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Jays' Guerrero earns Player of the Week nod

No. 3 overall prospect paces Eastern League with 12 RBIs
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has six extra-base hits through his first nine games with Double-A New Hampshire. (Kevin Pataky/MiLB.com)
April 16, 2018

With each passing day, any questions surrounding Vladimir Guerrero Jr. become less about what can he do and more about what can't he do. The answer: not much.MLB.com's No. 3 overall prospect enjoyed a smashing Double-A debut with New Hampshire and in the process was named Eastern League Offensive Player

With each passing day, any questions surrounding Vladimir Guerrero Jr. become less about what can he do and more about what can't he do. The answer: not much.
MLB.com's No. 3 overall prospect enjoyed a smashing Double-A debut with New Hampshire and in the process was named Eastern League Offensive Player of the Week for April 5-15 after going 13-for-36 (.361) with two homers, four doubles, 12 RBIs and seven runs scored in his first nine games with the Fisher Cats.

Guerrero has hit safely in all but one game this year, and he has four multi-hit efforts in his last five games, including three straight. The Blue Jays' top prospect has gone 10-for-21 (.476) in that span after opening the season 3-for-15.
"You kind of say, where do you go from here?" Fisher Cats manager John Schneider told MiLB.com after Guerrero drove in a career-high six runs on April 7. "The biggest thing for him is understanding at-bat by at-bat, pitch by pitch, how teams are going to try to attack him and then adjusting along with him."

His Player of the Week nod comes on the heels of his dramatic game-winning home run in Toronto's exhibition finale on March 27. Guerrero's walk-off blast snapped a scoreless tie in the last of two games played at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, where his father spent the first eight years of his Hall of Fame career.
Toronto signed Guerrero as a 16-year-old in 2015, and he began his professional career a year later with Rookie-level Bluefield in the Appalachian League. The third baseman broke through as one of the Minor's brightest stars in 2017 during his first full-season campaign, when he hit .323/.425/.485 with 43 extra-base hits, 76 RBIs and scored 84 runs in 119 games with Class A Lansing and Class A Advanced Dunedin. He participated in the All-Star Futures Game at Marlins Park last July for the World team, singling twice and scoring two runs.
View the Pitcher of the Week winners »
"For a 19-year-old kid, he's so convicted to his approach and his plan each at-bat," Schneider told MiLB.com's podcast "The Show Before the Show" recently. "When you talk to him, the adjustments he can make pitch by pitch are really phenomenal for a kid his age. We don't really talk about power. We don't really talk about mechanics with him. He can hit … we let him tell us how he's approaching each at-bat."
Below is a complete list of the 2018 season's first Offensive Players of the Week for April 5-15:

Michael Avallone is a contributor to MiLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @MavalloneMiLB.