Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

Tag: Matt Guerrier

In case you missed it: Oh Captain, my Captain

Los Angeles Dodgers vs Arizona Diamondbacks
By Jon Weisman

While Matt Kemp could be activated in time for the Dodgers’ home opener April 4, it’s not clear when Hyun-Jin Ryu will next pitch.

Ryu injured his right Captain of the Toes on the play pictured above, making a sudden stop at third base on Dee Gordon’s double. As Ken Gurnick of MLB.com reports, Ryu would slot in for the third game of the San Diego series April 2 (after Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke), but that start could go to Dan Haren or Paul Maholm.

Kemp, meanwhile, has had no setbacks, Gurnick reports, and is playing six innings a game now in minor-league affairs. The Dodgers just want to make sure he’s completely confident before activating him.

More from Gurnick:

The Dodgers will play a simulated game at Dodger Stadium, on Wednesday. Mattingly said it will last four or five innings, and it is mostly being held to keep the relievers sharp. He said his regulars will average three or four at-bats in the first two Freeway Series games Thursday and Friday, but they will back off in Saturday night’s game because the season resumes Sunday night in San Diego.

Elsewhere …

  • A.J. Ellis is working on pitch framing, he explains in an interview with Mike Petriello for Fangraphs.
  • At Blue Heaven, Ernest Reyes has this discovery about long-ago Dodger reliever Ron Perranoski:”If Ron Perranoski were not a newspaper reader, he might have taken weeks to find out that the Cubs had dealt him to the Dodgers.  He was in the army then, and read about it in the sports page.  Nobody had told him.”
  • Reggie Smith hung a “Gone Fishin'” sign just before a 1980 MLB labor stoppage was averted — see it at the Times’ Framework blog.
  • Former Dodger reliever Matt Guerrier has had an interesting transactional week, as MLB Trade Rumors notes.
  • Former Dodger infielder Jamey Carroll was released by Washington.

Turns out Matt Guerrier is the most interesting man in the world

Dodgers reliever Matt Guerrier went all in on this spoof of the famous Dos Equis commercials.

Guerrier hits disabled list, Antonini called up

Here’s some unexpected bullpen news: Matt Guerrier has gone onto the 15-day disabled list with right elbow tendinitis, retroactive to April 19, the Dodgers announced today.

The team has recalled lefty Michael Antonini from Triple-A Albuquerque. Antonini, who came to the Dodgers in exchange for Chin-Lung Hu in December 2010, would be making his major-league debut. He has a 4.26 ERA with 15 strikeouts against 24 baserunners in 19 innings with Albuquerque this season. In 2011, he had a 4.01 ERA with 8.0 strikeouts per nine innings for Double-A Chattanooga.

Update: More disabled list news comes from the Isotopes, who have placed Alex Castellanos on the sidelines with a left hamstring strain.

Remembering 2011: Matt Guerrier


Gary A. Vasquez/US PresswireMatt Guerrier (33)

The setup: We set the stage pretty clearly when Guerrier signed a three-year, $12 million contract with the Dodgers in December …

… Guerrier, who came up with the Minnesota Twins in 2004, has had a pretty fine career as a reliever, with a career ERA of 3.38. He has averaged 75.5 appearances the past four years. But the 32-year-old righty’s strikeout rate has dropped below six per nine innings over the past two seasons, and as Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. points out, his fielding independent ERA was over 4.00 last season, indicating he’s benefited from some luck. Add to that a batting average on balls in play over the past two seasons of .224, which is exceedingly lucky — and a warning sign considering that, as David Pinto of Baseball Musings writes, he’ll have a poorer defense behind him in Los Angeles.

So you know, there’s some stuff that’s good with Guerrier, and there’s some stuff that’s less good. With the exception of 2008, when his ERA soared above 5.00, the results have been there. The main concern might be asking him to continue being this productive from ages 32-35.

Since the Dodgers’ last won a World Series, according to Baseball-Reference.com, the following pitchers have had an ERA below 4.00 with a K/9 rate below 7.00 for three consecutive seasons after turning 32, pitching a minimum of 50 innings: David Weathers, Steve Reed, Paul Quantrill, Terry Leach, Chris Hammond, Ryan Franklin and Jeff Reardon. I realize that ERA isn’t a very good way to measure the quality of relief pitching, but I’m just exploring the possibility of someone being good, not making any definitive statement.

So you have that. He might be good, maybe for a long time.

Against that, though, I would still offer that relievers are simply, unavoidably, notoriously inconsistent. We’ve detailed this frequently in the past, but to sum up, it’s exceedingly rare that relievers don’t go through bad spells, and when you try to jump on the bandwagon of one that’s been successful for a while, the odds grow against you.

There have been 66 pitchers for the Dodgers in the Ned Colletti era, from Jonathan Broxton to Mark Loretta. The highlights in the bullpen have been the low-risk investments, coming up through the farm system or coming in as cheap free agents, who have paid dividends. Perhaps, based on the failures of the 2010 bullpen, Colletti has decided he can’t play that game anymore, though you’d think George Sherrill might dissuade him from placing such a big bet on Guerrier. …

The closeup: At the start of the year, with the rest of the Dodger bullpen largely crumbling around him, Guerrier was mostly superlative. He had a terrible outing April 23 in Chicago, the game in which the Dodgers rallied from a 5-1 deficit to take an 8-5 lead, only for Guerrier to allow five runs in his second inning of work to take a 10-8 loss. They were the first runs Guerrier had allowed after 11 2/3 scoreless innings to start the season. One week later, Guerrier allowed three runs (two earned) in the bottom of the eighth inning against San Diego, turning a 2-2 tie into a 5-2 defeat. Nonetheless, through June 4 Guerrier had recovered to the point that he had a 3.04 ERA and had stranded 10 of 13 inherited runners. He allowed no runs or inherited runs in 22 of 29 appearances, and if it weren’t for those Chicago and San Diego games, Guerrier’s ERA through June 4 would have been 1.00 in 27 innings.

From that point on, however, Guerrier became less reliable, not only with a 4.91 ERA for the remainder of the season but by allowing 57 percent (16 of 28) of inherited runners to score – far too high a figure for any major-league reliever. Guerrier finished 2011 with a 4.07 ERA and 46 percent (19 of 41) inherited runners scoring. The average National League reliever allowed a 4.16 ERA and 30 percent of inherited runners to score.

If a rookie like Javy Guerra or Josh Lindblom had pitched the way Guerrier did, you would shrug and say “that’s about what you expect” or “you get what you pay for.” But for a multiyear contract man, it was disappointing – and yet, not completely surprising. I admit that I had lost track of how Guerrier was more effective in the first two months of the season – at a time when much of the team was injured or underperforming – but the total year was unfortunately inconsistent.

Coming attractions: Guerrier has two more years left on his unevenly structured contract: He was paid $1.5 million in 2011 but is owed $4.75 million in each of 2012 and 2013, with $1 million deferred until 2014. He will likely be the Dodgers’ highest-paid reliever in 2012. Mike Petriello of Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness offers more on Guerrier and his contract.

Why Lance Cormier is a darkhorse roster candidate

Kim Klement/US PresswireIn the past three seasons, Lance Cormier has allowed a sub-.700 OPS against left-handed batters, including 26 extra-base hits in 486 plate appearances.

Outside of the left-field conundrum, the Dodgers’ biggest question mark for Spring Training might be how they will address the task of getting left-handed batters out with their almost completely right-handed bullpen. No one wants to see Hong-Chih Kuo relegated to facing only lefties, and the only other left-handed thrower on the 40-man roster is the uncertain Scott Elbert.

Three non-roster invitees to major-league camp are left-handed: 39-year-old Ron Mahay, achy-hamstringed Dana Eveland (whose career 5.74 ERA will apparently be sidelined for weeks after Thursday’s injury) and Wilkin De La Rosa, who has never pitched about Double-A. After that, you start dipping down into the minors for developing players like James Adkins.

With Ronald Belisario’s absence seemingly opening up a roster spot, Mahay would seem to be the default candidate. He had a .520 OPS allowed against lefties last season. But the previous two seasons, his OPS allowed against lefties was above .700 — which isn’t terrible, but isn’t exactly the kind of authoritative performance you’re looking for when you really want someone to come in and get that guy out.

I got to wondering if there were any righties among the Dodger relievers who were reliable against lefties. Here’s a chart of the bullpen candidates’ OPS allowed against lefties over the past three seasons in the majors:

2010 PA/ 2010 OPS   2009 PA/ 2009 OPS   2008 PA/ 2008 OPS
Belisario 86 .793   122 .720      
Broxton 123 .626   148 .414   126 .800
Colon 5 .650   94 .713      
Cormier 162 .718   180 .671   144 .667
Elbert 4 2.000   40 .699   14 1.000
Eveland 59 .802   60 .999   170 .646
Guerrier 102 .649   120 .525   126 .801
Hawksworth 185 .886   76 .724      
Jansen 51 .586            
Kuo 69 .271   40 .524   98 .557
Link 16 .962            
MacDougal 39 1.353   124 .760   24 .858
Mahay 68 .520   111 .743   110 .721
Monasterios 188 .709            
Padilla 166 .590   352 .837   385 .944
Redding       282 .860   402 .808
Schlichting 39 .465   9 .905      
Troncoso 99 .823   157 .751   84 .707
Villarreal             68 .862

Some observations:

  • The Dodgers have a few righties who seem consistently effective against their opposite numbers: Jonathan Broxton, Matt Guerrier and, based on a small sample size, Kenley Jansen.
  • Oh, and another guy who probably isn’t on your radar … late signee Lance Cormier.
  • Based on only his one season, Carlos Monasterios offers an intriguing first impression — though looking at the chart, you can see how much these numbers can fluctuate. Look at what happened to Ramon Troncoso, for example, or moving in the other direction, Vicente Padilla.
  • For extreme small-sample candidates, there’s Roman Colon and Travis Schlichting. Consider at your own risk.

If the Dodgers decide that Kuo, Broxton, Guerrier, Jansen and Padilla are all effective against lefties, they could decide to go without a second left-handed pitcher — especially if they also think Cormier is worth a roster slot. It might still be Mahay’s spot to lose or Scott Elbert’s spot to win, but Cormier might be this year’s guy you least expected.

Why Guerrier could lose the WAR

Just one more quick note on soon-to-be-newest Dodger reliever Matt Guerrier:

According to Baseball-Reference.com, Guerrier has had Wins Above Replacement values of 2.3 in 2009 (age 30 for most of the season) and 1.4 in 2010 (age 31).  The Dodgers’ expectation or hope in giving him a $12 million contract through 2013, presumably, is that he’ll repeat that performance over the next three years.

But since 1990, again according to Baseball-Reference.com, only three relievers above age 30 have had as many as five seasons with WAR over 1.0 without striking out more than 7.0 batters per nine innings (Guerrier’s career high). And none of those pitchers — David Weathers, Mike Timlin and Steve Reed — did so in more than three consecutive seasons.

In other words, what the Dodgers are asking Guerrier to do — be a productive reliever for a third, fourth and fifth season in a row after turning 30, without striking out many batters — has not been done by anyone in at least the past 20 years.

Update: To be precise, Jeff Reardon accomplished the feat from 1988-92. His first two seasons fell outside my original search. Dan Quisenberry (1983-87) and Kent Tekulve (1981-87) also succeeded. But that’s it since at least 1970.

Dodgers roll the dice with long-term bet on reliever Matt Guerrier


Bruce Kluckhohn/Getty Images
Matt Guerrier

The Dodgers are about to give a three-year, $12 million contract to Matt Guerrier, writes Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com. The deal was first reported by Newsday’s Eric Boland in a tweet.

Guerrier, who came up with the Minnesota Twins in 2004, has had a pretty fine career as a reliever, with a career ERA of 3.38. He has averaged 75.5 appearances the past four years. But the 32-year-old righty’s strikeout rate has dropped below six per nine innings over the past two seasons, and as Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. points out, his fielding independent ERA was over 4.00 last season, indicating he’s benefited from some luck. Add to that a batting average on balls in play over the past two seasons of .224, which is exceedingly lucky — and a warning sign considering that, as David Pinto of Baseball Musings writes, he’ll have a poorer defense behind him in Los Angeles.

So you know, there’s some stuff that’s good with Guerrier, and there’s some stuff that’s less good. With the exception of 2008, when his ERA soared above 5.00, the results have been there. The main concern might be asking him to continue being this productive from ages 32-35.

Since the Dodgers’ last won a World Series, according to Baseball-Reference.com, the following pitchers have had an ERA below 4.00 with a K/9 rate below 7.00 for three consecutive seasons after turning 32, pitching a minimum of 50 innings: David Weathers, Steve Reed, Paul Quantrill, Terry Leach, Chris Hammond, Ryan Franklin and Jeff Reardon. I realize that ERA isn’t a very good way to measure the quality of relief pitching, but I’m just exploring the possibility of someone being good, not making any definitive statement.

So you have that. He might be good, maybe for a long time.

Against that, though, I would still offer that relievers are simply, unavoidably, notoriously inconsistent. We’ve detailed this frequently in the past, but to sum up, it’s exceedingly rare that relievers don’t go through bad spells, and when you try to jump on the bandwagon of one that’s been successful for a while, the odds grow against you.

There have been 66 pitchers for the Dodgers in the Ned Colletti era, from Jonathan Broxton to Mark Loretta. The highlights in the bullpen have been the low-risk investments, coming up through the farm system or coming in as cheap free agents, who have paid dividends.  Perhaps, based on the failures of the 2010 bullpen, Colletti has decided he can’t play that game anymore, though you’d think George Sherrill might dissuade him from placing such a big bet on Guerrier.

Guerrier joins a bullpen that, if the season were starting today, would include Broxton, Hong-Chih Kuo, Kenley Jansen, Vicente Padilla, Blake Hawksworth and Ronald Belisario, with Ramon Troncoso, Carlos Monasterios, Travis Schlichting and Scott Elbert among those waiting in the wings.  That’s a deep bullpen, indicating at least one of three things — Colletti doesn’t see any hope for additions to the Dodger offense, he doesn’t intend to tolerate any weakness on the pitching staff, or someone’s being lined up as trade bait.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén