MLB: Vlad Jr. Will Be the Second Son of a Hall of Famer to Debut

Vlad Jr. will become only the second son of a Hall of Famer ever to make his MLB debut, and only the fourth to play in a major league game.

Here’s one more reason to be excited about the debut tonight of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (aka “Vlad Jr”): When he takes the field for the Toronto Blue Jays against the Oakland Athletics, young Guerrero will become only the second son of a sitting Hall of Famer to make his MLB debut.

That’s saying something because there are 329 members of baseball’s Hall of Fame. Guerrero’s father, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., was inducted in 2018.

Signed by the Montreal Expos at age 18, he debuted Sept. 19, 1996, getting one hit in five at-bats. During a 16-season career with the Expos, Angels, Rangers, and Orioles, the elder Guerrero amassed 2,590 base hits, 449 home runs and drove in 1,496 runs.

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He led the league in base hits with 206 in 2006, batting .336. His career high was .345 in 2000.
Only three other Hall of Famers sired sons who played in a major league game, only one of whom was a Hall of Famer when his son debuted. Can you guess those father-son duos? The answers are at the bottom of this article.

As for Vlad Sr., his best season was almost certainly 2004, his first with Anaheim. He scored a league-leading 124 runs that year, batted .337, hit 39 home runs, and drove in 126. Although none of those represented career highs, in combination they were enough to give him the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award over New York’s Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez, who played for the American League champion Red Sox.

A nine-time All-Star, Vlad Sr. played in 44 post-season games, including the 2010 World Series with the Rangers.

He retired at the end of the 2011 season.

So Vlad Jr. will have a lot to live up to.

Now about that question: The only other sons of a current Hall of Famer to have played a major league game were Eddie Collins Jr., son of Hall of Famer Eddie Collins of the old Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Sox, Ed Walsh Jr., son of Chicago White Sox pitching great Ed Walsh, and Eduardo Perez, son of Cincinnati Reds slugger Tony Perez.

Of the three, young Collins was the only one who debuted as the son of a Hall of Famer. He played his first game on July 4, 1939, about six months after his father’s election. An outfielder for the Philadelphia Athletics, he played parts of three seasons.

The young Walsh pitched for parts of four seasons for the White Sox in the late 1920s and early 1930s, compiling an 11-24 record. But the MLB Hall of Fame did not exist then, and his dad was not inducted until 1946, more than 15 years after Walsh retired.

Eduardo Perez debuted for the California Angels in 1993. He enjoyed a 13-season career before retiring in 2006, having played in 754 games.

His father, the great Cincinnati Reds slugger of the 1960s and 1970s, had not been elected to the Hall at the time of Eduardo’s debut. But Tony did achieve Hall status during Eduardo’s playing career; he was elected in 2000, while Eduardo was playing for the St. Louis Cardinals.