Before Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s ill-fated dash home and before Ernie Clement’s drive to left that Andy Pages, a rare mid-inning defensive sub, sprinted 123 feet to snare, there was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. versus Blake Snell to open that wild bottom of the ninth.
Given the chaos that followed, it’s an at-bat that’s largely remained out of the Game 7 discourse, a 377-foot drive to centre field, calmly corralled by Tommy Edman for the inning’s first out, seemingly no big whoop.
But, like so much from that all-timer Game 7, there’s more to the story.
Guerrero was up 3-0 in the count. He sat changeup and got one. He let loose the swing he wanted, too, sending the pitch out at 100.5 m.p.h. — only at the last second, the ball moved off the barrel just enough to avoid full impact.
“An inch,” he said with disdain, the difference so marginal between a walk-off homer to win the World Series and a frustrating footnote in a forever-haunting loss. “When he released that ball, it was exactly where I was looking for it. It had to be God to move that ball away a little bit from me. That’s just the way it is.”
A harsh reality, one Guerrero and his Toronto Blue Jays teammates have had to learn to live with in the 145 days between that 5-4 Los Angeles Dodgers victory on Nov. 1 and Friday night’s season opener against the visiting Athletics. Coverage on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ begins with Blue Jays Central at 5:30 p.m. ET / 2:30 p.m. PT before first pitch at 7:07 p.m. ET / 4:07 p.m. PT.
Guerrero’s near-miss, along with the rest of that game’s craziness, “was all I was thinking about” throughout the off-season,” he said.
“I’ve got the entire game in my head,” — not only that at-bat, he added — and “every time I went to the weight room, lifted a weight, every time I took a swing, that’s all I had on my mind, Game 7, Game 7. When you think like that, it makes you stronger and hungrier to accomplish that goal.”
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The test of that last part is just beginning. One of the challenges before the Blue Jays is finding ways to use Game 7 without being trapped by it.
J.J. Picollo, the Kansas City Royals general manager who was an assistant in 2014 and 2015 when the club followed up a Game 7 loss in the World Series by winning the Fall Classic a year later, noted how his returning players had “a tremendous focus” on winning a championship, and not just on returning to the playoffs. But he added first that “the focus has to be to get in that position.”
Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro made a similar point, saying “it’s dangerous thing to think you have to build off last year.”
“There is no such thing as running it back,” he said. “This year is this year. We’re shaped and formed by our past, but we have to organically be a new group of players pursuing a new goal this year and have to let that transpire naturally, as well. … It’s hard as hell. Toughest division in baseball. 162 games. Crap’s going to happen that we’re not ready for. Let’s go. Let’s get started. That’s the approach I think our guys will take and we need to take.”
Max Scherzer noted that he’ll “never get over it — not that one — nor should we (because) that’s how important winning a World Series is to all of us,” before he added that the Blue Jays reached “the highest level of baseball you can possibly play.”
“So now, you get what we’re doing? You get why we do everything that we practice, all the preparation?” he added. “Everybody in here knows what the ending looks like. This is why I do everything the way I do, because I’ve seen how important everything is, how important executions are in the postseason. Once you get that taste in your mouth and you understand that level of baseball, you understand that’s the standard.”
New-look roster. Same aspirations.
The roster from last year to this one is similar, with significant changes.
Dylan Cease, owner of the franchise’s richest free agent at $210 million over seven years, and Cody Ponce were signed to add more velocity and whiff to the rotation. Tyler Rogers was imported to add a dynamic force from a unique submarine arm angle to the bullpen. Kazuma Okamoto and Jesus Sanchez were brought in to help compensate for the loss of Bo Bichette, complementing other key incumbents like George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho, Addison Barger and Ernie Clement.
“What we learned last year is we’re not relying on one guy,” said manager John Schneider. “Our goal is to always out-team the other team and use everyone’s skills appropriately to try to win that night. So we’re not looking for Kaz; we’re (not) looking for Addy; we’re not looking for Varsh, or anyone to say, “OK, you need to do X, Y, and Z to pick up production that Bo had last year.” It’s just how can you help us win and what is important right now. My job is to find spots for them to do that and then just go play.”
Then there’s Guerrero, who, a year ago at this time, was the prime symbol of the inflection point facing the franchise and now, as he begins his $500-million, 14-year extension, is reflective of the wider stability the franchise has built.
A walk-off homer against Snell in Game 7 would have been fitting, punctuating a sensational postseason while also marking a moment of deliverance for the 27-year-old, who’s been uniquely linked to the franchise’s fate since he signed as an international free agent in 2015.
Even without it, his emergence last fall extended beyond numbers, best illustrated by the way he “had some movie lines” in the dugout before Game 6 of the World Series, as Schneider relayed last fall, telling his teammates, “‘ if you’re nervous tonight, look at me.’”
In that way, he was not only meeting the moment, but overtaking it.
“We all have responsibilities here,” Guerrero said of the weight on him throughout his time with the Blue Jays. “Obviously, when that was handed to me, I was still pretty young. But the way that I can manage that is just to go out there every day and play hard. When you go out, and you do what you’ve got to do, you’re going to cover the responsibility and what it means for the team.”
He’s lived that mantra on the field every day to such a degree that a scout for a rival club who has long watched Guerrero said that the way he ran the bases last spring, before the extension was done, demonstrated that he was setting a standard for the way the team plays.
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It’s why ace Kevin Gausman, making his first opening-day start with the Blue Jays on Friday, described Guerrero as “the perfect franchise player.”
“He does everything the right way. He really engages with fans. He loves playing baseball. And if you watch him play, it’s every pitch. He really enjoys every single aspect of the game,” Gausman said.
“He did an exceptional job last year of knowing that we had lost Bo at a pretty big time (in September), and I think he kind of looked inward, how can I make up for what Bo is missing … just knew he needed to take his game to another level, and he did. His postseason was incredible; he was unbelievable. Every at-bat, he didn’t give away a single at pitch the entire postseason. … I think Vladdy has just learned, especially with his big contract, he knows that he’s who everyone looks at.”
Now more so than ever, which is among the many ways Guerrero’s life has changed since signing his extension last April.
Asked to reflect on how different things are for him compared to a spring ago, he said, “the biggest difference is that you don’t have that thought in your head if you’re going to be here or if you’re going to be playing somewhere else. Once you sign that contract, you feel your mind at peace, like, OK, I’m going to be here for a while, for a lot of years. That helps you accomplish a lot of things, be successful, be a better teammate, better human being.”
A human being who enters 2026 with a singular goal for his Blue Jays, a goal which he came one damn inch from achieving a year ago.
“Winning the World Series,” Guerrero said without hesitation. “That’s it.”
