MSTI’s 2011 in Review: Relievers, Part 3
November 12, 2011 at 11:36 pm | Posted in Josh Lindblom, Mike MacDougal, Ramon Troncoso | 17 Comments
Mike MacDougal (B+)
2.05 ERA, 3.96 FIP, 6.5 K/9, 4.6 BB/9
Sentences I never thought I’d write: “Along with Matt Guerrier, Mike MacDougal was one of only two Dodger relievers to spend the entire 2011 season on the active roster.” Think about that for a second.
Like with Aaron Miles, when MacDougal was given a non-roster invite in January it hardly warranted much attention, since he hadn’t been a useful pitcher for years and he didn’t figure to make much of an impact with the big club. Yet thanks to a solid spring and a bullpen that was far more unsettled at the end of camp than the start of it, MacDougal broke camp with the club and stuck around all season. When it became clear that he might be coming north in March because people were putting far too much importance on five scoreless spring innings (to that point), I looked at what was realistic to expect from him:
Remember, this is a guy who over the last four seasons has pitched in 144 major league games, and has a K/BB rate of 99/95, while allowing more than a hit per inning, and his minor league numbers haven’t been much better. I’m not immune to the idea that guys can get healthy or fix a mechanical issue that brings improved results, but rarely does that happen at 34, and in this case, the nice ERA isn’t really justified.
“The nice ERA isn’t really justified” was a recurring theme throughout the season, as “MacDougal allows inherited runners to score without affecting his own ERA” became something of a running joke, as you can see by the large gap between his ERA and his FIP. Just as an example, here’s part of a recap of a randomly selected game from June, though know that this could (and did) apply to a whole lot of MacDougal appearances:
I’d like to take this opportunity to once again point out how silly ERA can be. Kershaw left the bases loaded, and while starting that mess is definitely on him, once he left the game he had absolutely no control over whether those runners score. If Elbert wiggles out of that mess, Kershaw allows three total earned runs, which doesn’t look so bad. Elbert (and MacDougal) couldn’t, and so Kershaw’s line looks like a disaster. MacDougal, by the way, faced three batters without retiring a single one. He wasn’t charged with any earned runs. Remember that when someone looks at MacDougal’s 2.14 ERA and tries to tell you he’s any good. Hooray, ERA!
Now again, like Miles, MacDougal gets a lot of credit for being a zero-risk scrap-heap pickup who made some contributions this year, even briefly being elevated to the role of main setup man in front of Javy Guerra when injuries took down Kenley Jansen and Blake Hawksworth. When a team brings in the usual collection of has-beens and never-weres over the winter, this is exactly the sort of “good enough, but not great” performance you’re hoping for. So good on MacDougal for that, because a 3.96 FIP for a minimum salary is eminently usable.
That doesn’t change the fact that he was clearly overrated by many because of that shiny, clearly faulty ERA, of course. He barely struck out more than he walked over the season, and he was constantly hurting other pitchers by letting their inherited runners to score. Never was this demonstrated more clearly than in one of Don Mattingly’s worst managerial decisions, bringing MacDougal into a 1-1 game in Milwaukee on August 16:
With the game tied at one in the bottom of the ninth, Hong-Chih Kuo started the frame off by walking Prince Fielder on six pitches. Kuo didn’t look good doing it, and with righties Casey McGehee and Yuniesky Betancourt following, Don Mattingly strode to the mound and called to the bullpen for his righty, which was absolutely the correct move.
Unfortunately, coming in wasn’t Javy Guerra, who hadn’t pitched since Friday and has allowed just one earned run in the last two months. It was Mike MacDougal, who threw 2/3 of an inning last night and is, you know, Mike MacDougal. I’ve defended Mattingly a lot this season, but much of this loss lies on him, as he fell victim to the same mistake that managers have been making for decades, which is saving their closer for a lead in a tie game on the road.
Or as I put it on Twitter at the time,
Whenever you can bring Mike MacDougal in to a tied game with a man on in the bottom of the 9th, you have to do it.
I bet I don’t have to tell you how that ended, right? MacDougal is a free agent, but I think we all believe the Dodgers will show interest in retaining him. Let’s hope that’s for less than $1m, or even better, another non-guaranteed deal.
Ramon Troncoso (D-)
6.75 ERA, 5.19 FIP, 5.6 K/9, 1.6 BB/9
Geez, does anyone still remember 2009, when Troncoso was one of the more reliable non-elite relievers in the NL? That seems so long ago now. It’s easy to look back at 2010, when he pitched in 16 of the first 24 games, and conclude that Joe Torre ruined him like he did so many others, but that was a theory we investigated and largely discarded last season.
2011, Troncoso’s fourth season with the Dodgers, saw him have three different tours of duty with the big club, though his season numbers were ruined when he allowed 12 hits to just 17 batters in his first two appearances in April. He wasn’t seen again for a month, in which he had eight relatively good outings in May and June sandwiched around two disasters, and then spent all of July and August in the minors before returning in September to contribute five good outings and one nightmare.
As you can tell, Troncoso in 2011 was either hit or big, big miss. He’s under team control in 2012, but is out of options, meaning that he must break camp with the team (or be on the DL) or otherwise exposed to waivers before being sent down. It’s not altogether unlikely that we’ve seen the last of him as a Dodger.
Josh Lindblom (A-)
2.73 ERA, 2.35 FIP, 8.5 K/9, 3.0 BB/9
Was it really over two years ago that Lindblom was a fast riser, nearly breaking camp with the club in 2009 after just nine MiLB games in 2008? Apparently it was. Lindblom went back to ABQ and was successful in a relief role, but then was sent back to AA Chattanooga in an attempt to convert him to starting. The results were mixed for the remainder of 2009, and then 2010 was an absolute disaster, putting up a 6.54 ERA and allowing 13.5 hits per nine, and granted that’s in ABQ, but still not good. The Dodgers finally gave up the ghost on “Josh Lindblom, Starter”, and allowed him to return to the bullpen in June, where he was solid to end 2010 back in AA and excellent in 34 games for the Lookouts to start this season – earning himself a recall on May 29 when Kenley Jansen made a trip to the disabled list with shoulder inflammation.
Overall, the results were good. Lindblom got into 27 games across multiple stints with the team (generally going up and down as Jansen was available and not), and allowed more than one earned run just one time, which is solid. I remember saying to myself, about halfway through his tenure, that I liked him but that he didn’t miss enough bats, because over his first 13 games, he’d struck out just 9 in 16 innings. Over his final 14 outings, he whiffed 19 in 13.2, puncuated by striking out five of the six Diamondbacks he faced after replacing Clayton Kershaw following the ace’s ejection on September 14.
Looking ahead to 2012, Lindblom probably doesn’t have a job completely sown up out of camp, but with his 2011 performance and minimum cost salary, there’s no reason to think we won’t be seeing quite a bit of him.
******
Next! Kenley Jansen is unhittable! Hong-Chih Kuo falls apart! And oh good lord, I have to write something about Lance Cormier? It’s the final installment of relievers – part 4!
2011 Midseason Grades: Pitching and Management
July 12, 2011 at 9:29 am | Posted in Blake Hawksworth, Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Davey Lopes, Don Mattingly, Hiroki Kuroda, Hong-Chih Kuo, Javy Guerra, John Ely, Jon Garland, Jonathan Broxton, Josh Lindblom, Kenley Jansen, Matt Guerrier, Mike MacDougal, Ned Colletti, Ramon Troncoso, Rubby de la Rosa, Scott Elbert, Ted Lilly, Vicente Padilla | 37 Comments
Thanks for all the feedback on yesterday’s hitting grades, and today we move on to pitching and management. Remember, the letter grades are just for fun, without a whole lot of thought or science behind them.
Starting Pitchers
Clayton Kershaw (A+) (9-4, 3.03 ERA, 2.45 FIP)
Is A+ even high enough? I’m not sure it is, though we certainly expected great things from him. Think about this: his HR/9 rate and H/9 rate are unchanged from last year, but he’s managed to do that while lowering his walk rate (again!) and increasing his strikeout rate. He’s leading the league in whiffs, and he has two shutouts among his three complete games. He’s 23. He’s lefty. He’s an All-Star.
Don’t let anyone tell you that he’s progressing towards being an ace, or one day he could be one of the best. Clayton Kershaw is, right now, one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball. The scary part? He could still get better.
Chad Billingsley (B) (8-7, 3.87 ERA, 3.41 FIP)
Over at Baseball Prospectus this morning, Geoff Young of DuckSnorts offers the opinion that Billingsley “should be a star, but isn’t”. And that’s true. 26-year-old Billingsley is walking more and striking out less than 23-year-old Billingsley did in 2008. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because he’s still a very valuable asset and the extension he signed over the winter was welcomed, but he’s also not going to be a Kershaw-level star like we’d once hoped he would be. Again, that’s not to get on Billingsley, it’s just seemingly who he’s going to be – a durable #2 or 3 type who will be consistently inconsistent (3 starts this year of at least 8 IP and 1 ER or less, 3 starts allowing 5 ER or more). That’s not a star, but it is a quality pitcher we should be happy to have.
Hiroki Kuroda (B) (6-10, 3.06 ERA, 3.73 FIP)
Only five pitchers have received less run support than Kuroda (shockingly, no other Dodger appears on the top 40 of that list), so let’s not pretend the poor win/loss record means absolutely anything at all. Conversely, the ERA is a little misleading as well, since he’s striking out fewer and walking more than he did in either 2009 or 2010, facts which are reflected in the higher FIP. Still, he’s been a solid member of this rotation… and probably the only Dodger with any real trade value at the deadline. I’ll be sorry to see him go, if he does.
Ted Lilly (D) (6-9, 4.79 ERA, 4.59 FIP)
Lilly hasn’t been awful (back, back, it’s gone!), but nor has he been (throw to second, and the runner is in!) in any way worthy of the $33m deal he received in the offseason. He’s (that ball is far, it is out of here!) striking out fewer than ever, and more (he’s going, and he swipes second without a throw) batted balls in front of a defense that isn’t great at converting them into outs isn’t (that ball is crushed into the second tier!) a good mix. Oh, and he’s 35 and has complained (Navarro’s throw to second, not in time, another steal!) of arm soreness already. Loving that three-year deal more than ever.
Rubby De La Rosa (A) (3-4, 3.74 ERA, 3.40 FIP)
Probably the most impressive of any of the rookies pushed ahead of their schedule this year, de la Rosa has shown immense talent while being forced to learn on-the-job. While his first few starts were dicey – good lord, the walks, and that one game that he nearly got bounced in the first inning was a heart-stopper – RDLR has shown marked improvement, even flirting with no-hitters in each of his last two outings. The talent is unquestioned, but the real concern now is limited his innings, since he’s quickly coming up on matching his previous high with more than two months remaining in the season. But if he’s limited and if someone like Kuroda is dealt… how do you finish out the season? John Ely? Dana Eveland? Yikes.
Jon Garland (D-) (1-5, 4.33 ERA, 4.59 FIP)
Hey, remember when Garland was signed largely because he’d never been on the disabled list before? If you do, then you probably also remember him saying he couldn’t get multi-year deals because other teams didn’t like the looks of his medical reports. Garland gets a lousy grade not because of his performance (ignore the 1-5, a 4.59 FIP is in line with his usual season), but because he sells his durability as a skill. Clearly, that’s one item he forgot to pack for his second (and likely final) tour with the Dodgers. At least that large 2012 option won’t kick in.
John Ely (inc.) (0-1, 6.23 ERA, 5.61 FIP)
Remember Ely-mania last year? Seems so far away, doesn’t it?
Relief pitchers
Jonathan Broxton (MRI) (1-2, 7 saves, 5.68 ERA, 5.56 FIP)
I have absolutely no idea how to grade Jonathan Broxton. Was he good this year? No, of course he wasn’t, and for many people that justifies their opinion that at around midseason 2010, he somehow lost his heart / mind / balls / toes / earlobes / whatever. The fact that he somehow managed to even close out seven games earlier this year is somewhat misleading, because he rarely did so smoothly; conversely, it’s difficult to blame him entirely for the big blown save in Florida because the Dodgers would have won if Jamey Carroll had merely fielded a simple ground ball.
I’d say the answer lies in the fact that he’s been on the disabled list for over two months due to a right elbow injury, with no estimated return date. We never saw the healthy Broxton this year, just as I felt we never saw a healthy Broxton in the second half of last year. The lesson, as always? Joe Torre cannot be trusted with relievers. You hate to say it about a guy who is only 27, but Torre may just have ruined Broxton’s career. Thanks for stopping by, Joe!
Hong-Chih Kuo (-) (0-0, 8.71 ERA, 4.12 FIP)
Take everything I said about Broxton above and multiply it by 100 for Kuo, because the anxiety issue he’s been fighting for years makes it impossible to really judge his on-field performance. Since returning, he’s at least managed to limit the walks (6/2 K/BB in 5.2 IP), though the results (five runs, four earned) haven’t all been there yet. The fact that he even returned as quickly as he did should count as a win.
Kenley Jansen (B+) (1-1, 4.40 ERA, 3.15 FIP)
I bet a lot of people will be surprised by this grade for Jansen. “But his ERA is 4.40, rabble rabble rabble!”, they’ll yell. That’s true, it is. That number is also heavily inflated by two poor outings – allowing 5 earned runs to Atlanta on April 19 in a game that the Dodgers were already losing in, and allowing 3 earned runs on May 23 in Houston, a game which preceded his stint on the DL with right shoulder inflammation by less than a week. Since returning from injury on June 18, he’s been nearly untouchable, striking out 13 while allowing just two singles in 9.2 innings. While the walks remain a problem, he’s actually striking out more per nine than he did in 2010, and you might remember that even last year’s rate was on the verge of being historic. The question for me is, why is he stuck in middle relief and garbage time rather than in higher leverage situations?
Matt Guerrier (C-) (3-3, 3.10 ERA, 4.44 FIP)
Boy, who would have thought that handing out an expensive multi-year deal to a non-elite middle reliever wouldn’t have worked out well? Besides everyone, that is. Guerrier actually hasn’t been that bad, but that’s sort of the point: players who get $12m over three years should be able to do better than “hasn’t been that bad”. Though he’s striking out slightly more than he did as a Twin, he’s allowing both more walks and hits than he did in either of the last two years, despite moving to the easier league. He’ll be 33 in less than a month. It’s not a good trend.
Mike MacDougal (C+) (0-1, 1.67 ERA, 3.74 FIP)
2003 All-Star MacDougal has done an excellent job of reviving his career after several years bouncing between the bigs and AAA. MacDougal, who made the 2003 All-Star team as a member of the Royals, has just a 1.74 ERA, emerging as a leader of the injury-plagued Dodger bullpen. The former All-Star has allowed only six earned runs to score, putting him in contention for 9th inning responsibilities. All-Star.
(I can’t do it. MacDougal has allowed approximately 982 of the 48 inherited runners he’s received* to score. For nearly the entire season, he’d walked as many as he’d struck out, before finally giving himself some distance in recent days. He’s not a good pitcher, but like Aaron Miles, we expected nothing, so the small contributions he’s made get him some minor credit. *note: numbers may be fabricated.)
Number of Ortizii: 0 (A++++)
Say what you will about this club, at least they’re not employing anyone named Ortiz who was last useful 6-8 years ago, much less multiple players like that.
Javy Guerra (B+) (1-0, 4 saves, 2.33 ERA, 4.01 FIP)
Guerra, like MacDougal all those years ago, is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t overrate saves. For a guy who walked 6.8/9 in the minors last year and was forced to the bigs simply because of injuries, he’s been fine. He’s keeping the ball in the yard, he’s cut down on the control issues, and he’s even managed to steal a few saves while serving as the last-ditch closer. As far as debuts go, his has been a successful one. Let’s just not go overboard in anointing him as the man in the 9th inning, because he hasn’t been that good – 13 K in 19.1 IP doesn’t thrill me – and in each of his last two saves, he loaded the bases before getting out of the jam. That’s not the kind of tightrope you can walk for very long.
Blake Hawksworth (B) (2-2, 3.00 WHIP, 4.12 FIP)
“Isn’t Ryan Theriot“, and that alone gets him a boost. Actually, I joke, but it’s sort of true: when healthy, Hawksworth has been a perfectly acceptable and average reliever, doing a decent job of keeping runners off the bases (WHIP of 1.000), and striking out more than double as he’s walked. Considering that Theriot is doing his usual “I’m not a very good baseball player, but I am short and white, and that counts for something, right?” routine in St. Louis, even just getting that moderate level of contribution in exchange is a big win.
Scott Elbert (B-) (0-1, 5.25 ERA, 2.54 FIP)
I know there’s been a lot of turnover in the bullpen this year, but Elbert is one of those guys where I constantly have to check if he’s still on the team or down in ABQ. I suppose that’s partically because he’s pitched just twice in the last two weeks, and partially because he’s rarely in for more than 2-3 batters at a time. As for his performance, he’s a bit of an oddity in that you’d expect a power lefty to be hell on lefty hitters, but he’s actually rocking a reverse split: lefties (.701 OPS) are actually doing more damage than righties (.561 OPS) against him. Overall, I guess you can say he’s been “acceptable”, in that he’s finally gained a foothold in the majors, but hasn’t exactly made us think he’s going to be a difference maker.
Then again, considering his mysterious disappearance at this time last year, even that is a massive step forward.
Ramon Troncoso (D) (0-0, 6.23 ERA, 4.92 FIP)
I know it’s popular to blame Torre for Troncoso’s downturn as well, and maybe that’s part of it, but I do remember writing a post last year that outlined how he had larger issues than overuse. Whatever it is, he’s barely a major league quality pitcher right now… which probably explains why he’s not in the major leagues. That’s what’ll happen when you aren’t striking anyone out and giving up an absurd amount of hits, though I’ll allow that since he was never a strikeout guy, pitching in front of a defense that does no favors probably doesn’t help.
Ronald Belisario (MIA)
Ha, no. There’s about as good of a chance that he pitches for the Dodgers again as there is that you’ll see Orel Hershiser or Don Drysdale out there.
Josh Lindblom (B+) (0-0, 1.69 ERA, 3.43 FIP)
Nearly two years after we first thought we might see him, Lindblom finally got the call this year, and so far, so good. It’s hard to make judgements based on just eight games, but he’s yet to allow more than one earned run in an appearance, and for now, that’s good enough.
Lance Cormier (dFa) (0-1, 9.88 ERA, 6.84 FIP)
I’m still convinced the only reason Cormier wasn’t DFA’d a week or two earlier than he eventually was (on May 24, when Rubby De La Rosa came up) is because he had a charity event for tornado victims set up at the stadium on May 15, and it would have been poor form to cut a guy just before or after that. I also like that we can say “nah, he wasn’t as bad as his ERA, look at his FIP” and while that’s true, even his FIP says he was awful.
Vicente Padilla (inc.) (0-0, 4.15 ERA, 2.61 FIP)
I sure do feel like we’ve talked about Padilla a lot this year for a guy who piched just 8.2 innings. First he was signed to a somewhat confusing 6th starter/longman/Broxton insurance role, in a move for depth I actually really liked. Then he required surgery for a forearm injury in the spring, preventing him from taking Garland’s rotation spot to start the year. He returned exceptionally quickly from that, taking over for the injured Broxton to nab three saves of varying quality in late April and early May, leading many to proclaim him the next big thing… until he returned to the DL with a recurrence of the arm injury. But the fun doesn’t stop there, because he was supposedly hours away from being activated in June before a neck injury flared up, leading to more surgery and probably the end of his season. Got all that? Phew.
Management
Don Mattingly (B+)
It may sound odd to praise a rookie manager when we weren’t fans of his hiring in the first place and when the club he’s leading is on pace for its worst finish in decades, but I don’t see how you pin much of this mess on Mattingly. He’s proven himself to be far more than a Joe Torre clone, in particular showing a nice willingness to be creative with his bullpen. It hasn’t been perfect, as some of his Navarro-related pinch-hitting escapades still burn, and he likes bunting more than I’d prefer, but he was handed a subpar roster that had its infield and bullpen totally destroyed by injuries, all as fans stayed away thanks to the off-field mess. It would be an impossible situation for any manager, and though the final record won’t be good, Mattingly has been a pleasant surprise, managing to keep the team playing hard through it all. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up shouldering more of the blame than is needed when all is said and done.
Davey Mutha-F’ing-Lopes (A+^100)
I don’t usually grade the base coaches. Matt Kemp doesn’t usually lead the league in WAR. There you go.
Ned Colletti (F+)
Let’s quickly review all of the contracts handed out last winter by Colletti that were for at least $1m, shall we? Uribe, massive bust. Lilly, missing fewer bats than ever. Guerrier, adequate but overpaid and having one of the lesser years of his career. Garland and Padilla, both injured multiple times and likely out for the year. Barajas, crappier than usual and hurt. Thames, ineffective and injured. Navarro, hitting .183. To be fair, Kuroda has been very good, but it’s hard to say that without caveating that he clearly took a huge paycut to stay in LA.
There’s been a few positives – signing Billingsley was great, the no-risk NRI of Miles worked out, and trading Ryan Theriot for Hawksworth was a good move if you try to forget that it was necessitated by acquiring Theriot in the first place – and you want to be sensitive to the fact that the ownership mess has really put him in a bad position. But overall? Not good, Ned. Not good.
******
Tomorrow, the final review of the series: me.
Today’s ABQ Call-up Isn’t Jerry Sands, But It Will Be Soon
April 13, 2011 at 7:27 am | Posted in Jerry Sands, Ramon Troncoso | 26 Comments
Per Chris Jackson of the Albuquerque Examiner, Ramon Troncoso is on his way back from Albuquerque to join the big club. In 4.2 innings for ABQ so far, Troncoso has allowed three hits and a walk, striking out two. As Eric Stephen of TrueBlueLA has become fond of noting, that’s four days in a row that the Dodgers have recalled a player from AAA, following John Ely, Jamie Hoffmann, and Ivan DeJesus.
The difference here is that while the first three recalls were more or less expected, the move to get Troncoso wasn’t, especially with another move needing to be made on Friday when Jon Garland is activated. Beyond that, we don’t yet know who is being sent down to make room for Troncoso. When I noted the move on Twitter, several people guessed Blake Hawksworth, in light of how he took the loss last night, but he’s out of options so that seems unlikely. With Hector Gimenez and Dioner Navarro still on the DL, our usual best guess of A.J. Ellis is safe, so unless there’s another new injury we don’t know about, my best guess is that this is going to be Hoffmann, headed back to ABQ a few days ahead of schedule.
Hoffmann’s received just one at-bat since his recall, and the Dodgers have no shortage of outfielders; it was always assumed that he’d be the one sent back down when Garland was ready. Recalling Troncoso would bump the roster back up to twelve pitchers, where the Dodgers tend to prefer it, though I will admit that it does seem odd that they wouldn’t have just called up a pitcher over Hoffmann in the first place. I suppose we’ll learn more today.
Speaking of Albquerque and guys who aren’t long for it, Jerry Sands has started off his AAA season by homering in each of his four games, and none of them have been cheap. In his first 16 PA, he has 7 hits (including the 4 homers) and not a single strikeout. Watch his homer from last night below (h/t to Twitter follower “OdinsBeard“), and try to keep strong with me in waiting until at least the end of April before we launch a full-fledged “Free Jerry Sands!” campaign. You’ll notice the center field fence there says “428″, making this shot at least 440 feet.
I Think The Rotation Is Ready For the Season (Updated)
March 6, 2011 at 2:47 pm | Posted in Dioner Navarro, James Loney, Jamey Carroll, Ramon Troncoso, Scott Elbert | 18 CommentsNice weekend for the starting staff, right?
Chad Billingsley, today: 3.2 innings, 3 hits, 2 runs (1 earned), 2 K, after last week’s 3 scoreless inning debut.
Clayton Kershaw, yesterday: 4 scoreless innings, facing the minimum 12 batters, giving him 7 scoreless innings this spring in which he’s allowed just 3 hits.
Jon Garland, on Friday: 3 scoreless innings, allowing just one hit.
Any comments about the offense, or lack thereof, should be held back on a day that has a lineup missing Matt Kemp, Rafael Furcal, Andre Ethier, Casey Blake, and Juan Uribe, and features Dioner Navarro hitting cleanup. On the other hand, Marcus Thames, on his 34th birthday, doubled off the left-center wall to tie the game at 3 in the 8th.
******
25th man update: Justin Sellers replaced Juan Castro in the starting lineup at shortstop, walked once in two tries and made two errors on the same play in the first inning, destroying a WGN banner in the process. Castro struck out pinch-hitting in the 5th (against Carlos Marmol, to be fair) and later doubled. Aaron Miles, playing third, tripled and scored the first Dodger run, while Ivan DeJesus went 0-2. The arrow is still pointing strongly in Castro’s direction.
******
Ramon Troncoso got four outs on seven pitches, prompting new DodgerTalk co-host Joe Block to claim that he’s made the team; Troncoso has now thrown 3.1 scoreless innings without allowing a walk. I think that may be a bit premature, but with the turmoil at the back end of the bullpen, there’s certainly opportunity. You’d think that his history, and time away from the overuse of Joe Torre, would get him some consideration, though.
******
Hey, Navarro’s going to get a hit sometime, right? I know, it’s spring, it’s early, I get it. Just saying, guys who have hit .212 over the last two seasons and have an arguably superior player behind them need to show something a little more than not getting on base once over their first eleven plate appearances. He at least plated Gabe Kapler on a sac fly today, though of course if Kapler hadn’t been on third, it’d have just been another flyout. Meanwhile, A.J. Ellis drew a walk and threw out a runner trying to steal.
******
At the Los Angeles Times blog, Steve Dilbeck wonders what might happen if James Loney‘s knee troubles end up being worse than they appear. Despite Russ Mitchell getting the most playing time in Loney’s absence right now (where’s John Lindsey?), Dilbeck thinks that Casey Blake would get the bulk of the time during the season, with Juan Uribe sliding to third and Jamey Carroll entering at second, because it’s just not realistic to think that Jerry Sands breaks camp with the team.
I think Dilbeck’s assumption is probably correct, but it got me thinking – would that alignment actually make the team better? There’s a few reasons to think that it might:
- Carroll would add badly need OBP. His mark has been .355 or higher in each of the last three seasons, four of the last six, and five of the last seven. Carroll doesn’t hit for power, but then again neither does Loney; overall, Carroll had a higher OPS+ last year.
- It’d help optimize the lineup, since Carroll could be a good #2 hitter, pushing Blake down to 6 where he belongs.
- It’d shift Uribe to 3B, which is his stronger defensive position.
- It’d improve platooning possibilities. If Blake were the 1B, then he’s a much more dangerous hitter against lefty pitching than Loney is (though I hope that’s going to happen regardless). You could also spot in Gibbons against tough righty pitching, which likely wouldn’t happen if Loney was in.
It’s not all roses, of course, because you couldn’t expect the 37-year-old Carroll to play every day, and you’d weaken an already questionable bench by removing him from it. The ideal solution is that Loney is healthy and productive, so by no means am I rooting for him to be out. But just the fact that this is a conversation worth having shows the extent of the questions that he’s going to have to answer this year.
Update #1: Well, looks like Carroll has injury concerns of his own:
Jamey Carroll was unable to throw comfortably Sunday after taking a pitch off his right index finger Saturday, but X-rays were negative.
Carroll was able to hit despite the swelling in the finger and will probably need a few more days before he can return to game action.
Update #2: I’d meant to note that Scott Elbert, who was originally supposed to pitch today, did not. Here’s why:
Scott Elbert, the lefty reliever struggling with his control in games, was held back from a scheduled Sunday appearance and instead will throw batting practice Monday while working on a mechanical adjustment.
MSTI’s 2010 in Review: Relievers, Part 4
November 18, 2010 at 8:44 am | Posted in George Sherrill, Ramon Troncoso, Travis Schlichting | 39 CommentsWe’re back! Two more relief pitcher reviews to go.
Ramon Troncoso (D)
4.33 ERA, 4.67 FIP, 5.7 K/9, 3.0 BB/9, -0.2 WAR
It’s funny to think about it now, but Troncoso was the absolute savior of the bullpen back in April. With Hong-Chih Kuo on the DL, Ronald Belisario MIA, and George Sherrill falling apart, Troncoso quickly became Joe Torre’s go-to guy to get games to Jonathan Broxton.
Troncoso appeared in 15 of the team’s 22 April games, and was quite effective in holding opponents to a .208/.296/.292 line in the first month. As April bled into May and the appearances mounted, that led to a never-ending line of jokes and concerns that Torre would run him directly into the ground.
April 28 (doubleheader):
In each game, 4 relievers entered after the starting pitcher. In Game 1, following Hiroki Kuroda were Jon Link, Ramon Troncoso, George Sherrill, and Ramon Ortiz. After Charlie Haeger left in Game 2, you saw… Troncoso, Link, Sherrill, and Carlos Monasterios. I’ll forgive the usage of Link, who we all knew was getting sent back down to make room for John Ely today anyway, but Torre’s abuse of Troncoso is bordering on the ridiculous. He’s on pace to get into about 115 games this year, and Dylan Hernandez’ constant usage of the ‘paging Dr. El Attrache’ hashtag on Twitter has gone from “humorous” to “terrifying”.
Jonathan Broxton began warming in the 8th inning, with the Dodgers up 4-2. Fine. Yet the Dodgers put up 3 in the top of the 9th after RBI hits by Loney, Blake, and DeWitt, so Broxton sat down. Also fine. Yet with a five-run lead, who comes in? Not George Sherrill, who’s been horrible. Not Carlos Monasterios, who for all his success is still a Rule 5 pick. No, Torre inserts Ramon Troncoso, now on pace for over 90 games this year. I can’t even begin to explain how boned this team is if Troncoso, the most vital non-Broxton reliever, breaks down, so you’d think you’d want to save him for important situations. But wait! This gets better. Troncoso walked Chris Young, and then gave up an RBI single to Rusty Ryal… which gets Torre to warm Broxton up again.
Troncoso, of course, got the final three outs in the next two batters thanks to a strikeout and a game-ending double play. So Torre managed to work out both of his best relievers… in a five-run game. All this, while guys who practically have middle names of “put me in only in five-run games” sat and watched.
And then on top of it all, with Jeff Weaver warming and Carlos Monasterios wondering what he’s done to offend Joe Torre to make sure he hasn’t pitched in a week, who comes in? That’s right, Ramon Troncoso, who’s still on pace for 90+ games. The silver lining in Troncoso getting hit hard was that Ortiz got charged with the men he’d left on, but this was Troncoso’s third night in a row, and fourth in five nights. Am I really going to kill him for letting Adrian Gonzalez take him deep? Of course not. I’ll never understand Torre’s bullpen usage, ever.
Hey, Joe. Why are you bringing Ramon Troncoso in A) when the team is losing, B) in a tight game when he’s coming off three homers in his last two outings, and C) when he’s on pace for approximately 180 games this season? Sure, Troncoso is claiming that he’s found “a flaw in his delivery”, but is absolutely anyone going to be surprised when he ends up on the disabled list by the end of the week? Anyone?
Troncoso didn’t end up on the DL, but he may as well have. After his nice April, he allowed an OPS of .899 in May and .830 in June. He was so bad that he ended up getting sent down to AAA in early July, and he bounced back and forth several times before returning for good when rosters expanded in September – and he wasn’t much better in ABQ either, with a 5.73 ERA and a 1.545 WHIP.
That said, it’s easy to blame Joe Torre for this. (Fun, too.) But there’s more to it than just Torre’s overuse. I’m actually going to toot my own horn a bit and say that I was worried about Troncoso as far back as last November, in the Maple Street Press Dodgers Annual:
Explain this: Ramon Troncoso’s strikeout rate per nine innings dropped from 9.0 in 2008 to just 6.0 in 2009, and he combined that with a rising walk rate – up from 2.8 to 3.7. Even his reputation for being a groundball machine suffered, with his GB/FB rate dropping from 3.44 to 2.10. One might say that’s a recipe for utter disaster, yet Troncoso’s ERA dropped nearly a run and a half from 4.26 to 2.72. How was that possible?
I went on to explain that it was in large part because Troncoso had been extremely lucky with his flyball rates in 2009, and those peripherals didn’t really support an ERA like that. So when the inevitable regression occurred, I wasn’t all that surprised and took a deeper look into why. It’s kind of a long read, so I won’t copy the entire thing here (though I encourage you to read it), and instead I’ll just show conclusions without the accompanying explanations:
1) His 2.72 ERA in 2009 was wildly misleading.
2) He’s actually been regressing each year, not just this year.
3) His home run luck from last year is evening out.
4) His hot start to 2010 was just a decent start magnified by the disaster around him.
5) A regression in 2010 wasn’t hard to see coming.
6) You can’t completely absolve Joe Torre.
Believe it or not, Troncoso’s 2010 WHIP was lower than his 2009, which should be reason 1,023,876 why ERA for relievers is unreliable. Troncoso is in no way guaranteed a job in 2011, but his history as a Dodger ought to at least get him a long look in spring training next year.
George Sherrill (F)
6.69 ERA, 5.20 FIP, 6.2 K/9, 5.9 BB/9, -1.0 WAR
I think a lot of people are expecting me to rationalize Sherrill’s terrible year, and claim that it wasn’t that bad at all. I’m not, and it was. It’s just important to realize that there’s a bit more to it than just “holy crap, this guy suddenly became awful.”
Before we even get into how his 2010 unfolded, do remember that expectations for Sherrill were unfairly inflated headed into the season. His shiny 0.65 ERA as a Dodger in 2009 had people thinking he was a stud, and while he was very good, he actually struck out fewer and walked more in LA than he’d done with Baltimore in the tough AL East. (Just another example of why ERA, particularly for relievers, isn’t the best tool to judge a pitcher, friends. Did we really expect that 621 OPS+ from last year was going to stick?)
So I certainly expected some regression. But this? No, not even I saw this coming. We first started hearing about trouble with Sherrill in the first days of spring training, as he’d reported with sore knees and then took a line drive off his right ankle, though it was reportedly not serious. Sherrill made it through the spring, and made his season debut in the 8th inning of Opening Day in Pittsburgh. How’d that go?
Even more concerning than that mess was the self-immolation of George Sherrill, who was so brilliant for the Dodgers last season. After an entire spring of hearing him claim that his mechanical issues were “no big deal” and that he’d be fine when the season started, he came in and after getting two quick outs, allowed a walk, a double, and a three-run homer to Ryan Doumit. With Hong-Chih Kuo on the DL and Scott Elbert trying to be a starter in ABQ, the Dodgers may be have a serious lefty problem in the pen if Sherrill can’t get straightened out, and quick.
But it didn’t get better. He allowed runs in three of his first five games, including blowing his first save opportunity on April 10 in Florida, and didn’t manage to get through an outing without issuing a walk until his sixth time out. He perked up a bit at the end of April, going eight straight games without allowing a run, but it was still troubling that he’d managed to strike out just two in that time. By the end of the month, he’d walked ten and struck out only five.
May started with back-to-back disasters, and ended when he was placed on the DL with “mid-back tightness”, as the club needed a roster spot for the returning Rafael Furcal. He missed barely the minimum, and returned to allow a run against the Angels on June 11. Few remember it now, since it was Jonathan Broxton who blew up in the 9th and Ramon Troncoso who got the loss in the books, but it was actually Sherrill who gave up the two-run homer to Robinson Cano in the tied 10th inning of the infamous June 27th disaster against the Yankees on Sunday Night Baseball.
Two days later, on June 29, I looked into what had happened to Sherrill, and started off with a shocking realization:
in looking at Sherrill’s game log, one thing jumped out at me so clearly that I can’t possibly bury it any further: George Sherrill hasn’t had a strikeout since May 17. That’s more than six weeks ago, ever since he struck out Houston’s Michael Bourn (who struck out 140 times last year) in the 8th inning of a 6-2 Dodger win in Los Angeles. By (a completely unfair) comparison, Clayton Kershaw has 56 strikeouts since Sherrill’s seen his last one. He’s clearly fooling no one. How can you succeed like that?
Obviously, you can’t. Here’s why:
It’s not that hard to see what’s causing this, either. He’s not throwing as hard (88.3 MPH average on his fastball, lowest of his career). He’s not getting anyone to chase junk out of the zone (swings on just 21.1% of his pitches outside the strike zone, tied for his lowest ever). He’s not avoiding bats on any pitches (85.1% of his pitches are met with contact, and he’s getting just 5.5% swinging strikes, each worst of his career).
So is he hurt? He claims no, despite missing time this season with a bad back. There’s been questions all year about his mechanics, theories that his offseason was too short, and stories about being “cured” by watching Billy Wagner on TV. Obviously, none of it has worked. Maybe it’s all of the above. Or none.
Sherrill then went out and gave up runs in two of his next three outings, and the other shoe dropped over the All-Star Break, as he was put on waivers. That fooled a lot of people into thinking that he was off the roster immediately – since he clearly wasn’t claimed, he never left the team – but the timing made the team’s distaste clear.
His nightmare season continued when he allowed runs in his first two post-break outings, got stuck with the loss when he wasn’t warmed in the bizarre “Mattingly’s two mound visits” game, and finished out July with another blown save in San Diego. Well, okay, that one wasn’t totally his fault, and I apologize for the length on this, but it’s awesome:
First of all, please be sure to note that the two hits Sherrill allowed came on two ground ball singles which found their way through the infield. A few feet in either direction and the plays get made, and no one talks about George Sherrill at all. It’s not like he gave up two liners, hit a guy, and allowed a grand slam, despite what you may read elsewhere.
Here’s the part that makes even less sense: George Sherrill has been atrocious all year. You don’t bring him into the 9th inning of a tie game, but you especially don’t bring him in to face a right handed hitter. I’ve said this so many times in recent weeks that I won’t even bother linking to it, but if there’s one way that Sherrill can help the team, it’s in that he can still be effective against lefties. Cover your eyes before I post these splits:
Sherrill vs RHB, 2010: .436/.515/.745
Sherrill vs LHB, 2010: .190/.314/.333Yet the first batter in the 9th inning was Scott Hairston, a righty. He got a base hit. Lefty Tony Gwynn Jr. sacrificed him to second, and the Padres – who clearly had read the scouting reports – pinch-hit for Everth Cabrera with righty Oscar Salazar.
Before we go further, I just want to drive this point home:
1) The winning run is on second.
2) George Sherrill cannot get righties out.
3) George Sherrill has already allowed a hit to a righty.
4) A righty is at the plate.At this point, you’d think – you’d pray – that Torre would have put down his Bigelow green tea and decided to do something to, you know, manage the team to a victory. Like bring in Jonathan Broxton, say.
But no. Sherrill remained in the game. Salazar bounced a grounder up the middle. And the Dodgers are further out of 1st place than they’ve been all season. And you wonder why I don’t want to see them trade for a starter. What we really need to see are losing teams who put their managers on the trade block, because that’s where the Dodgers really need an upgrade.
Sherrill didn’t really perk up much over the remainder of the season (though he did amusingly draw a walk in his first big-league at-bat), but he wasn’t completely useless, as the quote above alludes to. Even in this completely nightmarish season, Sherrill was still pretty effective against lefties, ending the year at .192/.286/.288 against them, which puts his OPS against LHP at almost exactly what Pedro Feliciano of the Mets – well-regarded as a lefty-killer – had. It doesn’t make his unholy lack of success against righties okay, of course, but it’s something.
The Dodgers were almost certainly not going to pick up Sherrill’s 2011 $6.5m option, an absurd amount for a non-elite reliever, even if he’d had a good season. Now? He’s the most obvious non-tender in baseball, and may be looking at minor-league deals at best for next year.
Travis Schlichting (C+)
3.57 ERA, 3.17 FIP, 5.6 K/9, 4.0 BB/9, 0.2 WAR
Mr. Schlichting managed to run his season in reverse. That is, he was more successful in the majors (1.324 WHIP, 7.9 H/9) than in the minors (1.437 WHIP, 10.5 H/9), despite going back and forth four times.
Schlichting’s season debut was also the highlight of his year, since he pitched four scoreless innings to pick up his first career win in a 1-0, 14-inning affair against Arizona in June. I joked at the time that he probably punched his own ticket back to AAA with the effort, and that’s exactly what happened. He came back up for a quick stint later in June before being sent down again, and by the time he’d pitched 2.1 scoreless innings in Arizona on July 3, he’d run his scoreless inning streak to 10 to start the season.
I, of course, jinxed the hell out of that, and his season went pretty downhill from there. In 12.2 IP over his final 10 games, Schlichting allowed 9 ER while walking more than he struck out. I bet you’ll never figure out how that happened!
Man, I never get tired of hearing that players have hidden injuries, only to see said injury get worse. And by “never get tired”, I of course mean, “hiding an injury just never ends well”. In this case, it’s Travis Schlichting…
“I was just trying to fight through it, because my mechanics were bad at the beginning of the year, and I think that’s when it started. I was just forcing it, and it kind of never went away. It wasn’t affecting me in games, so I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.”
Conte was unsurprised to hear the pitcher had a problem that he hadn’t talked about.
“That’s sort of part of the game,” he said. “Our job, of course, is not to let it get that far, so we always appreciate it when a player tells us when he has something going on. But we understand when players don’t.”
Figures. Assuming he’s healthy, Schlichting figures to be in the mix for one of the last bullpen spots with guys like Troncoso and Jon Link. Now will someone please fix his Wikipedia picture already?
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Next! Ronald Belisario‘s mysterious season! Russ Ortiz‘ predictable disaster! And Octavio Dotel‘s unfortunate legacy! It’s relievers, part 5!
It’s Friday…
July 16, 2010 at 1:13 pm | Posted in Garret Anderson, George Sherrill, James McDonald, Ramon Troncoso, Ron Belliard | 11 Comments…so why is everyone at work in such a foul mood? Anyway, the less said about last night’s game the better (I’m only half kidding when I say that watching it was less entertaining than watching the cat chase bugs around), so let’s touch on a few widely varied topics.
Let’s start off with the rotation, where James McDonald appears likely to get the Monday start in John Ely‘s place, and while that’s not confirmed, McDonald was scratched from his start today. McDonald missed over a month with a hamstring pull, and his three starts since his return have been mixed. Four shutout innings on July 1 was a nice start, but then he allowed four earned runs in 6.2 IP at Iowa on July 6. Then on the 11th, he allowed just one run over 6.1 at Omaha, but did so while walking four and striking out just two, so it’s hard to say what to expect. I’m not convinced that he’s any better than Ely is right now, but I’m glad to see him get a chance – and fortunately for him he gets to face the Giants.
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How many people were confused when George Sherrill got into last night’s game? I asked that on Twitter, and the answer was: a lot, since they thought he had been immediately removed from the roster. Think of this like the month of August, where trades are still allowed but only once players have made it through waivers. You never hear about it, but tons of players - even ones teams don’t really plan on trading – are placed on waivers, just to see who makes it through and is available to be used in deals. It’s kind of the same thing for Sherrill, who finds out if he clears waivers today and is on the roster until then. The only difference here is that if Sherrill is claimed, he can’t be pulled back by the Dodgers, unlike the usual August waivers I mentioned.
In a related topic, I suppose this is why waiver deals are supposed to be kept so secret. Imagine if Sherrill had come out and struck out the side last night? (I know, you’d probably need some sort of medicinal help to imagine that.) How would that have made things look then?
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BP’s Jay Jaffe says that the Dodgers have regressed more on defense from 2009 to 2010 than any other team in baseball:
Having accentuated the positive, we’ll move on to lambasting the negative, since eliminating it doesn’t seem to be an option, or even very much fun. And No. 1 on the list of teams that deserve it are the Dodgers, who went from leading the league in DE last year by a whole seven points to ranking 10th this year. Not surprisingly, one key culprit appears to be the loss of Orlando Hudson (+17), though Blake DeWitt and friends have been a respectable two runs above average at the keystone. At third base, Casey Blake has declined (+13 to -5), and Rafael Furcal has dropped off (+13 to +4), surprising given how much more Furcal-like he’s been when available. In the outfield, Matt Kemp has lost 10 runs himself (+8 to -2), a particularly rough blow when coupled with his 20-point drop in True Average. Luckily for the Dodgers, they’re second in the league in strikeout rate, minimizing the number of balls in play.
It’s really hard to argue with any of that.
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Ramon Troncoso‘s pitched in four games for the Isotopes, and he’s allowed two homers – though he has struck out five and walked just two. Only one of the two homers was at home, so it’s not all the ABQ effect, though last night’s was a walkoff. Not good.
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ESPN’s Buster Olney speculates on who may want to buy the Dodgers should the McCourts be forced to sell:
There is speculation within the sport that if the McCourts are forced to sell the Dodgers as they go through their divorce proceedings, the person who is most perfectly positioned to buy the team is Dennis Gilbert, the longtime agent and team executive. Gilbert lives in the L.A. area, is a known quantity to commissioner Bud Selig, and Gilbert essentially finished second in the bidding for the Texas Rangers last year — largely because Nolan Ryan chose to align himself with Chuck Greenberg. Gilbert knows a whole lot of people, big hitters in the money world, and if the Dodgers’ franchise needs rescuing — and in the sport right now, the team’s ownership troubles are regarded as a cover-your-eyes embarrassment — Gilbert will have the financial wherewithal to restore the club to its past greatness.
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Garret Anderson update: his 0-1 last night kept him steady at #10 on the list of “worst seasons in Dodger history“, though with only six more hitless at-bats, he’ll likely be up to #7.
Also, while I have a lot of respect for Tony Jackson, this part of his chat yesterday killed me:
Sam (Fullerton)
How much longer will the Dodgers leave the corpse of Garret Anderson out on the field before they waive him?Tony Jackson
That’s a good question, Sam, but I get the sense they’re not going to wait much longer, unless Garret suddenly gets hot. I do think Torre and the coaching staff likes having him around for what he brings to the clubhouse. He lockers next to Matt Kemp at home, and I think they think he has been a good influence. So it may come down to how long the front office is willing to go along with the wishes of the staff.
Maybe I’ve been off on a distant planet or something, but haven’t we heard plenty of whispers that people aren’t always thrilled with Kemp’s attitude, culminating in the benching that seemed to be a direct result of a spat he had with bench coach Bob Schaefer? So… wouldn’t that then mean that Anderson’s actually doing a terrible job at mentoring, too? Guess we can just add that to the list of things he can’t do anymore.
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As long as we’re getting on Anderson, I should be an equal opportunity naysayer and expand on the D I gave Ronnie Belliard in the first-half grades. He’s got one hit in his last twenty-eight at-bats, and he’s hitting just .220 on the season. Clearly, he’s not much of a contributor in the field, either.
I don’t think cutting him is as clear-cut as it is for Anderson, simply because there’s not an Xavier Paul behind him ready to step in. Chin-lung Hu isn’t any sort of a bat, and Ivan DeJesus needs to play every day after losing last year to injury. In addition, Belliard is really the only backup 1B on the team, unless you count Casey Blake.
So his spot is secure for now, but I’d really like to see if the Dodgers can cheaply go after Russell Branyan, as I suggested earlier this week. Think about it: dump Anderson, dump Belliard, keep Paul, acquire Branyan. You’d then have your non-catching bench split between two righties and two lefties, you’d be covered in the outfield with Paul and Johnson, Jamey Carroll could cover backing up 2B/SS/3B, and Branyan would be a true lefty power bat who could actually play some 1B. Even if you think that stretches the non-1B backup infield to have only Carroll, remember that it’s only six weeks until rosters expand, ABQ isn’t that far away should injury happen, and if worst comes to absolute worst, you could still stick Russell Martin at 3B for the late innings of a game where injuries mount until reinforcements arrive.
Claudio Vargas, Really?
June 19, 2010 at 9:50 am | Posted in Carlos Monasterios, Claudio Vargas, Garret Anderson, Matt Kemp, Nick Green, Ramon Troncoso, Travis Schlichting | 6 Comments
I’m not entirely sure I remember writing this on Twitter late last night, but apparently I did:
I could have sworn I just saw dodgers.com say Claudio Vargas may be the 5th starter soon. Clearly, I have alcohol poisoning.
Well, at least it was legible and without typos. And apparently it’s true:
Vargas could take over fifth-starter role
BOSTON — The Dodgers’ fifth-starter shell game has a new/old name in play: Claudio Vargas.
In his first start for Triple-A Albuquerque on Thursday night, the right-hander allowed one run on a solo home run in three innings, with four strikeouts and no walks.
Vargas was signed earlier in the week, two weeks after being cut loose by Milwaukee, where he had a 7.32 ERA in 17 relief appearances. The three innings was his longest outing of the year, an indication the Dodgers will try to stretch him out and make him a starter again.
I think the only indication here is that the rotation is in serious trouble, hurt by the injury to Chad Billingsley and the poor outings of John Ely and Carlos Monasterios – and that’s without having any idea how Vicente Padilla will do in his return today. I guess I don’t really understand why people are all that surprised Monasterios struggled last night; he’s a Rule 5 pick who’s striking out just 4.1/9. The fact that he’s been able to stick in the big leagues without completely embarrassing himself, and with some small successes, is remarkable in itself. It says far more about the Dodgers that he’s been asked to start so much than it does about him.
As for Vargas, well, why not? I actually was sad to see him go last season, mostly because the trade made no sense at all. It’s not like he’d come up until he shows he can get hitters out at AAA, so that’s at least a few more turns of the rotation.
Really, I think people are looking at the problem here in the wrong way. The issue isn’t really whether guys like Ely, Vargas, or Monasterios can pitch like All-Stars. They’re your #5 starter, and there’s plenty of teams in the bigs who have even larger issues at the back of the rotation. No, the problem is having more than one of them in the rotation at the same time. Now, part of that will be helped when Billingsley returns, hopefully as soon as his 15 days are up. But if and until Padilla proves himself… well, everyone seems to want the Dodgers to get a Cliff Lee or a Roy Oswalt. I’m not going to go through the reasons again why they’re so unlikely; we’ve been through that. But even if the Dodgers were able to get one of those guys, it likely wouldn’t be for another month. Maybe what they ought to be doing is getting a lesser veteran who wouldn’t cost as much – sort of like Jon Garland last year – right now, just to solidify things.
And no, I’m not talking about Pedro Martinez. I want someone who’s actually pitched this year. I’m talking more along the lines of (and I’m just tossing names out without really looking into salary concerns or doing a ton of research) Kevin Millwood or Jake Westbrook. They’re certainly not the piece that’ll push you to a championship, but they may be the stabilizing force in the middle of the rotation that will keep things from imploding until Billinglsey is healthy and you can work on getting a top starter.
(Although if you really want a good laugh, go read some of the jokers on the Dodger Facebook page, replying to the Vargas story. I’m not sure how some of these people managed to even turn their computer on; I particularly like the suggestion that the Dodgers should trade Vargas to Florida for Josh Johnson.)
Of course, Tony Jackson has the perfect last word on the situation:
Even when he is ready to go, well, he is still going to be Claudio Vargas.
Yep. He sure is.
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Ramon Troncoso got rocked, again. Travis Schlichting was effective, again. Whether you think Troncoso’s problems are that Torre ran him into the ground, that he was never that good in the first place, or both, there’s a roster move to be made today to activate Padilla, and it makes no sense to keep Troncoso over Schlichting. I’m not saying you demote Troncoso, but at least come up with an injury to get him some time off and away from the mound.
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I’m sure some people will read this as arrogance, but these anecdotes from Jackson’s story on Manny make me think that Matt Kemp is just hilarious:
Before any of the real reporters could approach him, a phony one did. Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp, holding his blue batting-practice bat like a microphone, immediately stuck it into Ramirez’s face and said, “How does it feel to be back in Boston?”
Ramirez gave Kemp about as much time as he was going to give anyone. After Kemp returned to the other side of the clubhouse, which was about seven feet away, he yelled at the assembled media, “Manny smells good today. If y’all get close enough, you can smell him.”
and…
When Ramirez stepped out of the cage after taking his first allotment of hacks, he received another loud cheer. Kemp, who had followed Ramirez into the cage, who had his right back pocket hanging out of his uniform pants and who, like Ramirez, was helmetless, stopped after one swing and turned to wave an acknowledgement to the crowd, feigning as if he thought the ovation was for him.
No complaints about immaturity, old people. That’s good clean fun.
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Yes, I saw that Garret Anderson hit a homer last night, and yes, it is making me reconsider the DFA-o-meter on the right sidebar, though not for the reasons you’d think. I still think he’s awful and want him to get cut, but since I don’t think the team will ever actually do it, I’m not sure I feel like updating it for the entire season.
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Hey, Nick Green signed with Toronto. Hooray! Gone for good.
A Weird, Wet, Worrisome Win
June 16, 2010 at 12:58 am | Posted in James Loney, Joe Torre, Rafael Furcal, Ramon Troncoso | 25 CommentsAnd thus ends one of the weirdest days in Dodger history.
On most nights, the out-of-nowhere news that Chad Billingsley was going on the DL approximately an hour before game time would be the only thing worth discussing.
On most nights, the best day of Rafael Furcal‘s Dodger career (five hits, two outstanding defensive plays) would be a great sign of hope that he could be the player we always hoped he’d be – and if not him, we’d be discussing James Loney‘s three doubles among four hits.
On most nights, an 12-0 laugher over the Reds would be more than enough to discuss and celebrate.
And on most nights, a rain delay of two hours and twenty-four minutes would be enough of an oddity that it would merit discussion of its own.
Yet, all I can think about are the beyond perplexing and downright disturbing decisions by Joe Torre. Not to focus on the negative in what was otherwise a fun game, but his choices here could have a far-reaching impact on the future.
Remember, Billingsley’s been on the DL for about six hours, long enough for me to write a post discussing how close the Dodgers are to a full-blown rotation emergency. That means it should be fresh in your mind that above all else, you protect your remaining starters, because if anything happens to any of them, this club is in enormous trouble. So while it was disappointing that Hiroki Kuroda‘s outstanding start was interrupted by the rain on a night you’d hoped he could give you innings, you happily take your 6-0 lead and you toss out a Justin Miller, or a George Sherrill, or a Jeff Weaver, and you run them out there until their arms fall off, knowing that you’ll need your important arms later this week and that Travis Schlichting is on his way to Ohio tomorrow.
What you absolutely do not do, under any circumstances, is run your 35-year-old starter with a history of injuries back to the mound after he’d been down for well over 2.5 hours (the delay was 2:24, but the Dodgers were batting before and after).
So Kuroda went back out for the fifth, and predictably loaded the bases on two hits and a walk. He managed to get out of it without allowing a run, but not before needing 27 pitches to do so and nearly letting the Reds back into the game.
Letting Kuroda go back out, at an enormous risk, bought the Dodgers… well, what, exactly? He pitched just one inning after the delay, so the argument that Torre wanted to save the bullpen for this week’s gauntlet doesn’t fly. No, the most likely scenario is also the most terrifying one: Torre wanted Kuroda to qualify for the win. You know, a “win”, an utterly meaningless statistic, but even less meaningful to a manager who’s only responsibility here should be to get his team out of this game without any major injuries.
It’s almost unspeakably reckless.
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But wait! There’s more. So Kuroda gets his five innings, leaving with the 6-0 lead on a wet field. Now, it’s time for Miller. Or Weaver. Or Sherrill, of whom the Dodgers own website noted had barely received an opportunity to pitch since returning from the DL. Or hell, I don’t care, A.J. Ellis. Yet who comes in? That’s right, Ramon Troncoso of all people, whose overuse has been such a running joke that Dylan Hernandez has made a cottage industry of the #DrNeilElAttrache tag on Twitter.
Now, it’s not actually the fact that Troncoso came into the game that bothered me, as he hadn’t pitched since Saturday. I still think it was a bad idea, but, fine. No, the problem here is that in the top of the 7th Manny hit a two-run homer, increasing the lead to 8-0, and then the Dodgers proceeded to load the bases against the hapless Micah Owings. Remember, at this point, the Dodgers hadn’t used a single batter off the bench, bizarrely not even replacing Manny for defense with a big lead on a poor field. This is when you bring in Ronnie Belliard or Reed Johnson or Garret Anderson to face Owings.
But Joe Torre left Troncoso in to hit with the bases loaded. Troncoso took a walk and was forced to run the bases. Furcal plated two, and by the end of the frame it was 11-0…
…and Troncoso stayed in to pitch the bottom of the 7th. After already pitching an inning, and running the bases, in a blowout game. Of course he did.
******
Let’s not let all this overshadow the win, which was great for a team that had struggled on offense (to put it mildly) recently, and particularly for Furcal and Loney. It’s just that this one fun game could have major repercussions thanks to some inexplicable decisions. You hope Kuroda doesn’t break down, again. You hope this isn’t just one more nail in the Troncoso coffin. But that’s all you can do – hope – and I’d prefer to hope that the manager of the team wouldn’t be actively contributing to those possibilities.
Besides, Steve Lyons loved the idea to bring Kuroda back in. That’s all the proof I need to know it was a terrible idea.
Ramon Troncoso’s Got More Problems Than Just Joe Torre
June 6, 2010 at 12:17 pm | Posted in Ramon Troncoso | 17 Comments
Any casual fan can see that Ramon Troncoso‘s been a disaster lately, and it’s pretty easy to toss the blame on Joe Torre, who ran him into the ground early in the season thanks in part to the unreliability of the other relievers, and in part because he’s Joe Torre.
But blaming this on Torre is the easy way out, and instead I’m going to make what’s probably an unpopular statement here: Ramon Troncoso was never as good as the public perception of him would make it seem.
A cursory glance at the bottom line would make that seem crazy. “But MSTI,” you complain. “His ERA was a sparkling 2.72 in 2009. This year, it’s up to 5.54! He’s clearly not the same pitcher!” But the thing is, while he’s certainly regressed some since last season, the fall isn’t as large as the ERA would make it seem.
Consider these factors:
1) His 2.72 ERA in 2009 was wildly misleading. It’s not a secret that ERA isn’t always the best indicator of pitching performance, ignorant as it is of defense and ballpark factors, among others. It’s even more unreliable for relievers, since you have to deal with the issues of small sample sizes and inherited runners. There’s a few stats which try to deal with this, but let’s check out xFIP (definition here; basically it says what a pitcher’s ERA “should” be once those other factors are all accounted for). Using xFIP, that fancy 2.72 ERA last season really should have been 4.22. That doesn’t seem quite as nice, does it?
2) He’s actually been regressing each year, not just this year. Check it out, from 2008-10:
xFIP: 2.96, 4.22, 4.90
K/9: 9.00, 5.90, 5.19
BB/9: 2.84, 3.70, 3.46 (okay, this one’s not as bad)
Plus, for someone who’s never had real strikeout stuff and relies on generating grounders…
GB%: 60.8%, 55.1%, 49.4%
FB%: 17.6%, 26.2%, 35.3%
That’s an enormously troubling trend, and the reason that we didn’t see these issues popping up so much last season was mostly because…
3) His home run luck from last year is evening out. Troncoso allowed just 3 homers in 82.2 innings last year, which is outstanding, but somewhat unsustainable. His 0.33 HR/9 rate was far below the major league average of 1.05, and he’s paying for it this year, allowing taters at a 1.73/9 rate.
4) His hot start to 2010 was just a decent start magnified by the disaster around him. At the end of April, Troncoso had allowed 5 earned runs in 13 innings, and struck out 7, about one every other inning. That’s nice enough, but nothing truly outstanding. Yet when you remember that the Dodger bullpen in April was missing Ronald Belisario and Hong-Chih Kuo, featured not one but two Ortizes plus the self-destructing George Sherrill, all following a pre-Ely, Haeger-fueled struggling rotation, that kind of performance looks like Dennis Eckersley, circa 1990.
5) A regression in 2010 wasn’t hard to see coming. While it may seem that 2010 is a suddenly epic disaster, it’s not as huge of a surprise as it may seem. In fact, last November when I sat down to write Troncoso’s player capsule in the Maple Street Press Dodgers Annual, I may have used DERA rather than xFIP, but I basically said that this could very well happen:
Explain this: Ramon Troncoso’s strikeout rate per nine innings dropped from 9.0 in 2008 to just 6.0 in 2009, and he combined that with a rising walk rate – up from 2.8 to 3.7. Even his reputation for being a groundball machine suffered, with his GB/FB rate dropping from 3.44 to 2.10. One might say that’s a recipe for utter disaster, yet Troncoso’s ERA dropped nearly a run and a half from 4.26 to 2.72. How was that possible? Troncoso may not have done a great job of keeping runners off the bases, allowing his WHIP to rise by ten percent, but he did do a better job of not allowing them to score. He improved his strand rate from 67.1% to 77.7%, and almost as important did a great job of keeping the ball in the park, despite the higher flyball rate. Troncoso pitched 42.2 more innings in 2009 than 2008, yet allowed just one more home run. In addition, he also owes a large debt to the Dodger fielders behind him; unlike bullpen colleague Jonathan Broxton, whose DERA (Defense Independent ERA) was more than half a run lower than his actual mark, Troncoso’s DERA of 3.46 is more in line with his other numbers than his 2.72 ERA would have you believe. That’s not to say that Troncoso wasn’t a valuable pitcher in 2009, just to not be surprised by a regression to the mean in 2010.
I’m surprised that the home run rate has jumped as high as it has, but more or less this is exactly what we’ve seen. Now, you may be asking “why has the home run rate jumped that much?”, and while there could be a few reasons, it’s hard to ignore the fact that…
6) You can’t completely absolve Joe Torre. Troncoso’s average fastball velocity has dropped from 92.8 MPH to 92.5 to 90.7 in his three seasons under Torre, and if the overuse hasn’t led to a full-fledged blowout, it seems clear the wear-and-tear has had some effect.
******
So what’s next? Hopefully the homer luck gets back to normal sooner rather than later, which ought to help, or that there is some sort of injury found which would explain the drop in velocity and groundball rates. But until either of those things happen, you’re looking at an overworked arm with declining velocity who’s allowing more flyballs than he ever has, without the stuff to get hitters to swing and miss at them. And that may just be the pitcher that Ramon Troncoso is now, because as much as we all respect him for going out there every day his name was called, he was probably never the top-flight relief arm many of us thought he might be.
We Can End This Experiment Now, Right?
May 20, 2010 at 12:07 am | Posted in Joe Torre, Manny Ramirez, Ramon Ortiz, Ramon Troncoso | 17 Comments
Hey, I’m not going to complain too much about (what appears to be, since it’s still the 4th inning as I write this) the end of a 9-game winning streak. They were going to have to lose sometime, so that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to basically punt a game by letting Ramon Ortiz start, which was never a good idea in any way whatsoever. Should we really be shocked that Ortiz got lit up, allowing five earned runs and nine baserunners in 3.1? Of course not. His ERA is now 6.30. It’s just not working. I know there’s no obvious answer as to who fills the last spot in the rotation until Vicente Padilla returns, but we all agree it just cannot be Ortiz again, right?
And then on top of it all, with Jeff Weaver warming and Carlos Monasterios wondering what he’s done to offend Joe Torre to make sure he hasn’t pitched in a week, who comes in? That’s right, Ramon Troncoso, who’s still on pace for 90+ games. The silver lining in Troncoso getting hit hard was that Ortiz got charged with the men he’d left on, but this was Troncoso’s third night in a row, and fourth in five nights. Am I really going to kill him for letting Adrian Gonzalez take him deep? Of course not. I’ll never understand Torre’s bullpen usage, ever.
That said, Jon Garland‘s struggling pretty hard right now too, having loaded in the bases with no outs, so it’s by no means out of the question that the Dodgers come back and win this game to keep the streak going. Hey, that’d be awesome, and it’d be a fantastic story. It still doesn’t make starting Ramon Ortiz right.
******
Manny Ramirez was a late scratch from the lineup due to some sort of foot injury he suffered during batting practice – details remain sketchy. I don’t know what’s going on with Dodger outfielders in pregame warmups, but between Andre Ethier‘s pinky, Xavier Paul getting hit in the head in AAA on the same night, and now this, Matt Kemp needs to be covered in bubble wrap and locked in the trainer’s room until the first pitch.
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