TORONTO -- As Vladimir Guerrero Jr. reclaimed his title as baseball’s next big thing earlier this season, he did it with remarkable consistency. There were no peaks, no valleys, just a .300-plus batting average and 1.000-plus OPS each and every week, giving opposing pitchers nightmares.

His August has been inevitable. Through 21 games entering Tuesday, Guerrero hit .229 with a .676 OPS and just three home runs. This isn’t cratering by any means, but it’s miles from the MVP-caliber pace he produced through four months. In many ways, it’s an embodiment of the broader struggles this lineup has faced.

Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo first mentioned it Friday, when the Blue Jays lost, 4-1, to the Tigers despite an absolutely brilliant performance from Robbie Ray. Montoyo felt the lineup was trying to do too much, which is a problem fairly unique to baseball. Sometimes, “giving 110 percent” isn’t the answer.

“When the whole lineup struggles, everybody is trying harder,” Montoyo said after Monday’s bounceback 2-1 win over the White Sox. “Today was a good sign of better at-bats against good pitching. It’s such a great sign. Remember, Vladdy’s a young guy and it’s a process. He’s going to learn from what he’s going through right now. He’ll be all right, believe me. This guy is going to be one of the best players in baseball.”

The weight seemed to come off Guerrero’s shoulders in the sixth inning, when he singled home Bo Bichette and advanced to second on the throw home. As Guerrero popped up from his slide, he pumped his fist and beat his chest, screaming in celebration to his teammates in the dugout. Guerrero has lacked that energy in recent weeks -- the team as a whole has, at times -- but there it was again.

“It was a combination of a couple of things. I think it’s the heat of the moment, of course, and I’ve been going through rough times lately and it was a combination of those two things,” Guerrero said through a translator. “On top of that, I came through with the base hit and the double play. I got the feeling that finally I can help the team the way I want.”

Guerrero is still on pace for one of the best offensive seasons in the history of the franchise. Brief slump aside, he entered play on Tuesday hitting .309 with a 1.004 OPS and 36 home runs -- a run at 45 or more homers lying in front of him through September. It looks like José Bautista’s club record of 54 homers from 2010 will live another year, but Guerrero could still make a run at George Bell (47) for the second most in a single season.

The challenge over the final 39 games will be fatigue. In past years, Guerrero has openly admitted that he ran out of gas down the stretch. That’s normal, but Guerrero’s fitness caused him to really lose steam. As his posture dipped at the plate, his elbows and hands dipped, leading to more of the ground-ball contact that he struggled so much with earlier in his MLB career. Now that he’s improved his fitness and commitment to those routines, though, what does a stretch run closer to 100 percent look like?

Part of the solution will be feeding off one another. The Blue Jays’ dugout is a beehive of banter and mischief, and we saw some of that come back to life in Monday’s win over Chicago.

“We were backing each other up in the dugout. It was unbelievable,” Guerrero said. “We were telling everyone, ‘Keep swinging. Keep swinging. They’re going to fall. Keep swinging. Keep taking good at-bats.’ Finally, it did. It was great. We were backing up each other.”

The lineup needs to improve the same way Guerrero does for the home stretch, and getting George Springer back from his left knee sprain will help, but nobody on this roster -- and few hitters on the planet -- have the ceiling of Guerrero.