The Blue Jays’ season ended with a 4-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, and with that defeat, Toronto was officially knocked out of playoff contention. A club that spent heavily over the offseason never found the kind of rhythm it needed, with injuries, an uneven pitching staff and an inconsistent lineup all helping turn the year into a letdown.
At the center of it all has been Vladimir Guerrero Jr., whose production dropped sharply in a season that never matched expectations. Guerrero finally addressed the slump in an interview with Veronica Batista, and he framed his contract in a way that caught plenty of attention.
"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," Guerrero Jr. said, translated by Phillip Feliz on X.
"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."
That answer put his rough year in blunt terms. Guerrero has long been tied to Toronto’s biggest successes, and nobody is trying to erase what he has already done. But the reality this season has been hard to miss: over 533 at-bats, he has nine home runs and 56 RBIs, and he didn’t finally homer at Rogers Centre until September 13.
Fans have grown frustrated, and Guerrero knows it. He talked about how quickly support can disappear when a player is struggling.
"You know how it is with fans, when you're good, they're with you 100%," Guerrero said in the same interview. "But when you smell like sh#t, like we like to say here, nobody supports you."
After Wednesday’s loss to Baltimore, Mitch Bannon of The Athletic asked Guerrero Jr. whether he regretted those remarks. Guerrero said he did not.
"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 specifically, but what I said is the way I feel."
He also said, through his interpreter Hector LeBron, that the contract is on his mind every time he comes up empty.
"Every at-bat when I fail, I think about my contract because I know all of these people who go to the games, they pay to see me being successful, to do something good every at-bat. Every time I think about that."
Guerrero wasn’t the only reason Toronto fell apart, and he acknowledged his own slump as part of the story. Still, the Blue Jays are left with a season that went nowhere, and Guerrero said he plans to head into the offseason and prepare as well as he can, according to Matheson.
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