There’s a sense of uneasiness settling over Vlad Guerrero Jr. I’m projecting it there, of course. The uneasiness is all my own, born from the second extended slump of Vlad Jr’s season.

Watching him is an odd experience, as we’ve gone from expecting Guerrero to do something special to hoping he can create something positive.

Since the Jays hosted the Mariners in Seattle, he owns a .200/.260/.257 slash line. He has three extra base hits in those 77 plate appearances. It’s not great!

This newsletter dispatch has been long gestating. Trying to strike a balance between leaning on the comfort of Guerrero’s age while also recognizing existing aging curves belong in the trash. There’s no good excuse for him not to hit now. He was born and bred to hit. He always has and he did until very recently. But now, he struggles and it makes me…uneasy.

Photo: Fred Thornhill, The Canadian Press

It was pre-baked take, a line of reasoning I’ve worn out this year - Vlad Jr needs to get in on the launch angle revolution. I downloaded a bunch of charts showing Guerrero hits the ball on the ground too much, that adding some loft to his swing will cure all his ills, as his propensity for hard contact will make him unstoppable.

And then September rolled around and, lo, Vlad Jr started hitting the ball in the air more than he had all year! Which is great, except he stopped squaring it up and is just weakly flying out. As stated previously, it’s not great.

Suddenly, not enough hard contact. The ground ball singles that buoyed his numbers much of the year have been replaced by soft fly outs. So what’s the fix? He’s so close to being a dominant offensive force, yet I don’t know that the missing piece is easily discovered, at least not at my pay grade.

It feels like the All Star break again, when Vlad Jr was slumping and the uncertainty overwhelmed the residual excitement of him finally arriving in the big leagues. Unlike the All Star break, the end of the season only allows for a winter over which we debate an unanswerable question: Was Vlad Guerrero Jr’s 2019 season a disappointment? The answer is, for me, almost for sure yes.

Admittedly, this is an overreaction on my part. He’ll surely finish the year as a 20-year old every day player, above-average at the plate and with obvious, immense skills. He’ll also be effectively replacement level in 120-odd games, a bad defensive player with middling game power. His 2019 is one of the worst seasons compiled by a regular player his age this century.

He didn’t hit at anything close to the level expected, given his minor league track record. This was the one we were allowed to dream on, but thus far it’s been more grim reality than dreamscape.

Expectations are not something Guerrero himself can control. And a slower-than-expected season is not a baseball death sentence, nor is it a harbinger of what his career will be. Still just 20! Still the owner of an incredible eye at the plate, a below-average strikeout rate and the author of some of the hardest hit balls in the game. Lots to work with and build upon. The pressure, however, is now on.

The pressure is on to discover the next gear, to plug the leaks in the swing and make the required adjustments to be the world beater we were promised. But it’s going to take work. All reports suggest he has it in him to dig in and do what it will take to reestablish himself as the cornerstone of the franchise. So let’s see him do it.

The stakes are high but if anyone can rise to the challenge, it’s the player whose potential allowed them to grow so big in the process.