Category Archives: Juan Uribe

Dodgers Avoid Sweep And Potentially Lose Uribe In Great Day All Around

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The Dodgers avoided a sweep with today’s 4-3 victory over Milwaukee, but they may be without their starting third baseman for a while:

Third baseman Juan Uribe was held out of Thursday’s lineup because of an injured left wrist, and he will be seen by a specialist in Houston on Friday, an indication that the club is concerned the injury — incurred during a slide — could be something serious.

Uribe did not start on Wednesday night because of pitching matchups, said manager Don Mattingly, who was informed during the game that Uribe would be unavailable.

“They said he can play defense but not bat,” said Mattingly before Thursday’s game. “I had him in there today. I didn’t hear about this until during the game. They told me he can’t swing. I was caught by surprise last night. [The Brewers'] team doctor will look at it today, and when we get to Houston tomorrow, they’ll have a specialist look at it, and we’ll make a decision from there, I guess.”

Usually, when you hear that a member of the regular lineup is dealing with a potentially serious injury in April, it’s cause for concern. On the other hand, usually you’re not talking about a player so unproductive that to lose him might actually be a benefit. (The side bet I made with a friend before the season, where I said that he would not hit more homers than millions he’ll earn – 21 – over the life of his Dodger contract is starting to look really good.)

While we don’t know yet how long Uribe may be out or even if he’ll hit the disabled list, for as long as he’s unavailable he’ll be replaced by some amalgamation of Jerry Hairston, Adam Kennedy, and possibly Justin Sellers. Hairston is the preferable option, since he actually has some offensive skill, made several great defensive plays today, and played third base every day down the stretch for a playoff Milwaukee team last season, but his versatility is valuable and so it’s not hard to see Don Mattingly wanting to play Kennedy there, even though Kennedy may actually be more useless than Uribe, who is at least a decent fielder at the position.

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But back to today’s game. Aaron Harang didn’t look great in allowing nine baserunners over six innings, but managed to avoid the crushing blow and left after six with a 4-3 lead, thanks to run-scoring hits by – wait for it – the heart of the Dodger order, including Matt Kemp‘s 7th homer of the season and singles by Juan Rivera & Andre Ethier. It was actually Matt Treanor who got the scoring started on a sacrifice fly in the second, but that was far from the most notable thing he did this afternoon; he actually led off the 4th inning with a triple – he was stranded – botched a bunt attempt in the 8th that got Hairston nailed at home, and threw a ball into center in the bottom of the inning.

Yet by far the most impressive and unexpected performance of the day was that of Jamey Wright, who entered in relief of Harang to start the 7th inning. Wright struck out Rickie Weeks, Nyjer Morgan & Ryan Braun to get through the inning, then started off the 8th by whiffing Aramis Ramirez & Corey Hart, making five straight strikeouts for the embattled Wright, who still has yet to allow a hit as a Dodger. Javy Guerra set down Milwaukee in an uneventful 9th for his sixth save, and the Dodgers have their tenth win of the season.

Ted Lilly kicks off the new series in Houston against J.A. Happ at 5:05pm PT tomorrow night.

What Have We Learned So Far From Spring Training?

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A month into spring training and less than two weeks before Opening Day, what have we learned so far about the 2012 Dodgers? Not a whole lot, you could argue. We spent all winter talking about how locked-down the first 23 spots on the Opening Day roster seemed to be, and for the most part, that hasn’t changed a bit over the last few weeks. Jerry Sands hasn’t done much to earn the final spot on the roster, opening himself up to some real competition from Justin Sellers and Josh Fields, and while that may lead to a depressingly weak bench, it may be for the best given Jerry Hairston‘s defensive troubles and Don Mattingly’s insistence on letting James Loney & Andre Ethier get another chance against lefty pitching.

On the pitching side, the rotation remains set while Blake Hawksworth won’t be ready in the bullpen, and so the final spot will come down to Josh Lindblom battling NRIs like Jamey Wright & John Grabow, just like we expected weeks ago. (It won’t be Ramon Troncoso, of course.) Wright and Grabow each have the ability to opt out of their contracts on Sunday, which would then give the Dodgers until March 30th to decide to add them to the roster. If they don’t, they’re free agents. Expect at least one to be out of the organization in a week.

But we knew all that. What else has spring training taught us?

Well, we know that Juan Uribe isn’t worried. But he really, really should be. You know how little importance I place on spring training numbers, and so that’s why you won’t hear me making a peep about the fact that Matt Kemp has only a .297 OBP in Arizona, because, you know, spring. (It works both ways, too. I’ve been saying for months that Ethier’s going to have a great 2012. Is he going to hit .440/.483/1.080 all year? Uh, probably not.) But that’s not an absolute, and when you have a highly-paid veteran coming off a massive bust of a debut, in which injuries played a part and conditioning was called into question, you’d like to see something to give you some hope that he’ll rebound this year.

Heading into the last week of March, Uribe has managed just five singles. It’s hardly cause for optimism, though he’s doing his best to Allen Iverson the situation away by saying the games don’t count:

“I’m not worried because this is practice,” Uribe said, smiling and as carefree as ever. “I want to make sure I’m healthy, that I’m having good at-bats. It doesn’t matter if I get hits. This is to prepare for the regular season.”

Uribe said he was pleased with the results of the surgery he underwent in the fall for the sports hernia that prematurely ended the first season of his three-year, $21-million contract.

“You really don’t know how you feel until you start playing,” he said.

Feel the enthusiasm, don’t you? Uribe’s going to get his chances simply because of his contract, but I’m having a hard time envisioning him being the starting third baseman all year. Unfortunately, the options behind him are slim. Adam Kennedy is hardly a viable option, Hairston is useful mostly for his versatility, and Sellers is much more valuable up the middle than he’s going to be at third base. Spring sensation Fields could get a look, but despite his 23 homer 2007, his fielding and subsequent hitting have been so poor that he’s been worth all of -0.1 fWAR for his career.

It’s an ugly situation at third base, and Uribe is doing nothing to make us feel any better about it. But hey, if not David Wright, Mark Reynolds seems to be available. So there’s that.

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Still holding out hope that Frank McCourt won’t hang onto the parking lots? You’re not alone, according to Mike Ozanian of Forbes…

The five remaining groups bidding for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers want the roughly 130 acres of land Dodger Stadium’s parking lots sit on to be included with their current offers for the team. The current bids for the Dodgers range from $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion.

According to a high-ranking baseball executive familiar with the bids who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the potential owners do not simply want the right to lease the parking lots at Dodger Stadium from team owner Frank McCourt, they want outright ownership of the land.

No surprise there, of course. Why wouldn’t the incoming owner want to own the land his new toy sits on and ensure that he doesn’t have to deal with the soulless McCourt? By all indications, McCourt doesn’t want to give the lots up; on the other hand, it’s not that difficult to see him acting that way simply to drive up the purchase price, because that’s exactly the sort of thing he does.

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Ken Rosenthal doesn’t think that Clayton Kershaw is going to repeat as NL Cy Young or that Matt Kemp will take the MVP that so many of us thought he should have won last season, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t expect any awards to come home to Los Angeles…

NL Manager: Don Mattingly, Dodgers

Several NL executives view the Dodgers as a darkhorse in the West, and not simply because they boast one of the league’s best hitters, Kemp, and pitchers, Kershaw — or because they’re about to be sold.

Mattingly, managing for the first time, held the Dodgers together through a rocky first half last season, then guided them to an 82-79 finish. His challenge this season is to get the most out of right fielder Andre Ethier and first baseman James Loney in their respective free-agent years.

With a little help at the trade deadline, the Dodgers could return to prominence sooner than expected, elevating Mattingly’s profile.

I felt Mattingly really did an excellent job in his first season, as we discussed near the end of last year, and so it’s not hard to see this scenario at all. On the other hand, the Manager of the Year award is kind of a crock, because it almost always goes to the manager of a playoff team, thus largely making it the “Talented Roster of the Year” award. Yahoo’s Tim Brown chimes in with some Mattingly praise as well.

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I’m headed off to spring training this weekend (that’s Florida, not Arizona, though) and so expect a quiet few days around here. (Which, based on my history of being gone when big things happen, will almost certainly guarantee that McCourt is going to agree to sell the club to Lindsay Lohan at some point in the next three days.)

That said, the new site is coming along wonderfully and I still plan to launch it in the days leading up to Opening Day. I’m pretty excited about it, and I hope you will be too. Just for kicks, here’s a sneak peek…

…and much more to come. (This would be a hell of a lot easier if we could all just agree to never, ever use Internet Explorer again, by the way.) While I iron out the last few items, I would like to make sure that I’m building this in the most effective way for your usage, and so I’d love to see some discussion on these two items. First, a survey on how you find new MSTI content…

[polldaddy poll=6070039]

Second, I’m going back and forth on the commenting system. Many of you like the default WordPress system for its simplicity, while many of you hate it for exactly that same reason. I’m looking into using a third-party system (not Disqus) that would allow for real-time commenting and the ability to sign in via social networks, as well as more easily reply to other comments in the thread. What say you?

History May Not Be on Juan Uribe’s Side In 2012

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In the nearly 65 years since Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947, 931 players have managed at least 295 plate appearances in their age-31 season, an average of 14.3 a year. Of those 931 players, 916 managed to post a better OPS+ than the 56 that Juan Uribe put up during his nightmarish 2011 debut season in Los Angeles.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the worse news: only two players in major league history who ever had an age-31 season as poor as Uribe’s or worse ever rebounded to be even a league-average offensive ballplayer again, and you’re not going to like who one of them is. It’s a list that’s littered with catchers and shortstops who could never hit in the first place, like Larry Cox, Kurt Manwaring, Dal Maxvill, and Willy Miranda, and who certainly never turned it around as they continued to age.

The two players who did manage to rebound from such a poor age-31 season both have Dodger connections, but neither inspire a great deal of hope. Mike Devereaux came up with the Dodgers before being dealt to the Orioles in March of 1989, where he enjoyed some success as the Baltimore center fielder for most of the next six seasons. In 1994, he ended his first stint with the O’s by hitting just .203/.256/.332 (48 OPS+) in his age-31 season; the next year, he managed a 108 OPS+ while splitting time between the White Sox and the Braves. It was the last decent year he’d ever have, as he put up just a 62 OPS+ between 1996-98 with the Orioles, Rangers, and Dodgers, and his career ended when he was released by Los Angeles in May of 1998.

The other player who managed something of a bounce-back barely qualifies for the list, because his big comeback was a precisely league-average 100 OPS+, but I particularly don’t enjoy talking about him because he’s my least favorite member of the 2012 Dodgers: Adam Kennedy. After seven mostly productive years in Anaheim, Kennedy joined the Cardinals in 2007, putting up what should have been a career-ending .219/.282/.290 (50 OPS+) line. He was a bit better for St. Louis in 2008, then surprisingly good for Oakland in 2009 (100 OPS+) before being bad in Washington in 2010, worse in Seattle in 2011, and lord knows what in Los Angeles in 2012.

So what does that mean for Uribe? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. It’s fair to say that our study is somewhat arbitrary – age-31 on its face isn’t necessarily all that different from 30 or 32, and 295 PA was chosen only because that’s what Uribe had – and Uribe did have to fight through injuries all season after putting up two decent years in San Francisco. On the other hand, this is a guy who was atrocious for nearly all of his age 25-28 years with the White Sox, and his body type doesn’t exactly lend a lot of confidence that his injury woes were a fluke. (In the BP injury database, he has an impressive fifteen entries for “soreness”, “tightness”, or “stiffness”, dating back to 2004.) In addition, none of the top projection systems like PECOTA (.241/.293/.385), ZIPS (.249/.300/.401), or Bill James (.240/.298/.394) have a whole lot of optimism for Uribe in 2012, and I also haven’t seen a whole lot of analysts who can offer up anything more positive than, “well, he can’t be that bad again, right?”

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, Uribe simply has to be better, because there just aren’t a whole lot of alternatives if he’s not. Kennedy? Jerry Hairston? If Uribe can’t buck history and his own mediocre past, the Dodgers are left with only two 36-year-olds behind him, unless you’re the world’s biggest Russ Mitchell fan – and considering he was just DFA’d and went unclaimed, it doesn’t seem anyone really considers him a big leaguer.

Uribe was perhaps the biggest Dodger disappointment last year, and it might be fair to say that he’s the biggest Dodger question mark for 2012, potentially only behind James Loney. He still has $16m coming to him over the next two years, plus another $1m deferred to 2014, so between that and the lack of third base options, he’s going to get every chance to succeed. To be honest, the bar for success for him isn’t that high, because you expect so little from a guy with a .298 OBP over 11 seasons. He’s not a good hitter, and he’ll never be one. But if he can just get back to his usual ways of decent power (16 or more homers six times) and solid defense, that’s at least something the Dodgers can work with.

If not? Well, contract or not, a repeat of his 2011 could have him on the bench by July and out of town by October, dooming us to 400 plate appearances from Kennedy. Juan Uribe, eternal conundrum.

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Be sure to check out Razzball this morning, where I answered five questions for Grey about Jerry Sands, Andre Ethier, Dee Gordon, and Javy Guerra.

MSTI’s 2011 in Review: Third Base

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Today we move on to third base, and man, it ain’t pretty. The six Dodger third basemen combined for just a .624 OPS, good for 25th in MLB. Sensing a theme yet?  We already touched on the second biggest offender at the hot corner, Aaron Miles, with the second basemen, so today we’re left with the hungry, the tired, the overpaid wretches. This isn’t going to be pretty.

Juan Uribe (F….ing Juan Uribe)
.204/.264/.293 .557 4hr -0.1 WAR

(Like I was really going to use anything other than the “Emo Juan Uribe” picture, even ahead of the “Juan and Ned awkwardly shaking hands” photo.)

I’ll say this for Juan Uribe: even though we all absolutely hated the three year, $21m contract Ned Colletti so generously bestowed upon him last winter, none of us ever expected this. Oh, we knew he’d have a lousy OBP and be in no way worth the contract, but this? The fourth worst TAv and wOBA in baseball, along with two stints on the disabled list? I don’t think so.

At the time, I did note that there could be some positives from the deal, mostly in that it would ensure Ryan Theriot would be gone and that it’d give the club flexibility in an uncertain infield situation going forward. I also said this, of course:

Now that we’ve got the positives out of the way… what in the hell is this team doing giving three years* and $22m to Juan Uribe?! (*standard caveat of “it’s just a report, and not an official deal yet” applies.) Uribe’s never had even a two-year deal in his life. He was quite good in 2005 with the White Sox (111 OPS+, 23 HR), but after four consecutive years of not having an OBP over .301, he was cut loose after 2008. The Giants got him for 1 year, $1m in 2009, and he was quite good again – 112 OPS+ – so they resigned him for 1 year, $3.2m in 2010. Other than increasing his HR, he completely regressed  at he plate. His OPS fell from .824 to .749, and his wOBA fell from .351 to .322.

That doesn’t make him useless, but as I’ve said every other time I’ve talked about him, I like him for one year and I’d accept an option for a second. But now we’re taking a guy whose age 25-28 seasons were all basically a waste, had one good year at 29 and couldn’t quite keep it up at 30 three guaranteed years? Why? Because he was a Giant? Because he hit a homer in the World Series (despite doing little else in October)?

Nearly a year later, I’m having a hard time disagreeing with any of that, except to note that since his deal was back-loaded, he still has $15m coming to him, so we’re far from done with him. The best part is, three of Uribe’s four dingers came in a five-game span at the end of April. Outside of that five-game stretch, he hit one homer in 72 games, and was awful no matter how you split the stats. No, really: look at his splits. Try and find one this isn’t execrable. Day, night, home, road, lefty, righty, black, white, up, down – he was atrocious at the plate in every possible way, though he was something of a pleasant surprise defensively. Sadly, thanks to his contract and the uncertain state of the Dodger infield with the possibility that as many as five veteran infielders won’t return (Loney / Carroll / Furcal / Blake / Miles), you’re probably still looking at your starting third baseman next year. And lord help us all, because the most positive outlook anyone could have on him is, “well, geez, he can’t be that bad again, right?”.

Casey Blake (D)
.252/.342/.371 .713 4hr 0.6 WAR

It’s hard to say that Casey Blake underachieved in 2011, since coming off a disappointing 2010 and with the injury history of third basemen his age being what it is, expectations were pretty much as low as they could be; if anything, we’ve been saying “Casey Blake” + “2011″ = “disaster” since as far back as December of 2008.

Yet while there was almost no hope that having Blake as the everyday third baseman was going to work out this year, there was still the chance that he could a productive member of this year’s team. If the chips had fallen in the right way, having Blake as a four-corners type who mainly faced lefty pitching could have turned out to be a very nice role. Of course, it didn’t happen that way; Blake started the season on the disabled list thanks to a back injury suffered while trying to bunt during a spring training game. (Which, ugh.) Upon his return, he lasted just 14 games before undergoing surgery to relieve a particularly nasty staph infection in his left elbow, which cost him more than a month. Finally getting past that, he returned in late May to hit .195/.278/.310 over the next five weeks before succumbing to a pinched nerve in his neck on July 3, sidelining him until the final day of the month. He played in just 19 more games before finally undergoing surgery on the neck, which would have been his fourth trip to the disabled list of the season if not for the fact that the September 1 roster expansion rendered such a move moot.

With all the injuries, Blake never really had a chance to contribute, and so his 2011 was basically a lost season. It’ll almost certainly end his Dodger career, and at 38 it might very well be the end of his MLB career as well. Despite the wasted 2011 and lousy 2010, Blake ends his Dodger career as one of the better third baseman in the history of the club, and while that may say more about the history of the hot corner for this organization than it does about Blake’s performance, it’s still evidence of a successful Dodger stint from one of the more popular players on the team.

Blake will be missed. From a baseball sense, I’m glad he’s not going to be on the club going forward, because I don’t think he can still be a useful performer, but I’ve enjoyed watching him for 3+ years, even if the circumstances of his acquisition were less than ideal. Best of luck, Casey.

Russ Mitchell (inc.)
.157/.259/.294 .553 2hr -0.1 WAR

It’s not a huge secret that I’ve never thought much of Mitchell, dating back to what I said when he was first recalled in September of 2010:

To be honest, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Mitchell. He’ll be 26 before next season starts, yet he had a line of just .241/.298/.406 last year, his second season in AA. Overall, his career OBP in the minors was just .321. Somehow that was good enough to get him to AAA, where he took advantage of the ABQ environment to rake: .315/.363/.535, with 23 homers. That’s not an accident, either; his OPS at home was 1.164, but on the road it was just .834, and it’s not like ABQ is the only park in the PCL that caters to offense, either.

Mitchell repaid that trust by getting six hits in 43 MLB plate appearances last season; this year, in his age-26 season, he hit just .230/.318/.401 away from the friendly confines of Albuquerque. Then, in two separate stints in the bigs this year (once for a month in April and May when Blake hurt his elbow, then the last month of the season) he managed just eight hits in 58 plate appearances, though to his credit one was a game-tying homer against the White Sox to avoid a sweep in the 9th inning in May.

If anything, Mitchell’s offseason will be more interesting than his season, since he had surgery on his left wrist and will be headed to winter ball to attempt to add “emergency catcher” to his resume. If he hopes to have a major league career, the transition better work, because I’m just not seeing it. Even with two ABQ-fueled years, his minor league OBP is just .326, and two MLB cups of coffee haven’t gone well. I can’t imagine he starts 2012 anywhere but back in AAA, and if he doesn’t, that’s a big problem.

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Next! Rafael Furcal bids adieu! Jamey Carroll picks up the slack once again! Dee Gordon‘s flashy debut! And Justin Sellers‘ uncertain future! It’s shortstop!

Juan Uribe Will No Longer Haunt Your Dreams

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…at least for the last month of 2011, anyway.

Surgeries are planned for Casey Blake and Juan Uribe in the coming weeks, with Blake scheduled for a neck operation on Tuesday and Uribe receiving a second opinion before undergoing a procedure to repair a sports hernia.

Whereas Conte described Blake’s surgery as inevitable, Uribe’s was something the Dodgers wanted to avoid.

“We think there is a slight tear and a nerve entrapped there,” Conte said. “There were two ways to go about this. One was to inject the area, see if it would heal, rest it and progressively get him back.”

That course of treatment appeared to be working — until Monday, when Uribe felt pain when sprinting.

“That told us the conservative approach was probably not going to work,” Conte said. “We suggested he get surgery.”

Conte said Uribe is on board with the plan.

“He would have a normal off-season,” Conte said.

Uribe ends his first season as a Dodger with a horrifically disappointing .204/.264/.294 line and nearly as many stints on the disabled list (two) as homers (four). The resulting .204 TAv is ahead of only Paul Janish, Alexis Rios, and Chone Figgins – that’s right, even worse than Adam Dunn – among the 233 big leaguers with as many plate appearances as Uribe had. (For the record, wOBA agrees, tying him for fourth with Rios, though also putting him ahead of Franklin Gutierrez.) It’s almost like you shouldn’t have given $21m to a 31-year-old coming off two one-year contracts totaling $4.2m, right?

No matter how you slice it, Uribe’s Dodger debut was an absolute disaster – but hey, at least he’s still got $15m more coming to him over the next two years plus a $1m bonus in 2014. It’s not even fun to apply actual analysis to Uribe’s season, so let’s instead delve into hilarious facts that exist concerning him:

1) Nearly eight years ago, he was traded straight-up for current teammate Aaron Miles. No, really.

2) The most Uribe-related fun we had this entire season was with a never-true-and-quickly-refuted rumor that the Giants might actually have been interested in taking him back in July.

3) There’s an entire Tumblr dedicated to how sad Juan Uribe makes everyone.

4) The best part of Uribe’s baseball-reference Similarity Score list is not that it’s a who’s-who of mediocre middle infielders over the last 20 years (Robby Thompson, Jeff Blauser, Jose Hernandez, Felipe Lopez, etc.) but that both Alex Gonzalezes make the list.

Don’t come back, Juan. We won’t miss you. Still, the fact that Uribe and Blake officially admit defeat on the same day does serve as a poetic reminder of what really had the most damaging effect on this club – that the original starting infield of James Loney, Uribe, Rafael Furcal, and Blake started just two games together, both in April.

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One of my favorite Twitter feeds is that of Matthew Kaminski, aka @BravesOrganist, who plays the keys in Atlanta. He’s often coming up with clever songs to play for opposing players as they walk up to the plate, and with the Dodgers in town this weekend, he needs our help:

#Braves vs. #Dodgers – any song ideas for the Dodgers’ players?

Hit him up on Twitter or leave your best ideas here. The Mighty Mouse theme for Miles? “Cryin’” for Andre Ethier? The possibilities are endless.