Matt Guerrier, pulling out hair
For regular readers of this space, you’ve likely noted by now that I keep a pretty positive vantage: the glass if half-full, the bill jar is half-empty, and smoking is always allowed. However, I’ve likely been remiss to this point in not calling out typically-reliable reliever Matty Guerrier for wholly stinking up the mound since the All-Star break.
At what point would this be a better look?
Consider that in his last ten outings, Guerrier sports a comical ERA of 18.00. His ERA for August? 20.25. Dude has been ticketed with an earned run in six of his last seven appearances, a run low-lighted by his stale outing on Sunday against Seattle.
Amongst all MLB relievers with at least 40 innings pitched, Guerrier currently ranked 116th in ERA (4.94), 119th in walks/hits per inning (1.53), 92nd in strikeouts-to-walk ratio (1.81) and 106th in opponent on base percentage (.347). In “late and close games,” as defined by Baseball-Reference.com, (focusing on situations in the 7th inning or later, with the batting team tied, ahead by one or with the tying run on deck), Guerrier, in 43 of those scenarios, is surrendering a .333 on base % and a .300 batting average. And that’s supposed to be his bread-and-butter. This season it’s been more like Shedd’s Spreading hits all over the damn place …
Guerrier has pitched in a great many games this year, 59. Last year he tossed in 73, his career high. However, of the 18 relievers that have thrown in that many or more games in ‘08, Guerrier nearly hits the mat in ERA. He’s 4th worst. Much has been made of the fatigue-factor attributed to such a workload, yet when pitching off 0-2 days of rest (55.1 innings), his ERA is 5.05. When coming off 3-6+ days (6.2 innings), it’s 4.03. The former no doubt offers a far better sampling, but the latter is still troubling.
All told, Guerrier’s 4.94 is nearly a run-and-a-half chunkier than his career ERA of 3.54. The Twins need to figure this out. In our 15 August games heading into Monday’s series with Oakland, Twin starters have gone 6 or more innings on 10 occasions. In 9 of the 15, the bullpen has surrendered at least one run. Between the rotation and Nathan, the bullpen needs to finds more zeroes.
Using the crazy Pitch FX technology the league now has in all parks as a means of tracking all pitches from both release point and crossing of home (in addition to horizontal and vertical break), here’s a small sample of Guerrier outings (compliments of Brooks Baseball) from June 2 against the Yanks, and also from Sunday. Surely, these contrasting numbers don't tell us all about the pitcher's struggles, although they do give some indication about his descending speed and accuracy. Below that, please also take a look at some graphings which further chart the reliever’s plight (blue line is league average):
6/2/08
Pitch Avg. Speed Max Speed Avg. H-Break Avg. V-Break # Thrown Strike% Time toPlate
Fast 91.66 ------- 93.4 ------- -4.70 -------- 9.96 -------- 16 --------- 68.75 ------- 0.419
Slider 86.40 ------- 87.4 ------- 0.53 ------- 4.17 -------- 2 --------- 50.00 -------- 0.422
Curve 80.45 ---------- 80.5 --------- 4.86 --------- -3.39 --- 2 -------- 50.00 -------- 0.484
8/17/08
Pitch Avg.Speed Max Speed Avg. H-Break Avg. V-Break # Thrown Strike% Time toPlate
Fast 90.94 ------- 92.7 ------- -4.39 -------- 11.12 -------- 11 --------- 54.55 -------- 0.414
Slider 85.62 ------- 86.3 --------- 1.91 ------- 4.24 --------- 5 ---------- 20.00 --------- 0.436
Curve 79.45 -------- 80.2 ----------- 5.81 -------- - --3.16 --- 2 ---------- 0.00 ------- 0.477
(From Fan Graphs):
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