Podcast: 'Dugout Blues' episode 80 - Blessing, Arruebarrena, Guerrero

On this episode of "Dugout Blues," Jared Massey (Dodgers Nation) and I have special guest co-host Chris Blessing of ROTOscouting.com in for a visit.

I know, it's been awhile since I posted a podcast here. My apologies. I'm going to start doing it every week. You can also get to the podcast on Dodgers Digest via the "podcast" tab in the menu bar.

Anyway, we talk a lot about Erisbel Arruebarrena, who was, coincidentally, recalled to the Dodgers the day after we recorded. Blessing wrote a great scouting report on EA.

We also talk about Miguel Olivo showing 70-grade cannibalism by biting a piece of Alex Guerrero's ear off in an altercation during Tuesday's game. Olivo was released on Thursday.

We close with a lengthy Q&A session. Keep up with the great questions, folks.

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Look for new episodes of "Dugout Blues" every Wednesday. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and review us on iTunes. We want to make this the best podcast we can so we're always looking for suggestions and ways to improve.

If you have questions you'd like us to answer or certain topics/players you want to hear more about, feel free to email us (dugoutbluepodcast@gmail.com) or send us messages on Twitter (@JaredJMassey or @DustinNosler). You can also "Like" the podcast on Facebook. We always welcome audience participation.

Image credit: Joe Martin

Dodgers' 3B situation: strained hamstring, bitten-off ear, mediocrity

Coming into the 2014 season, third base was a position of strength for the Los Angeles Dodgers at the major league level in addition to great promise for the future with the inevitable move of Corey Seager from shortstop to the hot corner.

The same could not be said the last couple of seasons with the massive struggles of Juan Uribe, but following a 5-fWAR campaign, his excellent defense and suddenly solid offensive contributions were something to look forward to. Though he has walked less and struck out more through the early portion of this season, his overall line is nearly identical and his defense is still Grade-A stuff.

Unfortunately, what has not carried over is good health. A hamstring injury a few weeks ago sidelined Uribe, but he returned to the field after about a week off to recuperate. That week off could look amazing compared to what is likely in store for Uribe after he re-injured the same hamstring in Tuesday's game against the New York Mets.

Ken Gurnick reported the injury as a right hamstring strain, and David Vassegh chimed in with added information as well as words from Juan himself.

Uribe's injury is in the same spot on same leg ( right hamstring ). He said it felt worse than last time. Team will evaluate him tomorrow
— David Vassegh (@THEREAL_DV) May 21, 2014

With Hyun-Jin Ryu slated to be activated tomorrow from the DL and the Dodgers in need of a 25-man roster spot, a faux-DL stint for somebody was already a possibility. Uribe's injury simply makes it that much easier to free up a spot for Ryu while letting Uribe rest the hamstring in an effort to not have it linger all season long.

The bench would be short a guy but the club has gone that route before, and Ned Colletti has proven to care more about not cutting end-of-the-roster players in the fear that somebody claims them rather than keeping the most talented guys in the majors.

Of course, the Dodgers do have the perfect replacement, who is tearing it up in Triple-A Albuquerque: second baseman/shortstop Alex Guerrero, who entering play today was hitting .368/.411/.737/1.148 with a .482 wOBA and 191 wRC+ in just over 120 plate appearances. Yes, it's Albuquerque, but he is 27 already and the issue all along with him has been defense.

Unfortunately for Guerrero, tearing it up doesn't mean anything right now after he was physically torn up by teammate Miguel Olivo, who tried to attack Guerrero on the field; sucker-punched him in the dugout; and then sealed the deal and his fate in the big leagues moving forward by biting Guerrero's ear and taking a chunk out of it.

Guerrero's agent Scott Boras said plastic surgery to repair the ear is in order. How soon Guerrero returns to action remains to be seen, but putting him out of the question for the time being means third base will be handled by some combination of Justin Turner and Chone Figgins.

Turner is hitting .230/.280/.284/.564 with a .254 wOBA and wRC+ of just 60. Figgins sits at .211/.423/.263/.686 with a .340 wOBA and 119 wRC+. That's due to him somehow drawing six walks thus far. Neither is an appealing alternative to Uribe or Guerrero.

As I suggested on Twitter, it's pretty much come to this.

CALLING BLAKE DEWITT. #Dodgers
— Greg Zakwin (@ArgyledPlaschke) May 21, 2014

Photo credit: Dustin Nosler, Dodgers Digest

What must the Dodgers think of Alex Guerrero's defense?

With a monster weekend, Alex Guerrero has moved into the 1.100 OPS range at Triple-A Albuquerque. Word is that he is just not good enough in the field though to get a promotion. His defensive numbers are not that bad, so what are the Dodgers thinking?

If you're thinking of the present only, clearly a Guerrero/Dee Gordon platoon is the best way to go, and send Chone Figgins back down. You have to keep Justin Turner because he's the only other halfway competent backup shortstop unless you want to put Gordon or Guerrero there (which nobody does) when a backup is needed.

But the Dodgers want Guerrero to keep getting reps at second base. They've said all along they see him as not-yet-acceptable as a major league defensive second baseman, but with a few months of practice hopefully he gets up to at least the level where his bat can compensate for what his glove gives away.

First, his numbers. In 28 games at second base he has a .971 fielding percentage, a 4.75 range factor and a 1.1 Fielding Runs Above Average. That doesn't scream "unacceptable."  It actually sounds quite acceptable. But scouts are seeing something they don't like out there.

Dee Gordon, by contrast, in 20 games last year at 2B for Albuquerque, had a .990 fielding percentage and a 4.9 range factor. In the majors this year, he's slightly below-average in fielding percentage and slightly above-average in range factor, leading to an overall evaluation as "average major-league second baseman." Let's say Guerrero is worse in the field (and obviously on the bases), but stronger at the plate -- who offers the better overall package? Is there a way to get playing time for everyone that deserves it? Is Turner really going to get 300 plate appearances this year for the Dodgers?

Kindly, I think Gordon is capable of about a .275/.330/.355 triple-slash line going forward, which is about 10 percent below an average Major League hitter, and so costs the team about 8 runs over a full season, relative to average. His baserunning is historic, though. He looks capable of about +11 runs there. So, we're up to +3 runs above-average, offensively. His defense is maybe just a little below average for a second baseman -- so he'd probably give back five runs there compared to an average major league second baseman.  Now, in the full WAR framework, an average major league second baseman is worth two runs more than an average player, So, we get to an exactly average major league player, all in all. It's a kind of head in the oven/feet in the freezer kind of average, but average nonetheless when you add everything up.

Guerrero, on the other hand, can hit about Major League average, maybe better. If he's at least an average baserunner then, he'd have to be no worse than two runs below average over the course of a season to be the team's best option. Despite his stats, he is, by all accounts, not that. The last thing the Dodgers want is to get weaker on defense right now. But, if it came with enough bat to be worth it, that'd be something to consider.

Let's say that the scouts are right and he'd be a terrible second baseman right now, -20 runs below average over a season. How good of a hitter do you have to be to make that up? Pretty good. Say .360/.480 or so. I don't think he's that good. What if he was only bad at second base, -10 runs over a season? A .340/.450 line would make up for that. That's probably the upper bound of how good he might be. So in this case, it's probably true that there's no huge advantage to making Guerrero the every day second baseman over Gordon today.

There would be a huge advantage per game to be had by playing Guerrero as the right-handed side of the platoon, since Gordon is horrible against lefties and Turner is Turner. Having Guerrero available as a pinch-hitter sure would change the complexion of a lot of games. But the Dodgers want him to get better at second and that takes playing games at second. If they had a Bill & Ted phone booth, they'd get him a bunch of games at 3B too and turn him into a utility infielder overnight (they've started giving him some time at SS, presumably so they can see what they've got there and so he doesn't completely get out of practice). But they don't. He arrived in America only when he did, and the best the Dodgers can really hope is they get their act together and take charge of the playoff race so that they can have this ideal situation in place come September/October.

Same story for swapping out Zach Lee for Paul Maholm. Similar story for swapping out Joc Pederson for one of our lefty outfielders. Except in the case of Pederson, he has nothing much left to learn at Triple-A. He has to do the rest of his learning in the majors. So, if we want him contributing down the stretch, the sooner Ned Colletti can get this man out of town, the better. And if you can get a reliever that won't walk every other batter, or a late-inning defensive infielder back, that's a victory.

I'm with Ethier at Point Break Live... He's playing Johnny Utah #knittigfactory #Bklyn pic.twitter.com/iZ6OknZGtF
— David Vassegh (@THEREAL_DV) May 19, 2014

 Photo credit: Dustin Nosler, Dodgers Digest

Alex Guerrero, Joc Pederson might force Dodgers' hand for promotion

Los Angeles Dodger history is littered with the dried-out husks of never-beens who dominated Albuquerque, but in principle you get to the bigs by putting up video game numbers in Triple-A. If you're a AAA all-star, that's nice. You've got a solid little .900 OPS in AAA, good for you. Unless your team has a need at your spot, that doesn't get you anywhere.

Well, the Dodgers have a couple guys off to a screaming hot start in AAA. Furthermore they're not Cinderella stories where you're not sure if the performance is a mirage. These are guys you expected to see this from at some point, who are just saying "The time is now."

One is Alex Guerrero. After nine games in AAA, he's just got a triple slash line of .467/.568/.900. He has struck out ONCE in 37 plate appearances. Not only is that incredibly impressive in and of itself, it indicates that the top line results are not BABIP-driven or lucky. I haven't seen his fielding or heard detailed reports, but the numbers look good; just one error, and he's getting a lot of chances.

The Dodgers are already paying the guy major league money, have him signed for four years, and his arbitration clock is not an issue at all, so there is no financial reason to keep him down. Chone Figgins has already been demoted and Justin Turner is not hitting, so the time very much seems ripe to let Guerrero at least get the starts against lefties, be a frequent pinch-hitter, and maybe even get some time at shortstop when Turner is needed elsewhere. Sure, it's just nine  games, but he had a pretty solid spring and has years of experience in Cuba. He was expected to just need a little time to acclimate, but it looks to me like that job is done.

Dee Gordon is doing great, and a lot of it is legit improvement. But his performance is pretty luck driven. Yes, he's at .355/.397/.468 but that's with a .404 BABIP. Even giving him a ton of credit for being able to leg out some grounders and choppers, you can't expect more than maybe a .330 BABIP from him. Just to be simple about it, take away .075 from each of his numbers and you get a more realistic .280/.324/.393. Doing that and stealing a base every other game and playing halfway-competent defense (which is all he's doing) makes you a pretty OK player; a borderline regular. Guerrero looks like he might be more than that, and start to take the job back against most right-handed starters too. 

The Dodgers sent Figgins down and called up Jose Dominguez since they had worked the bullpen a bit harder than they'd like and needed an extra arm short-term. When the bullpen is rested again, and a position player can be brought back in, look for the callup to be Guerrero, not Figgins.

The word on Guerrero is that his defense "looks stiff." I don't really care how it looks; he's making a good number of the plays. Gordon, on the other hand, is not.  He was a terrible shortstop and now he is a bad second baseman. He's made a couple tough plays but on the other hand he's botched more than a couple easy ones. Net-Net, he's not doing that well in the field compared to other major-league second basemen. Guerrero shouldn't need to be perfect to get the job, he should just need to be the best option. Right now (or really in a week or two from right now if he keeps it up) it looks to me like he should at least get a chance at the major league level to show that he is.

The other farmhand demanding attention is Joc Pederson, who after 19 games in AAA at age-22, is slashing .417/.522/.736 with six steals. Joc's case for immediate promotion is much harder to make. In his case, a promotion does start the arbitration clock, plus there is no real place for him to play even though Andre Ethier and Carl Crawford are both off to lousy starts, and Matt Kemp and Yasiel Puig are off to mediocre starts. If Ned could work a trade of an outfielder for a catcher, say Nick Hundley, that might be what it takes for Joc to get a chance.

Photo credit: Dustin Nosler, Dodgers Digest

Dodgers 7, Diamondbacks 5: Give me ALL your Ryu Australia puns

The Dodgers avoided a bit of a late scare to hold off the D-Backs and sweep the opening 2-game series in Australia.

• Hyun-Jin Ryu was excellent in five innings, allowing two hits and a walk while striking out five. He left the game after injuring his toe. It, thankfully, does not sound serious.
• Yasiel Puig had himself a 3-hit night (double, two singles) and drove in two as well. Puig was also bitten by the injury bug as his back is sore.
• Dee Gordon and Juan Uribe also chipped in with three hits and a run driven in apiece.
• Adrian Gonzalez stole a base.
• Alex Guerrero had his first official plate appearance and struck out. He's almost certainly about to be sent down for some minor league seasoning.
• The bullpen ran into some trouble in the ninth with a big lead. Jose Dominguez fared the worst -- two walks and a 2-run single -- while Kenley Jansen was taken deep by Mark Trumbo.

Photo Credit: Dustin Nosler, Feelin' Kinda Blue

Lessons and questions from 2014 Dodgers' spring training

The Cactus League portion of the Dodgers' year is officially over. There are a lot of questions on this team. So what did we learn?

 Pitchers 

• Ross Stripling - out for the year; Tommy John surgery 
• Javy Guerra - 8 IP / 4BB / 5 K = designated for assignment
• Brandon League - 16 batters faced, 1 K, only 6 outs, 16 ERA = a real problem. 
• Josh Beckett - The rib removal seems to have helped. He's on the mound and looking "meh." Hopefully with some more time, he can be a contributor again 
• Seth Rosin - 11 IP / 2BB / 12 K = vindication of the curious Rule 5 pick, so how do we keep him around? 
• Jose Dominguez - 8IP / 2 BB / 9K / 3H = want 
• Kenley Jansen - 7IP / 1BB/ 7K/ 2H = ready 
• Julio Urias - got in a game on the major league side and more than held his own at age 17. 
• Dan Haren - not looking great, but OK 
• Hyun-Jin Ryu - the one starter looking good 
• Paul Maholm - not a good spring, but should come around to be mediocre 
• Clayton Kershaw / Zack Greinke - not looking that sharp but expect them to turn it on 
• J.P. Howell / Chris Perez - OK 
• Chris Withrow - not OK. back to the minors with you 
• Zach Lee - not ready yet 
• Jamey Wright - if he was a non-roster invitee like usual, he'd not be on the team right now. 
• Paco Rodriguez - supposedly discovered flaw in his mechanics that was his downfall last year. Some control issues but an OK spring all in all. 
• Red Patterson - Got a long enough look after a decent AAA season that I think they're looking at him for any emergency starts that need to be made this year. 
• Matt Magill - did not look horrible. Control was under control. 
• Stephen Fife - forgotten man, barely got in a game 
• Brian Wilson - he has a decent knuckler! 
• Chad Billingsley - we should be seeing him sooner rather than later 

Hitters

• Justin Turner - Hit well, fielded OK all around the infield, made the team 
• Miguel Rojas - confounded expectations by hitting well and fielding poorly. Not going to be needed. 
• Chone Figgins - still has a good eye. No evidence of being able to drive the ball. Fast, but not super-fast. Questionable how much he'll add right now, but the Dodgers want to give him a chance based on his approach. So much so, they cut Javy Guerra. 
• Dee Gordon - made a lot of nice plays at 2B. 13 pounds of muscle -> four triples. Still fast. Getting smarter about his game, and working harder. Probably the opening day starter. 
• Alex Guerrero - hit well, made the routine plays but they seem to want to start him in the minors anyway. 
• Yasiel Puig - Starting to conjure up Andruw Jones, never a good thing. A wasted spring. He better get it together soon and adapt to the way pitchers are approaching him. 
• Carl Crawford - looked terrible. Don't want to speculate, but just have to trust him to be there when the bell rings. 
• Andre Ethier - Showed up prepared, looked good, great attitude. Ready to play all 3 OF spots. 
• Matt Kemp - progressing on schedule. Beast mode cometh.
• Joc Pederson - flashed some potential and could be ready around mid-season. 
• Mike Baxter - for some reason, he will get AB this year. 
• Miguel Olivo - buh bye. 
• A.J. Ellis - terrible spring as a hitter. Good D though. 
• Tim Federowicz - even worse spring as a hitter than A.J. 
• Hanley Ramirez - does not look like last year's world-beater but more like the 2011/2012 Hanley. Maybe he's not getting last year's daily doses of lengthy shoulder treatment since it's just Spring. 
• Adrian Gonzalez / Scott Van Slyke / Juan Uribe - just what you'd expect. 
• Brendan Harris - also just what you'd expect, and not making this team. 
• Erisbel Arruebarrena - he made it to America, but not into a game. I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the majors this year at some point anyway. Declared a willingness to play wherever he's needed.

Attempting to project Alex Guerrero's statisitics for his rookie season

It is notoriously difficult to translate performance in the Cuban league to the major leagues. The competition level is similar to A-ball in the minors. There's only about a dozen people who have any kind of record in both places, so that's not much to go on.

Nevertheless, some have made now their best attempt to guess at what our own Alex Guerrero might offer in 2014.

In the field, people expect him to be maybe average at second baseman once he gets used to it. On the bases, he might be about average as well, or a little below. He was signed for his bat though, so let's look at that.

His last few years in Cuba he was hitting something like .310/.400/.600, with a 14 percent walk- and strikeout rate. That sounds good, but it might only be equivalent to .225/.285/.400 (according to the foremost Cuba stats guy, Clay Davenport)

Some have taken a stab at projecting his 2014 hitting line, and they mostly see him doing better than that in the batting average department.

Projector	AVG / OBP / SLG	BB% / K% / ISO
ZiPS	.259/.324/.386	8 / 14 / .128
Steamer	.250/.309 /.418	7 / 16 / .168
Davenport	.215 /.277 /.389	8 / 28 / .174
Pecota	.240 /.298 /.405	? / ??  / .165
My Own Crazy Ideas	.256/.316/.421	8 / 18 / .165

I don't have the Pecota details, but to get to that line, it'd have to be around an 8 percent walk rate and 25-26 percent strikeout rate.

My crazy ideas are based roughly on the idea of treating Cuba stats like A-ball, but also based on translating traditional scouting reports into Major League performance. If a guy has a 45 hit tool and 55 power tool, that's pretty much the line I'm giving you since 50 is average by definition. And that's what they say he has.

These five projections are not saying terribly different things. He looks to be about an average hitter, and if he's capable of playing something close to a major-league average second base, that's really good. His hitting projection is not average for a second baseman, it's average for all hitters. That makes him a solid regular approximately worth his salary ($28 million / 4 years = $7M AAV). This winter, free agents expected to give about that level of performance (call it ~2 Wins Above Replacement) got right around that same dollar figure give or take. That's guys like David Murphy at $6M, James Loney at $7M, Chris Young at $7.25M and Marlon Byrd at $8M.

And critically, it's a comparable or higher level of performance than can be expected from Mark Ellis next year, so the Dodgers are likely to have improved their team overall and paid a fair price to do it.

Dodgers do well defending the corners, could use help up the middle

The standard theory of baseball defense says to be strong up the middle. If you have a good shortstop, second baseman, center fielder and maybe a catcher, you have good defense.

The corner positions don't matter as much. Certainly, the middle positions are harder to play and you need to be a better athlete to do well there. An average SS is a better defender than an average first baseman (or even a good 1B). Because fewer people can play an adequate major league SS, you're more willing to put up with a weak bat there. That's the essence of the rationale for the positional adjustment in the WAR framework.

First defense is rated relative to others at your position in terms of runs saved over/under average and then you get the positional adjustment thrown in -- more runs for middle defenders and runs taken away for corner defenders as you move down the spectrum C, SS, 2B, CF, 3B, RF, LF, 1B. It's about five runs per season for each notch down (although 2B/3B are about the same and LF/RF are about the same) -- so catchers get +12.5 and 1B get -12.5. Designated hitter would be another notch below 1B.

What about chances? First basemen get the most chances by far, if you count catching throws from other infielders. But that's such an easy job, the average 1B fielding percentage is around .994 (vs., say, 3B is at .959 -- seven times the error rate). If you try to ask about just batted balls, these also have varying grades of difficulty. Fly balls are easier than opposite field grounders, which are easier than pulled grounders, generally speaking.

On the individual side, the atomic measurement of all the modern fielding metrics is something like plays made - expected plays made, where expected plays made depends on how many balls were nominally the responsibility of a fielder and how fieldable each were (i.e. how likely is an average major league defender at that position to make that play). As a result, the runs saved above/below average defender at your position is a really nice idea for a metric. It is labor-intensive and somewhat subjective, but analysts are doing it fairly well nowadays. Of course Adrian Gonzalez is not a better defensive player than Matt Kemp, but he's better at 1B than Matt Kemp is at CF, and that's what's interesting in terms of the Dodgers defensive situation

The Dodgers have turned the standard theory inside out. They have above average defenders for their position at all four corners, and below average at all four middle spots.

In 2013, counting everyone who played at the position, the Dodgers were rated as follows (in units of runs saved per 150 games) in terms of each position relative to average at that position:

1B	LF	RF	3B		CF	2B	SS	C
7	8	3	23		-20	-4	4	-6

That's +41 on the corners and -26 up the middle. This difference of 67 runs between the two groups -- the biggest in baseball. Next were the A's at 54 and the Yankees at 45. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Nationals' middle defense was 46 runs better than their corner defense. The Cardinals, Brewers and Red Sox were also toward the bottom.

So, there are both winning and losing teams, big market and small market teams, at both the top and bottom of the list. How can we judge if this non-traditional strategy is effective? First off, we can just add up all the numbers. A run is a run. That's a total of 14 runs above average from all fielders. That's in the top third of baseball teams.

Going into 2014, the situation is about the same. Mark Ellis is gone, but hopefully replaced by other average defenders. Otherwise it's the same starters. I'll get into details about my projections later, but based on who I think is going to play how much where, I see the 2014 picture as substantially similar to 2013.

Certainly all four corner spots should be above-average, while all four middle spots have a pretty good chance of being below-average. Is this going to work for them? Well, team defense is perhaps even harder to measure than individual defense. The Dodgers' outfield situation makes a point about team defense -- it doesn't matter if Kemp is not a great center fielder because he's surrounded on both sides by guys with incredible range in Carl Crawford and Yasiel Puig. So, if they race over and catch a ball in his zone, it's still an out.

The simplest way to measure team defense is just how many balls in play became outs. That's called defensive efficiency. Various attempts have been made to spruce it up for double plays, park effects, etc. The Dodgers ranked about in the middle of the pack last year, maybe a little above the median. A lot depends on Alex Guerrero and Kemp. With Guerrero, we'll just have to see he has to offer this spring -- not much to go on yet. Kemp was looking less and less like a viable center fielder before his injuries. Given his serious ankle injury and hamstring issues, a reasonable person might expect him to be terrible out there this year (although, I do think we're going to see him hit like we're used to).

We can hope for the best, but the team's best lineup in the second half might be Kemp in a corner with Puig or Andre Ethier -- or even Joc Pederson -- in CF.

Photo credit: File photo