Guerrero’s Home Drought Outlasted Toronto’s 13-2 Loss

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 0-for-3 in Toronto’s 13-2 loss to Kansas City on Aug. 27 and still has zero home homers this season. Six days later the Blue Jays had swept Seattle, dropped a 6-1 game in Cleveland, and watched the same problem follow them out of town.

The night itself was a rout. The season-long hole at Rogers Centre is the part that did not leave with the Royals.

The Videoboard Sat Frozen at 10-0

A crowd of 42,621 watched the centre-field board stick on one on, one out, and a 4-0 Kansas City lead while the sixth inning came apart. It did not move until Vinnie Pasquantino’s two-run homer, a 370-foot drive that made it 10-0 and finally updated the linescore. The boos were already in the building.

Thursday’s 13-2 box score is as ugly as it sounded in the moment. Kansas City scored two in the first, two in the second, six in the sixth, one in the eighth, and two in the ninth. Toronto’s only runs were George Springer’s two-run homer, his 13th of the year, which cut a 10-0 hole to 10-2 and changed nothing.

HOW THE 13-2 GOT AWAY

1. Aug. 27, first inning: Carter Jensen leads off with a 421-foot homer on Spencer Arrighetti’s second pitch. Arrighetti then whiffs on a Salvador Perez roller, and Kansas City is up 2-0.
2. Second inning: Jac Caglianone, who finished with a career-high five hits and six RBIs, singles in two more. It is 4-0 before Toronto has a hit that matters.
3. Sixth inning: Simeon Woods Richardson faces 10 batters, allows five hits and two walks, and watches Pasquantino finish a six-run burst. The board finally flips to 10-0.
4. Ninth inning: Myles Straw, in his fourth pitching appearance of the year, gives up two more. The Royals leave with 16 hits and a 13-2 final in 2 hours and 44 minutes.

Noah Cameron held Toronto to two runs over six innings and improved to 9-8. Arrighetti, in his second start back from the injured list, lasted four innings, threw 79 pitches (49 strikes), and took the loss to fall to 7-7. The Blue Jays had wanted those 79 pitches spread over five innings, not four, with a nerve issue in his right foot still in the background.

Guerrero’s Hardest Contact Keeps Dying on the Infield

The boos found Guerrero in the bottom of that sixth, after a groundout to second. His last out of the night was a 114.7 mph grounder to third, tying for the fourth-hardest ball he has hit all year. The two balls he has hit hardest this season also went for outs.

He finished 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout. Manager John Schneider did not dress it up, either on the scoreboard or on his first baseman.

When you’re getting your ass kicked pretty good, they’re allowed to have their opinion. But we love their support every night.

John Schneider, Blue Jays manager, after the 13-2 loss

On Guerrero, Schneider called it a weird year and said the slugger is competing, working, and still hitting the ball that hard. The ball keeps finding people. Pre-game work on the field to track trajectory did not change the night. The search for his first home homer of 2026 continued through another packed house.

Zero Homers in 65 Home Games

Through 123 games Guerrero is hitting.258/.331/.348 with seven home runs and 48 RBIs. Every one of those seven homers has come on the road. His home and road splits this season are the cleanest way to see it, and they do not need a translator.

GUERRERO’S 2026 POWER SPLIT

Sixty-five home games, 241 at-bats, 276 plate appearances, and a.299 slugging percentage in his own park. On the road he slugs.403. For his career he slugs.479, with a 28-homer pace per 162 games and 190 home runs on the ledger. This year’s home line is a different player.

The last regular-season homer he hit at Rogers Centre came on Aug. 17, 2025, a 438-foot shot off Texas starter Nathan Eovaldi, his 21st of that season. He did go deep three times at home in last October’s playoff run, including a grand slam against the Yankees in the ALDS, and his most recent homer of any kind there was Oct. 19 in Game 6 of the ALCS against Seattle. Regular-season baseball at home has been a dead zone since last August.

A loud corner of the sport has already decided the home-park zero means he wants out of Toronto, as if a year of groundouts were a negotiating tactic. That is a stretch the numbers do not need. Seven homers on the road also do not cancel the home zero, even if that is the first rebuttal whenever the drought comes up. He is still hitting the ball 114.7 mph. It is still staying in the yard on the turf he plays 81 times a year.

Year One of a 14-Year, $500 Million Bet

This is Year 1 of the 14-year, $500 million deal that runs through 2039, with a $35.71 million average salary, a $325 million signing bonus, and a full no-trade clause. He will not hit free agency until 2040. FanGraphs has him at a 93 wRC+ this season, below league average, with 0.7 WAR. The same model had a 32-homer season on him before the year started. He has seven.

In late June, with the homerless home streak already a running gag and the club stumbling through a 6-5 loss to Texas, Schneider offered a small public wager.

I’ll put a dollar on it with you, that’s he’ll hit at least one here before the season is over.

John Schneider, Blue Jays manager, June 26 at Rogers Centre

September is here. The dollar is still out. A concussion in mid-August put Guerrero on the injured list; he came back Aug. 22 and went 0-for-3 against Kansas City five days later. He is 27. He is a six-time All-Star, a Home Run Derby winner, and last fall’s ALCS MVP. The contract assumed that version would show up at home. The version that is showing up has an.632 OPS in Toronto and a lineup that has to win series without the ball leaving the yard behind him.

A Rotation Held Together With Mop-Up Innings

The pitching that night was a picture of a staff improvising. Arrighetti was still installing an abbreviated slide step and trying to find conviction in the next pitch. Woods Richardson was asked to keep it close and cover innings, and did neither. Michael Lorenzen, released by the Colorado Rockies about a week earlier, threw two mop-up innings because Schneider needed a veteran who could take the ball every day. Lorenzen told him to try to break him. It would not work.

Shane Bieber had already gone on the 15-day injured list Aug. 24, retroactive to Aug. 21, with inflammation in the teres major muscle of his right shoulder. He will not throw for a couple of weeks. He had just thrown seven innings of one-run ball in Tampa on Aug. 20 and was 5-1 with a 2.84 ERA over his last seven starts, the one piece of the rotation that had actually settled. Jameson Taillon was still working back from forearm trouble, with a Triple-A rehab start on the calendar, and was not expected to help before early this week.

THE ARMS TORONTO TURNED TO THAT NIGHT

• Spencer Arrighetti: Four innings, 79 pitches, four runs (three earned), a fielding error, and a second start back from a nerve issue in his right foot.
• Simeon Woods Richardson: One inning, six earned runs, 39 pitches, and a 6.68 ERA after the outing.
• Michael Lorenzen: Two innings in his first work as a Jay, one run, 42 pitches, and a standing offer to throw 100 if asked.
• Myles Straw: A position player on the mound for the ninth, two runs in, game long gone.

Burning that many arms in a blowout left the rotation puzzle for Seattle and Cleveland even tighter with Bieber on the shelf. Arrighetti said the job is conviction and execution, and that he did not give the team much of a chance in a push. He started again Tuesday in Cleveland, lasted 3.2 innings, and took another loss, falling to 7-8.

They Swept Seattle Without a Guerrero Home Run

The wild-card funeral lasted one night. Toronto beat Seattle 8-1, 4-3, and 7-0 from Aug. 28 to 30, the same Mariners club it met in last fall’s ALCS. Max Scherzer threw seven innings of one-hit ball with 10 strikeouts in the finale. The Blue Jays walked out of the weekend 68-70, a game and a half behind Cleveland for the last wild-card spot, which is not what a 13-2 home loss is supposed to produce.

Guerrero went 2-for-12 in that sweep, with a double, two RBIs, and no home run. The ballpark that has not seen a regular-season Guerrero homer since last August did not see one in three more tries against Seattle. The club can win without him going deep. It has been doing it. The wins just do not travel as far as they would if the middle of the order still looked like the player on the contract.

Tuesday in Cleveland put a dent back in the standings. The Guardians won 6-1. Guerrero went 1-for-4. Arrighetti and Lorenzen both pitched in the loss. Toronto is 68-71. Cleveland is 70-68. The gap is 2.5 games.

Cleveland Still Owns the Last Wild-Card Spot

The American League’s third wild-card berth is being contested by teams that would not scare anyone in October. Cleveland holds it at two games over.500. Baltimore and Texas sit a game and a half back at 69-70. Toronto is next. Minnesota is 3.5 out. Seattle, after getting swept in Toronto, is 5.5 out at 65-74.

AL WILD CARD AFTER TUESDAY

Entering Tuesday, MLB’s own tracker had Toronto 1.5 games behind Cleveland in the final AL wild-card race, with three games left against the Guardians that also feed a head-to-head tiebreaker currently sitting 2-1 Toronto. The Wild Card Series opens Sept. 29. That runway is four weeks, not four months, and Guerrero’s home-run total at Rogers Centre is still zero.

Toronto plays Cleveland again Wednesday, still 2.5 games out of the last wild-card spot, and Guerrero’s home-run total at Rogers Centre remains zero.