DETROIT -- He’s alive!
Finally, after weeks of grinding through frustrating at-bats that looked completely unlike the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. we’ve all come to know, he launched a home run.
Guerrero’s third homer of the season -- his first since April 20 -- was a 105.1 mph rocket to left field (369 feet) off the Tigers’ Jack Flaherty, with just a 16-degree launch angle off the bat. That’s the lowest launch angle on any home run hit in Major League Baseball this season and just one degree off the lowest in Guerrero’s career, which he’s done on three homers.
You could see what this meant to Guerrero as he rounded the bases, flexing his arms and shouting as he neared second. This was as much an opportunity to exhale as it was to celebrate.
Before his home run, Guerrero had gone 69 at-bats without an extra-base hit, just two ABs away from the longest drought of his career (May 2022).
This also comes on the day Guerrero was moved into the No. 2 spot in the lineup, somewhere he hasn’t hit in nearly a year. This has been a constant push-and-pull throughout Guerrero’s career, and while he’s always been vocal about his preference to bat third, a swing like this could be awfully convincing.
Guerrero’s struggles recently had become an unavoidable story. Coming into play Sunday, he was batting just .128 with a .364 OPS over 13 games in May and he’d grown understandably frustrated. Guerrero echoed what everyone around him kept saying, though, which is that he just needed one big game, one big swing, to turn this whole thing around.
“I’m just looking to hit one ball very hard. It will stay in my head and in my mind,” Guerrero said through a club interpreter Saturday. “I know things are going to change.”
Well, he’s finally hit one ball very hard. Guerrero tends to catch fire when he comes out of these slumps, and with a four-game series against the Yankees on deck beginning Monday, his timing couldn’t be better.