CHICAGO -- Twenty minutes after the Blue Jays’ series-opening loss to the White Sox on Friday, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. walked out of the clubhouse and towards the batting cage, alone.
While John Schneider spoke to the media about an ugly game and the loss of Alejandro Kirk, the sound of Guerrero’s bat played in the background, whack … whack … whack. Seven quiet games without a home run were enough.
Guerrero finally launched one on Saturday, a 437-footer to left field that was gone the moment he made contact. Vladdy stopped to admire every foot of the ball’s flight, too, barely strolling out of the batter’s box until it had crashed down in the bleachers. It felt like the moment that would jolt the Blue Jays out of this early lull, but then that momentum disappeared.
Instead of an energizing win led by Guerrero, we’ll spend the night talking about an untidy 6-3 loss and the two home runs surrendered by Brendon Little.
Little’s struggles from the 2025 postseason have carried over into ‘26, and while there have been flashes of all the reasons the Blue Jays want to keep Little around, Saturday afternoon was another step in the wrong direction. After catching far too much of the plate with a sinker to the powerful Munetaka Murakami -- which is not recommended -- Little left another sinker over the plate to Colson Montgomery two batters later. Two big swings, three runs and a 2-1 lead evaporated.
Even when the Blue Jays tried to rally back and erase this memory, they ended the next inning with an out on the bases when Tyler Heineman tagged from second and tried to take third on a bases-loaded sac fly.
Standing on deck was Vladdy, who would have come to the plate with an opportunity to break the game back open. These are the individual moments -- whether they be bullpen appearances or decisions on the bases -- that we didn’t see from the 2025 Blue Jays when they truly found their identity and took off through the summer months.
“We’re eight games into the season and I feel like we’ve had some games that scream ‘not us,’ and when we play ‘us,’ we’re good,” Schneider said. “We’ve got to get back to it. There have been some things that are magnified. The more you dwell on it and the more you say ‘woe is me,’ the worse you’re going to get. They’re very well aware of the standard that is set here and the expectations that we hold.”
This is also where many conversations around the Blue Jays have lost any middle ground, which is too often where the right answers are found.
Little has become a lightning rod, the memories of those difficult appearances in the American League Championship Series and World Series still lingering. The stakes are so much higher now than they were in early 2025, too, the expectations of a World Series already in place entering this season. In the AL East, every inch matters, even if it’s a game in early April against the White Sox. There will be urgency.
“We’ve got to figure it out,” Schneider said. “We’re going to try to put the best team out there every single day, so we’ll definitely sit down and talk about it.”
At the same time, the Blue Jays have seen Little be an effective big-league reliever before. They’ve seen him put up a 3.03 ERA with 12 K/9 in a season. Little still has an option remaining, too, so this doesn’t need to be handled with extremes or permanent decisions. The idea of a reset with Triple-A Buffalo wouldn’t be the end of Little’s story, and would still leave him fully in control of how this season ends, even if it hasn’t begun the way he wanted.
These aren’t fatal flaws. The 2025 Blue Jays didn’t get over .500 and truly stay there until late May, and, until that point, there was plenty of imperfect baseball played, plenty of days that looked worse than Saturday in Chicago.
It’s telling how direct and pointed Schneider was postgame, though, a strong believer in the standards set by the 2025 team.
“We’ve set the tone here to what we expect,” Schneider said, “and if you’re not doing it, someone else will get a chance to do it.”
This is how it feels to stand in the spotlight of great expectations, though. Everything is bigger, brighter and louder. The highs feel higher because we’ve all seen where those could lead, but it’s the lows that pull this team even an inch away from their goal that can feel so much more frustrating.