the immediate concern is simple: the Blue Jays are out of the picture for now. The longer-term picture in Toronto looks murkier, and Guerrero’s comments did nothing to make it clearer.
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