It’s been quite a week at the World Series. Monday’s marathon 18-inning game ultimately went to the Dodgers on the back a number of outstanding relief appearances, including the longest of his career from the last man in LA’s bullpen, Will Klein. Klein ultimately earned the win after throwing four scoreless innings before Freddie Freeman sent the city into an early morning frenzy with a World Series walkoff homerun. With that swing of the bat Freeman entered category of his own as the only player
with multiple walkoff home runs in the World Series. Despite having the iconic moment of the game, Freeman was quick to acknowledge his teammate, Shohei Ohtani, who set an MLB Postseason record getting on base nine times in a single game.
In fact, what Ohtani is doing is so remarkable, he’s already gotten a similar write-up in this column a week ago when he hit three home runs and struck out 10 Brewers in the same game. He’s having an outstanding postseason and is in a category of his own as a two-way player. However, today I want to highlight another remarkable performance this Postseason from ALCS MVP Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who has shown no signs of slowing down [VIDEO].
In fact, Vladito has been the hottest hitter through the Postseason among all hitters with at least 20 plate appearances:
It’s a remarkable 16-game run. Eight home runs, 17 runs scored, 15 RBI. He’s slashed .415/.506/.831. He’s barely striking out with a minuscule 6.3 percent strikeout rate (only Nico Hoerner and Ernie Clement had lower strikeout rates this Postseason). He’s getting on base over 50 percent of the time while hitting for power — those eight long balls are tied with Ohtani for the Postseason lead.
I wanted to see how Vladito’s 2025 Postseason compared in the long history of baseball, so I reran that leaderboard with a 40 plate appearances minimum to ensure it was players who were hot across multiple series, not just one. You can see the top 20 Postseason performances sorted by wRC+ below:
It’s an all-time great performance so far with at least a game left to pad the numbers. Vladito is in the rarified air of Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson. But it’s worth noting that of the five players with a higher wRC+ than Vladdy on their way to Postseason glory, only Barry Bonds had a similar number of plate appearances during his run. Incidentally, the best Cub performance on this list is 2003 Moisés Alou who ranks 131st on this list with a wRC+ of 158 and a .388/.423/.551 slashline in 52 plate appearances.
The World Series returns to Toronto on Friday night and Vladdy will have a home town crowd to fire him up as he tries to stay hot and help the Blue Jays win their first championship since 1993. While we wait, enjoy all eight of Vladito’s bombs so far this Postseason [VIDEO].
