How done is Vladimir Guerrero?

“Well done,” would appear to be the correct answer. “Thoroughly cooked through and through.”

The Angels keep putting him in the lineup, hoping for some last flashback to his younger days, perhaps hoping that whatever physical issues he has will somehow fade away … and he keeps doing a whole lot of nothing.

The Angels are patient. I know. That’s generally a good thing. But Vladimir Guerrero is not much helping them win, and they have people on their roster who would be quite a bit more adept at it, the way Big Daddy Vladdy is melting down.

Three months into the season, 38 games and 144 at-bats for Guerrero, and he has contributed two home runs, 13 RBI and an OBP of .300. The number of outfielders in the majors who are out-hitting him is a very, very long one.

The days of him frightening the devil out of the opposition are long over. He has lost his power. He has turned into one of the slowest players in the bigs. And he can’t play defense until/unless his torn pectoral muscle heals, and that may not be something the Angels are all that keen on witnessing, considering that Vlad has been a subpar right fielder for several years now.

Guerrero is 34*, which isn’t ancient, but that’s 34* with an asterisk.

* — He’s 34 according to his Dominican birth certificate, and Dominican birth certificates are often works of stunning creativity. So he could be 36, no problem. Maybe 37. And he played eight seasons in Montreal on a concrete surface that was passed off as artificial turf and seems to have shortened several careers. Eight seasons on that stuff might be like, what, 12 seasons on well-manicured grass?

So Vlad’s body could have mileage on it more appropriate to someone 40, 41, 42 years old. And how many guys that old do you see hitting cleanup in the bigs?

The Angels have one huge advantage that other contending teams do not: They play in the American League West, which in any given year is the weakest division in ball — and in most of the rest of the years is one of the weakest. Also, it is the only four-team division in ball, and if you don’t think it’s easier to win a four-team division than a five-team division, then, well, you need to go back to second-grade arithmetic. And the opposition is the Texas Rangers, who haven’t won a playoffs series in club history and, this year, obediently are in the process of backing themselves out of the race; the Seattle Mariners, who have never got anything quite right aside from that 116-victory season; and the fiscally challenged Oakland Athletics, who no longer have the only modern, forward-thinking general manager in ball.

So, the Angels can afford to be patient. And even more patient. And, boy, are they.

I suppose the corporate thinking there is that the upside of Vlad, if he ever comes around and is even two-thirds of the player he was a year ago, is something like 16 homers and 70 RBI, if he can turn it up in the next few weeks — and keep it up through September.

The Angels may not have anyone on the bench who can DH and hit at that pace. But Gary Matthews Jr. (yes, a bust so far again this season) and, especially, Mike Napoli (10 homers, 28 RBI, in only 25 more at-bats than Vlad) might be willing to give it a go.

Matthews can play defense, anyway, and run a little. And Napoli, who seems to have lost the regular catching job to Jeff Mathis, could stand more at-bats. Or even a Brandon Wood; doesn’t he deserve an extended tryout, eventually? Is he going to be the club’s Slugger of Tomorrow … forever?

The Angels are paying $15 million for Vlad’s shadow this season, but the good news here is … it’s the option year of his contract, and they don’t owe him another penny past the end of the season. At which point the Angels are more likely to put “Anaheim” back in their name than to re-sign Vlad.

Meantime, it’s sort of an interesting case study of the constantly shifting calculus of baseball management. “How much does he hurt us, at what potential later reward, and can we continue to run him out there to slap a few singles because the division is weak enough that we can win with a cipher in the cleanup spot?”

Much has been made of the power collapses of David Ortiz and Magglio Ordonez. But Vladimir Guerrero is right there with them in the Sudden Power Outage department. The sense here is that he is done. It will be fascinating to see if the Angels come to the same conclusion — and act on it.