Blue Jays getting Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s best as he plays through knee pain

After a disastrous four-game sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers that wrapped up on September 14, the Toronto Blue Jays' playoff odds sank to 33.6%.

Fast forward to the team's Monday off-day and that number has climbed to 97.7%. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the biggest ones is the performance of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Despite battling knee inflammation, the slugger has put together his most impressive stretch of the season with his team in desperate need of a spark.

Since the Rangers series, Guerrero has slugged .750 — his best mark in an eight-game stretch all year — with four home runs, including his first two-homer performance of the season on Sunday.

It's also the first time in three seasons the 24-year-old has gone eight games without striking out once:

One of those games was just a pinch-hitting appearance, but Guerrero has still impressed with his plate discipline lately. Even over such a short span, if a player walks seven times without striking out, that's a strong indicator that they're locked in.

While an eight-game stretch can only tell us so much, Guerrero now has a .900 OPS to his name for September, and he's reversing some of the trends that have held back his production this season.

After getting a little bit swing happy in 2023, the first baseman has settled in during the final month of the season, showing far more patience in his 21 September games than he did early in the year.

Another criticism fairly levied against Guerrero was that he wasn't catching the ball out in front of the plate and driving it to left field with authority. Following his recent hot streak, his success pulling the ball has been significantly better in September than the rest of the season:

At times that can be a deceptive number for Guerrero because it can mean that he's yanking the ball on the ground too much, but his groundball rate this month (45.6%) is slightly below his season-long total (47.0%).

Not long ago, the Blue Jays first baseman appeared to be in a deep funk, but he's reversed that trend in dramatic fashion precisely when his team has needed a boost the most. Not only that, but he's done so while playing through pain.

For the vast majority of 2023, the dominant storylines surrounding Guerrero have been puzzlement over his failure to convert strong Statcast numbers into elite results, and disappointment that 2023 has been a step back from 2022 — a campaign that was widely characterized as a down year after his 2021 breakout.

When the regular season is said and done, none of that will disappear completely, but Guerrero is adding an important footnote to the story of his 2023. Not only has he contributed more to his team than his raw numbers suggest thanks to his excellent production in high-leverage situations (.908 OPS), he's also come alive during a make-or-break stretch of the Blue Jays' season.

Now that Toronto is likely to make the playoffs, Guerrero will probably get a chance to flip the script under the bright lights in October, too. If his recent results are any indication, he might just give Blue Jays fans a reason to feel significantly better about his 2023.