GO TIME FOR VLAD
Guerrero Jr. as cool as advertised in first taste of life just one step away from the bigs
BUFFALO— He is, in a couple of words, in a nutshell, in baseball utero, The Franchise: This sweet-faced boy-man with the pudgy cheeks and springy peroxidedipped dreadlocks.
Broad across the shoulders, a tad chunky across the bum, biceps straining his T-shirt. Maybe a bit of baby fat still hanging off his six-foot-one fireplug frame.
Flip-flopping, in his shower flip-flops, to the latest in what will doubtless be countless media scrums to come. Accustomed to it already as a superstar on spec.
Looking as one might have projected he would look a decade down the road, from the cutie who doffed his helmet to the crowd — just like dad, in what was the final game of his Expos career for Vladimir Guerrero Sr. at Olympic Stadium. It was 2003 and Guerrero was the last of the great Expos. But the iconic photo also captured his precocious namesake son, Vlad Jr., who even back then flashed a crinkle of razzle-dazzle, not remotely over-awed by the scene.
It’s in his blood, perhaps. And his blood will soon enough be the ichor pumping new generation vitality through the veins of the presently moribund Toronto Blue Jays.
That’s the plan, a plan thus far proceeding somewhat ahead of schedule, as 19-year-old Guerrero Jr. this week made the step-up from Double-A to Triple-A and a 500-mile drive from the New Hampshire Fisher Cats to the Buffalo Bisons — via Cooperstown and the induction of “papa” into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.
Accompanied, as always, by his abuela, Altagracia Alvino, grandmother and matriarch of the Guerrero clan, into her second generation of shepherding Guerreros into The Show with a firm family hand that doesn’t just stir the fish stew in the pot.
“Of course,” said Junior, confirming with a grin that Altagracia had arrived in town with him Monday. “If I moved to China, she’d come with me.”
Another foreign city for the 65-yearold Altagracia, far distant from her Dominican Republic home, and home to Jr., albeit born in Montreal. They are a lockstep team of two. “I always get advice from her,” says Guerrero Jr. “She’s there to support me. Every game, after the game, we sit down and we talk about the game.”
Cooks for him (and his teammates, as has become traditional on Sr.-Jr. clubs), grounds him, dotes on him. Does his laundry too: “She doesn’t allow me to do it.”
Babies a bit this 200-pound big bouncing babe, but a welcome bulwark against the crushing culture shock experienced by so many Latino players who leave their sun-drenched islands to scatter across the minors, in Canadian Prairies and down the American seaboard.
Altagracia and nieto have baseball-sojourned from Bluefield to Lansing to Dunedin to Manchester, N.H., with Jr. emerging as the No. 1 prospect in baseball, a status unchanged by the month he just spent on the DL with a strained patellar tendon in his left knee. Still, a slash line of .402/.449/.671 in 61 games with the Fisher Cats, hence the teen’s promotion to Triple-A, where manager Bobby Meacham slotted his shiny new trinket into No. 3 in the batting order against the wonderfully named Lehigh Valley IronPigs on Tuesday at CocaCola Field.
Third base Bison, third base Jay of the near-future, most likely, and a hitting phenom. Even he can’t be modest about that. “People already know that I can hit. I’m working on everything, I’m working on my defence.’’
In his Bisons debut, Guerrero Jr. drew three straight walks — at one point nine straight balls — from IronPigs starter Ranger Suarez, who reallyreallyreally didn’t want to be the first Triple-A pitcher to surrender a home run to the teen sensation. He also had a sac fly, scored twice and executed a couple of nifty defensive plays at the hot corner in Buffalo’s 11-8 loss.
Seizing an opportunity, the Bisons opened the gates at 4 p.m., allowing fans to take in BP — about 100 did so — whilst simultaneously hawking a new line of No. 27 ( just like dad) Guerrero merchandise, tees and game jerseys.
Guerrero may have disappointed the early arrivals by lofting only one (1) parabola over the fence but he laid down three perfect bunts — which would already make him the best bunter on the Blue Jays — should he continue climbing the staircase to the majors in 2018, perchance as a September call-him. That would be a boodle for the fans in the flush-out of a woebegone season, with few quality Jays left, post trade deadline, to engage and entertain the public.
A whole lot of burden to put on a 19-year-old’s shoulders, as franchise ballast and thriller, assuming Guerrero shows he can handle Triple-A pitching, which is more cunning, obviously closer to the MLB edge; definitely he’ll see a larger diet of breaking balls.
“We just got to wait and see what happens here,” he cautioned his interrogators, speaking through interpreter Rafael Dubois, Jays’ mental performance coach, from Venezuela. “Once I see how the game is played here, I’ll have a better idea.” But hey, “it’s the same baseball.”
Junior doesn’t have the same body type as Senior, and, in fact, didn’t really learn his instincts for the game at daddy’s knee — tutored more, while “papa” was away having a hall of fame career, by uncle Wilton Guerrero, heeding the advice of his godfather Pedro Martinez, and idolizing Adrian Beltre, another Dominican who rode baseball virtuosity off the island.
That’s a pedigree prep, though, and bred in the bone too, from his childhood days as a moppet running around the Expos dressing room to his coming of baseball age in the Dominican, signed by the Jays as a 16-yearold, for $3.9 million U.S.
They bought a bat. Everything else is jus. But of course they don’t want so preternaturally talented an asset prematurely cast as a DH. Developing his defensive skills and strengthening the throwing arm is part of the Triple-A agenda.
While the Jays brain trust — neither brainy nor to be trusted, frankly — has been prudent about bringing Guerrero along, he’s happy with the speeded up pace of things and unfazed by the weight of expectations.
“I don’t feel any pressure. I just try to get better every day. I try to do my job, do the things I need to do to get better.
“If I’m here, I’m going to do my job here. If I’m there, I’m going to do my job there.”
He seems the least surprised by his. 400 batting average at Double-A, almost as if it was anticipated. “That’s what I work every year for. When I go to the D.R., I just go to prepare myself for a long season. To prepare myself to hit and do my job.
“That’s what I work for and I’m not surprised about that.’’
Guerrero references that a lot, his job, and the by-now-familiar phenom-ness of being Junior, being Vladdy.
“I don’t get surprised by this. I just need to come here and do my job and put up my numbers and do the best that I could.”
Well, I don’t know how close that came to a verbatim translation of what he actually said. There was something in there about the “fanaticos” restlessly awaiting the kid’s Blue Jays debut. But clearly baseball is not just a job; it’s a joy.
You want fun? Twice this season Guerrero has blasted a home run off the hotel beyond the left-field wall at the Fisher Cats’ ballpark, on one occasion smashing a window. A likewise feat in Buffalo would have a crank of a jack landing on the I90 that leads to the Peace Bridge.
“The ball is what I hit,” Guerrero shrugged, “wherever it lands.”
Cross that bridge, though, and he’s some 100 miles from The Big Smoke. Enticingly close, geographically and metamorphically.
Junior, beaming: “Bueno, bueno, bueno.”