Yeah, the correlation between hitting the ball hard and being a good hitter is massive and the list of the EV leaders in MLB is basically just a list of the best hitters in MLB. As you say, the only exceptions are a guy like Oneil Cruz who have crazy swing-and-miss numbers (32% K rate for Cruz!) and thus simply aren't putting hard-hit balls in play often enough. But generally speaking, if you are top-20 in EV in MLB AND have a K rate of less than 20%, it's pretty much automatic that you're one of the best hitters in MLB. And this is what Guerrero is, usually.
Guerrero's problem this year is actually that he isn't hitting the ball hard enough. In his two 'big' seasons (2021 and 2024) his EV was at 94-95 MPH and his hard-hit % was at 55%. In the rest of his seasons (including 2025) his EV is down at 91-92 and his hard-hit % is at 50%. So (as you'd expect) the harder he's consistently hitting the ball, the better he performs.
And it isn't like he's 'lost it' or anything this year. He has the 2nd-hardest hit ball in MLB in 2025 and if you take players' 50 hardest-hit balls, he's 6th. But in overall exit velocity for all balls he's 31st. So he's making a lot more soft contact than usual to bring the numbers down. In his two big seasons he was 2nd and 7th overall in MLB in EV, and that's where he needs to be to be elite.
