Just how much impact can one 6-foot, 245-pound slugger have on a playoff series?
We’re about to find out now that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has checked into the American League Championship Series.
Vladdy was an equal-opportunity destroyer in Game 3: Nearly drilling a hole through the left field fence with a key double, eluding the leaping grasp of center fielder Julio Rodriguez with a tack-on home run, and splitting the gap in right center field for what could’ve been a triple and a playoff cycle.
Vladdy was a soothsayer, pulling aside No. 9 hitter Andrés Giménez before the game and telling the light-hitting shortstop, “You’re going to go yard today.”
“I told him, try to pull the ball,” Guerrero said in a Fox Sports postgame interview of the conversation with Giménez that preceded his game-tying, two-run homer. “He listened to me, and thank God he goes yard today.”
And Vladdy, perhaps most important, verified his status as a postseason monster.
He entered the game 0-for-7 in this ALCS and the Blue Jays 0-for-2, facing a must-win against Mariners right-hander George Kirby.
Four Guerrero hits – just a triple shy of the cycle – and a 13-4 throttling of Seattle later, they exit in far better shape.
Guerrero is now 13-for-28 (.464) with four home runs, 10 RBIs and just one strikeout in this postseason. And the Blue Jays are now trailing just 2-1 in this ALCS, thanks to one swing and one superstar.
“Yeah, man,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said of Giménez’s two-run, game-tying blast in the third inning, “that was a big swing from Andrés.”
Oh, it reversed so much:
The score, as the Mariners once again jumped the Blue Jays on a Julio Rodriguez two-run homer for a 2-0 lead and a 3-0 ALCS lead in sight.
The Blue Jays’ offensive doldrums, as they came in with no extra-base hits and just eight hits in 61 at-bats in Games 1 and 2.
The vibes, to say the least.
Suddenly, Toronto could not be contained, as Giménez’s blast started a five-run eruption, the rally re-started when Guerrero seared a 105-mph liner into the left field wall, a wild pitch and a Daulton Varsho two-run double eventually providing a 5-2 lead.
Amazingly, it all started with Giménez simply wanting to move Ernie Clement to third base with a grounder to the right side. He got a little more of Kirby’s fastball than that.
“You know,” Giménez told reporters in Seattle, with a laugh, “I’m okay with what happened.”
We won’t know for another one, two, four games if that swing flipped this ALCS. But in the Toronto dugout, it certainly did.
“You got to trust everyone in that lineup and when you tie the game like that, I mean, everything changed in that dugout,” Guerrero told a postgame news conference.
The flogging was on. Guerrero, George Springer, Alejandro Kirk and Addison Barger joined Giménez in donning the deep blue La Gente del Barrio sports coat to celebrate their home runs.
Shane Bieber locked in, inspired by the fact his “pick me up” plea after giving up Rodriguez’s home run was heeded, five-fold. And now the curiosity of Max Scherzer, 41-year-old, pitching to square the series is upon us.
Who knows what the old boy will have, but Schneider will sleep much better tonight knowing that there was an awakening at T-Mobile Park.
For a team, and its catalyst.
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