Vlad Guerrero Jr. stands, white jersey stained with dirt, new black cap pulled backward over his forehead. You’ve seen the clip. Sportsnet reporter Hazel Mae, who has herself delivered a star turn throughout these baseball playoffs, scraps her scripted question and instead vocalizes what millions of viewers have just realized: “Vladdy. You’ve got tears in your eyes, Vladdy.”
The first time I saw Vlad Guerrero Jr. was in July of 2018. It was in Buffalo, and the heralded 19-year-old was taking batting practice before his first game for the Blue Jays’ minor-league affiliate. The assembled media gawked at his home-run swings. Then we asked about his remarkable rise through minor league baseball, about his father —a decent ballplayer himself — and about his abuela, who packed his lunches, just as she had for his dad.
In that moment, if you had told anyone at Coca-Cola Field that, in 2025, Vlad Jr. would lead the Blue Jays to the brink of a World Series title, they would have responded: of course. He was one of the great hitting prospects in the history of the game, with an easy charisma that escaped even the filter of his translator, and he possessed a dramatic flair that’s prerequisite for the most fantastic and fickle position in sports: big-league slugger.
So here we have it, a tidy tale of conquering hero. Vlad Guerrero Jr. is taking his rightful place among baseball’s greats, authoring the kind of playoff story that will grow ever more enormous each time it’s told. He is universally beloved, unfathomably rich, and completely unstoppable.
Except that wouldn’t explain the tears.
The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays’ relentless run through the Major League Baseball playoffs has been shaped by failure. This is not a unique story in sports, but the severity of the recent heartbreak is, if not unprecedented, at least unusual. The organization entered the 2020s armed with young talent like Guerrero and Bo Bichette, the precocious shortstop who captured attention with his carefree approach, irrepressible offensive prowess, and, of course, his flowing hair.
The Jays were a perennial favourite among baseball writers, perpetually arriving but never arrived. Between 2020 and 2023, they played six playoff games and lost all six, including a truly epic Thanksgiving loss to Seattle, in a game they led 8-1. Vlad in particular had lapses, moments of youthful carelessness, such as when he was picked-off of second base in a crucial moment in a loss to Minnesota. He followed a breakout 2021 season with several that were closer to ordinary. The team tried to import a more serious approach, acquiring veteran talent and cutting out some of the dugout pranks. But in 2024, the Jays failed even to make the playoffs, producing one of the more miserable seasons in all of baseball. The perception of Vlad began to shift, from fun-loving star to someone too goofy to reach his potential. Bo at times seemed uninterested. To some fans, his once-celebrated carefree attitude suddenly seemed closer to selfishness.
The team also suffered increasingly public humiliations, as star player after star player spurned its advances in free agency. Team owner Ed Rogers offered megastars such as Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto sums nearing $1 billion, when you account for the conversion, and baseball’s best and brightest continued to say: No, thanks.
Going into 2025, they were picked by most analysts to finish last in their division. And who could blame them? The optimists had them second-to-last. It seemed that star outfielder George Springer had reached the end of his rope, Vlad and Bo were set to move elsewhere in free agency, and all that was left to do was figure out what the team could get in trades for the rest of the roster.
And yet here we are.
This Blue Jays team has been described as resilient, gritty, and tough as it worked its way through the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners. Now, as it sits one win away from defeating the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers and claiming the World Series title, you might be tempted to call it fated.
But the word that comes to mind as I watch (and watch, and watch) is mature.
Vlad Jr., shaped by his shortcomings, is still goofy, but also focused and effective, taking pride in all elements of the game. Bo, injured in September on an ill-fated dash for home, has rejoined the team by ceding both his position and his playing time when necessary — a development that would have seemed unthinkable last season.
There’s Ernie Clement, the charming infielder who, after being cut from a major league team for the second time, decided he needed to take the game more seriously. There’s Addison Barger, the enthusiastic youngster whose approach seems to have aged five years in the past five weeks. Chris Bassitt, the veteran starting pitcher, put personal pride aside to embrace a bullpen role. The list doesn't end there. Nathan Lukes turned himself from ten-year minor leaguer to nearly irreplaceable. Pitcher Eric Lauer, once a major-league washout, was forced to ply his trade in Korea just last year. And of course, there's Springer, who capped an inexplicable turnaround by hitting the team’s biggest home run in 32 years just days after taking a 96 mile per hour fastball off his kneecap.
The team has adopted a selfless mindset that is uncommon among groups of ultra-competitive millionaires. It’s won them both fans and games. It’s also a complete reversal of the story of the Blue Jays teams that came before — the kind of development that can only come to those who know the end of every other available path.
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