Daily Archives: December 15, 2010

Report: Dodgers Sign Matt Guerrier to Three Year Deal

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Update: Ken Rosenthal reports that it’ll be $12m over 3 years. I assume that’s going to be backloaded as $1m, $1m, $10m, because hey – why not?

We’re hearing rumors that the Dodgers have signed former Twins reliever Matt Guerrier to a three-year contract. No word on the terms yet, but this is shocking to say the least.

MLBtraderumors had a solid accounting of him in November:

The Pros

  • Guerrier led the league in appearances in 2008-09 and pitched in 74 games this past season.
  • He induces more grounders than fly balls.
  • His slider is excellent.
  • Guerrier has a 2.7 K/BB ratio against right-handed hittters in his career. 
  • He has just a 1.5 K/BB ratio against left-handed hitters in his career, but he does induce more groundballs against them (55%).
  • As mentioned earlier, it won’t cost a pick to sign Guerrier.

The Cons

  • Defense independent pitching stats like FIP and xFIP suggest Guerrier’s 3.17 ERA would have been higher if he had been less lucky in 2010.
  • He posted 5.3 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9 last year. That’s not spectacular and both rates were better in 2009.
  • The free agent market is flush with right-handed relievers, so Guerrier won’t have much leverage.

They also predicted that he’d get a one-year deal, and that’s the problem – well, one of the problems. The issue here isn’t that Guerrier isn’t good, because he’s clearly durable and effective, and in a baseball vacuum, that’s great, and he’s a solid addition to the pen.

But nothing ever lives in a vacuum, does it? When have multiyear deals to over-30 relievers – especially one who’s good but not dominant – ever worked out? How do you think the White Sox felt about Scott Linebrink‘s deal? The Blue Jays about B.J. Ryan? I realize I’m cherry-picking a bit, but the success rate there isn’t high. This is why everyone’s been laughing at the Angels for handing out multiple years to older relievers Scott Downs and Hisanori Takahashi. That’s all before you even notice that Guerrier’s K rate has dropped from 7.0 in 2008 to 5.5 in 2009 to 5.3 in 2010 – and his fastball velocity dropped in 2010 as well. It’s not a good trend for a guy who turns 33 next year.

Secondly, why is this team spending more money on pitching when the offense looks to be in trouble? I get that the bullpen was poor last year, but it’s long been shown that spending big money in the bullpen rarely works out. There’s plenty of talent in the pen that you need to have a little faith can bounceback, and yet the offense is still without a left fielder . We don’t yet know what Guerrier will get; I joked on Twitter that Downs got $15m over 3, but since Downs is both better and lefty, Guerrier deserves something less like $3/10. Therefore, I’m predicting 3/$21m.

Then there’s the question of what this does to the bullpen. If the season were to open today, and the Dodgers were to carry 7 relievers, which they usually do, you’re looking at a bullpen of…

R Jonathan Broxton
L Hong-Chih Kuo
R Kenley Jansen
R Matt Guerrier
R Vicente Padilla
R Ronald Belisario (out of options)
R Blake Hawksworth (out of options)

That’s an intriguing group, I’ll admit. But it doesn’t include a second lefty, which seems unlikely. So is there a trade in the works? It’s obviously not going to be Kuo, Jansen, Guerrier, or Padilla. Belisario and Hawksworth are candidates because they’re out of options, but don’t have much trade value. So is this where we see Broxton moved? I’ve long said I find it unlikely that he gets moved at the absolute lowest of his value, and I would hate dumping him for nothing, but I’m fine with it in the right deal. Personally, I still don’t see it happening.

More to come…

Russell Martin Takes Less Money With the Yankees*

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Buster Olney reports that Russell Martin has passed his physical with the Yankees, but also includes this nugget:

Martin’s deal with the Yankees is for a $4 million base salary

That’s of note because the Dodgers had offered him a $4.2m salary before non-tendering him; reports were that Martin was holding out for $5m. So let’s extrapolate a few things from that:

First, despite what we’d heard about Ned Colletti having interest in bringing Martin back, the $4.2m offer appears to have been “take it or leave it” and expired once the non-tender deadline passed. As Eric Stephen notes, that assumption is validated somewhat by the fact that Rod Barajas had his deal in place about 30 seconds after Martin was non-tendered, which I imagine the club must have been using as leverage in talks with Martin.

Second, it looks like Martin overvalued his worth, which is hard to do in this winter of crazy spending. We knew that the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays were all in on Martin, and that the Red Sox ended up not offering as much as the Yankees did. I don’t know what the Jays were offering, but it’s doubtful they were topping both the Sox and Yankees, so when Martin spurned the $4.2m offer from the Dodgers, that may have been a mistake.

Finally, this does somewhat validate the team’s decision to non-tender Martin. Had he been tendered a contract and gone to arbitration, he would have made $5m at the very least and possibly up to $6m. I’d said all along that was too much to risk on an injured catcher, and they appear to have read the market correctly.

Now all that being said… we’re still suck with Barajas and Dioner Navarro, who officially signed his one year, $1m contract yesterday. Does someone want to tell me how in the hell Navarro got more than the major league minimum? Not that the extra $500k or so is a big deal in the long run, but you really had to sweeten the pot for him? Why, to buy him away from his Plan B, fry cook at Long John Silver’s?

* The caveat to all this is of course that we don’t know what kind of incentives are included in Martin’s Yankee contract. As we saw with Vicente Padilla, incentives can be several times the guaranteed base value of the contract. Still, Martin is guaranteed less than he would have been as a Dodger.