Keegan Matheson has a blunt take on why the Blue Jays are fighting for a wild card spot at all.
"If Vladdy was even average this year, they're a playoff team, period," Matheson said.
That's a striking way to frame Toronto's season, and it's hard to argue with the logic behind it.
Guerrero hasn't just underperformed. He's been well below league average at the plate for most of this year, a genuinely rare outcome for a player of his caliber.
Matheson's point cuts through a lot of the noise around Toronto's offense, injuries, and bullpen usage this season.
Every other issue this team has dealt with, thin rotation depth, inconsistent lineup production, roster shuffling, still would have mattered less with a league-average Guerrero in the middle of the order.
Instead, Toronto has spent most of the season scrapping just to stay within range of a wild-card spot, rather than comfortably occupying one.
Why this framing matters heading into September
It's a fair way to separate the noise from the real story of this season. A team can survive plenty of individual struggles across a roster.
Losing its highest-paid player's production entirely is a different category of problem.
Toronto's front office made real additions at the deadline, and the pitching staff has carried this team through stretches where the offense simply wasn't there.
None of that fully offsets what an average version of Guerrero would have meant across 162 games.
Manager John Schneider has stood by his franchise player throughout, keeping him high in the order and refusing to punish him for the slump.
Whether that patience gets rewarded before the season ends is still the biggest swing factor in Toronto's playoff push.
Matheson's comment isn't really a criticism of the rest of the roster. It's a reminder of just how much value one player's absence can cost a team, even while he's still in the lineup every night.
Do you agree that an average Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would already have the Blue Jays in a playoff spot?
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