TORONTO -- Millions of Canadians share the same remote job, interning as John Schneider’s co-manager.
It’s a thankless job and the schedule isn’t great, but everyone keeps landing on the same idea that would have sounded ridiculous just six months ago: It’s time to drop the struggling Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the Blue Jays’ lineup.
Watching this team, you have every reason to believe it. Guerrero is stuck in one of the most stunning seasons we’ve ever seen from a Blue Jays star. Fresh off a transcendent performance in the 2025 postseason, he has flopped in ‘26, batting .262 with a .689 OPS and just seven homers, none of them coming at home.
Big moments keep finding Guerrero, but he can’t find that breakthrough, that one swing he’s spent all season searching for. With even a “good” version of Guerrero, the Blue Jays would likely be in a postseason spot today. Why, then, in a season that Schneider has tried just about everything else with this lineup, has Guerrero not been bumped down a couple of spots?
“There’s been thoughts of it, I just don’t know what the outcome would be,” Schneider said. “I don’t want to punish him. I think if there were guys tearing the cover off the ball, that would be a little easier to think about, too. We are built, as a team, for Vlad to be a focal point of our offense. I don’t think that, with where he hits, he will be pitched very differently. I don’t think there will be more or less pressure if he’s hitting down in the order. I want him up in important spots.”
Schneider’s point about how the Blue Jays are built around Guerrero is crucial here. This feels like an NFL offense built around a mobile quarterback, because without that one star doing what he's supposed to, the rest falls apart. The Blue Jays are spilling over with contact hitters, and all of those singles are supposed to flood the bases for Guerrero to drive in 100-plus runs.
Guerrero is supposed to be the sun. Everything else is supposed to orbit around him.
“He’s pretty fine with [hitting] anywhere,” Schneider said, “but I think that he deserves to be somewhere in the middle of the order, looking in relation to who else is on the roster.”
If the Blue Jays had a healthy Addison Barger, who could reasonably be sitting with 20-plus home runs and an .800 OPS by now, perhaps that would change the equation. If George Springer was giving this organization an encore of his incredible 2025 season, it’s easier. If Kazuma Okamoto was having more complete at-bats between his bursts of power, it’s easier. If Anthony Santander was here, being the hitter the Blue Jays signed him to be, it’s easier.
Instead, Schneider is committed to rolling out Guerrero in the second or third spot in the lineup. They’ve debated even those spots for nearly a decade now, Guerrero wanting to bat third and Schneider preferring him second, but it sounds like that will be the extent of it.
Schneider learned a lesson before, too, with Bo Bichette. Early in Schneider’s tenure, Bichette was scuffling and he decided to bat him seventh.
“Oh, I remember that one,” Schneider said, laughing. “That was a good conversation.”
Schneider texted Bichette the night prior, telling him he was shuffling the lineup, but didn’t mention exactly how. When Bichette saw the lineup soon after, Schneider heard from his young shortstop immediately. Those texts, as Schneider remembers them, were rather colorful. Bichette was pissed.
“That was reactionary and me being young in the job … and dumb,” Schneider said. “I think Bo is different than Vlad. You can strategically try to piss him off to get him going. I don’t think that strategically pissing off Vlad is going to change much.”
On this, he’s right. That always separated Bichette and Guerrero. Bichette always responded differently to failures and frustrations than Guerrero did. Neither way was better or worse, just … different.
If you told Bichette that he was probably going to go 0-for-4, he’d hit for the cycle and stare you down as he rounded third on the home run. It’s never felt like that type of external pressure or coaching has been the strategy with Guerrero, though.
Schneider knows Guerrero as well as anyone. They go back to the low levels of the Minor Leagues together, and this is clearly more of a “feel” decision than an analytical one. It’s becoming one of the defining decisions -- and most debated -- of the 2026 Blue Jays.