Why Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Will Snap Homerless Streak at Home vs. Mariners
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It once reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Arctic Circle.
Seattle once went 55 days without rain.
Blind squirrels find nuts.
Broken alarm clocks are right twice a day.
Unless they aggravatingly reset to midnight when the power goes out.
And the power has certainly gone out this year for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at Rogers Center.
As you may have heard, it has been over a year since Guerrero Jr. homered in the regular season. To be precise, it has been 378 days and 353 plate appearances since Guerrero Jr. last homered in the regular season at 1 Blue Jay Way on August 18, 2025, off Nathan Eovaldi.
That changes today.
This year, 462 MLB players have homered in their home ballpark this season.
Today it becomes 463.
Sixteen different Blue Jays have homered at Rogers Center this year, including noted sluggers like Myles Straw and Tyler Heinemann, who no longer plays for Toronto. The Blue Jays acquired Luis Urias from Arizona on June 20th. He has gone deep twice at home.
Brandon Valenzuela, Yohendrick Pinango, Charles McAdoo, and Sean Keys all started the year in Buffalo and have homered at home; Valenzuela has homered in Toronto six times.
Today, a 17th Blue Jay will hit one out north of the border.
And, no, the 17th won't be Brett Bateman, as much as he has been a spark plug for Toronto.
Why Today?
Guerrero Jr. slugged three home runs at home in the 2025 postseason. The last one came against Seattle starting pitcher Logan Gilbert in Game 6 of the ALCS.
Today's starter for Seattle is Logan Gilbert.
Guerrero Jr. sees Gilbert well.
For his career, including the postseason, Guerrero Jr. has homered off Gilbert three times in 23 plate appearances. He is slugging .810. And that is not a fluke, as his expected slugging percentage is .745.
His average exit velocity against Gilbert is a body temperature-like 98.6. He has barreled 4 of the 17 balls he has put in play against the Mariners starter.
A Promising Sign Amidst the Struggles
In his final at bat on Saturday, Guerrero Jr. hit the hardest ball he, or any Blue Jay, has hit all season, a screaming line drive to left caught by Mariners left-fielder Randy Aroazena right before it decapitated him. While it only went 299 feet with a launch angle of 7 degrees, the elite exit velocity is a sign that Guerrero Jr. is healthy and can still hit the ball hard enough to get it out of the park.
Guerrero Jr. has just one home run since the All-Star break, on August 8th against Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park.
Today, that becomes two when he hits his 72nd career home run at Rogers Centre. And maybe he even hits a pair today once he gets the Lake-Ontario-sized monkey off his back.
If he doesn't, he will have to hear about the drought for two more weeks because the Blue Jays won't be home again until September 11th, when they face Baltimore.
So set your broken clocks for 1:37 PM ET today at Rogers Centre because Vladdy will finally homer at home.
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Adam Steinmetz writes about the Toronto Blue Jays for On SI. Adam is also the editor and publisher of the Boston Sunday Sports Section, a weekly digital publication covering the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. A two-time winner of the Best Collegiate Sports Writer award in Philadelphia, he began his career with freelance work for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Palm Beach Post before building a successful career outside of journalism. He returned to sports writing last year, contributing to Pitcher List—including coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays—before launching Authorenticity on Substack, where he explores the human stories within baseball. The Boston Sunday Sports Section is his most ambitious project — the thinking fan’s modern Sunday Sports Section focused on the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.