Guerra makes an impression
Posted on March 9th, 2008 – 11:03 AMBy Joe Christensen
FORT MYERS — Deolis Guerra was one of 12 players cut from Twins camp this morning, but the 18-year-old righthander moved to the minor-league complex knowing it was mission accomplished.
Guerra, a 6-5 righthander, is one of four players the Twins acquired from the Mets for Johan Santana last month. In two Grapefruit League games, he pitched two innings, allowing no runs, two hits, no walks and one strikeout.
“I feel like I did what I’ve got to do,” Guerra said.
More important than how Guerra performed is how he conducted himself. His big league teammates were impressed. Guerra was a highly coveted amateur prospect in Venezuela and had his pick of teams when he signed with the Mets in 2005.
So it was naturally surprising for him, when the Mets shipped him off in the trade. After three weeks in Twins camp, however, Guerra has found a new home.
“I feel really comfortable,” he said. “I really like the team. The guys here, and how they treat you, it’s pretty good.”
The Mets had Guerra pitching in the Florida State League as a 17-year-old in 2006 and as an 18-year-old last year. The Twins are far more patient with prospects. I predict they’ll start him at Class A Fort Myers and wait for him to dominate the FSL before promoting him to Class AA.
It’s hard for anybody not to get excited about this kid’s upside. His birthday is coming April 17. That’s when he turns 19.
55 Responses to "Guerra makes an impression"
Guerra is a true 18 year old phenom.
He’s the real deal, not overhyped like Joe Fraud Mauer.
Guerra is a monster talent, and I can only hope the Twins don’t let him ROT in the minors when he very well could be the number 2 starter on this staff by the end of next season.
When are we going to get some ink in the Sunday paper? Please make my $1.75 worth it next week, it’s baseball season…!
I agree with Tom. There should be a lot more ink on the Twins and their minor league system. Of course, the editors cut back on minor league coverage last year, foolishly. Oh well, I’ve cut back to two days a week, and frankly, it may go down to zero soon. I feel bad about killing the trees for paper that is mostly ads and other stuff I don’t want to read.
As for baseball, it sure would be nice to have Phil Hughes in a Twins uniform.
Mike-So you want Phil Hughes in a Twins uniform? How do know Hughes was ever on the table in the Johan trade talks?
Once again, my local radio station, KMHL-Marshall, didn’t broadcast the game.
What’s with that? Are they in the Twins Radion Network or not?
Can’t get any other station in my house…..
No kidding romer. Although I did here KMHL is supposed to be broadcasing games this year. Maybe Spring Training ones aren’t included.
I used 105.5 KMGM out of Montevideo/Granite Falls last year to get my Twins coverage.
I don’t know anything. I expressed I’d rather have Hughes. Nothing more or less.
You got to love it: Almost two weeks into spring training, not one of our three CF candidates is hitting more than .238.
Hey, at least Span walked four times today. That’s a start, right?
I do like the fact that Gomez has scored 4 times during his 5 times on the bases. The one time he didn’t score was because he fell going to 3rd.
That is the advantage to devastating speed, you don’t have to get on base as often to score a lot of runs. I do believe with experience he will be on base more and more. It isn’t all bad.
Thanks Kyle B. I’ll give it a try, but I’m 15 miles south of Marshall. I’ve found the list of local stations (New Ulm, Windom, etc.) but I can’t get them in.
There were some games on KMHL-Marshall a week or two ago, but not lately.
It’s very possible that in 3 years, the Mets could offer Johan even up for Guerra & twins would turn them down. (Keeping payroll out of it) That would be sweet.
Ny was not going to give up Hughes … get over it …
I’m starting to get buyer’s remorse, after buying into the ST euphoria about the coming season and all its interesting developments. I’m starting to come back to reality concerning a number of things:
1) 3B was a hole last year. SS wasn’t. Considering both defense and offense, and combining the two positions of SS & 3B, I don’t see any aggregate improvement in the combination of those two positions…. because of Lamb’s defense and Everett’s offense.
So in a roundabout — but very real — way, the “hole at 3B” hasn’t been solved.
2) No matter who wins the CF position, it’ll only be stop-gap when compared to Hunter. Pridie (who I like) is a Tyner type; Span is a AAA type; and Gomez is a green-rookie type.
None of them will contribute either defensively or offensively to the level that Hunter did.
3) Harris at 2B has me pessimistic. He had a declining season last year and he hasn’t been getting it done yet. He might not be a good fit with the Twins, who knows.
2B is down both defensively and offensively compared to Castillo.
But…
4) DH is solved.
So…
There’s still two problems net, right where we were at the end of last season (3B & DH).
And I haven’t started talking about the pitching thing with the loss of veterans being solved by the declining Livan.
I hope we can finish above the White Sox, but I doubt it.
Not griping, just trying to be real. And I’m not ready to go after BS and his moves really.
But I’m wondering why we didn’t go after Rowand and Bedard but instead we have that extra payroll sitting idle.
Romer,
agree about the CF hole… still early in the spring, but I suspect that the Twins might want to try some other options there (Lofton,Crisp,?) while Gomez and Span spend some time at the minors.
Pridie looks like a decent bench player, but I’d rather have someone like Ruiz (who’s been having a monster spring) on the team.
Harris looks like a utility player and would be an upgrade over Punto. I like what I’ve seen of Casilla so far, maybe he will get a change…
If the CF situation continues, I would so love to see the Twins packaging Punto and a reliever for a CF…
romer-A tad pessimistic there!Why don’t you leave this board for a couple years and come back when we have these holes filled.
Any Twins trade package involving Punto would have to include Gardy.
If Gardy stays, Punto stays.
thrylos98 - Ruiz is intriguing, but do the Twins use a roster spot solely for a pinch-hitter?
Ruiz can be a backup 1B/OF/DH (same roles that Randy Bush and Gene Larkin had in the championship teams and since then has been missing.) He can spell Morneau at 1B and would be a better possibility there than Buscher (is there a need for another LH bat on the bench?)
The other issue about the roaster is that it is a very bad idea to go north with 12 pitchers, esp. with unproven position players… The bullpen is fine and we do not need a 6-man rotation… A spot is better spent for Ruiz than for a pitcher who would get 5 innings a month instead of working on his stuff at AA/AAA
Ruiz would be one of the worst fielding OF’s this team has had if they put him out there. Have you seen this guy. He has the body of Matt LeCroy. He can hit but the only position I could see him playing is 1B and that position is pretty well covered.
Geno
Hank Steinbrener stated that Hughes was offered for Santana so that is how people know that he was on the board. Now that trade was not available for very long but his was offered.
“”3B was a hole last year. SS wasn’t.”"
Bartlett put up a .265/.339/.361 line last year, with a grand total of 32 XBH for an 88 OPS+. He did that while committing 26 errors.
Now one can argue his range makes up for the errors–you might even be right–but it’s simply incorrect to say that SS wasn’t a hole last year. It was.
And while he won’t be an all-star, I have a hard time believing Everett won’t approximate Bartlett’s 88 OPS+ last year, most likely with better defense. At the very worst, Everett(2008) and Bartlett (2007) should be a wash.
Meaning anything gained at 3b is a net gain when you combine the two positions.
jama-Hank Steinbrener say Hughes was on the board!That makes it true?As i recall he changed his position about 20 times.Last time i checked,he is George’s son.I said when the Johan trade bit started that everything we heard was pure speculation.The only thing we know for sure is the final package.
Not only does Guerra have physical talent beyond his age but he also has maturity beyond his age.Just because the Mets seem to rush his development, doesn’t mean that we have to overcorrect the other way.If he is good enough to rival King Felix at age 20,so be it
Geno
You are dillusional if you think Hughes wasn’t at least offered in a trade. Everybody and their mom (Including Joe and LEN III) reported that Hughes was at least offered at some point in the off season. Then Hank the Tank confirms that and you still don’t believe it? Other than trading for Hughes what would have had to happen for you to believe that he was offered?
Remember folks we still have 3 weeks left of ST, as for the hole at third Lamb has been injured but it doesn’t sound too serious. I actually agree that it would be nice to have Kenny Lofton start in center until one of the youngsters is ready, I think both Gomez and Span have a great upside in the next couple of years & pridie looks good but he needs to work one arm strength. Monroe will be our DH and has been looking good so far this spring. Our CF’s have to work on getting on base but Span so far seems to be in front in that category, Gomez please stop trying to hit the ball out of the park HR’s will come with just good contact.
jama-So i’m dillusional,that really hurts my feelings.Where did Joe and LEN3 get their information from(uummm)
I’m assuming they got their information from a credible source. They do have ethics and LEN III has specifically stated that he won’t post things with out making sure they are accurate.
Again what would cause you to believe he was offered other than him actually being traded? I’m just curious because going by your thoughts nobody is ever offered in a trade until the trade actually goes through.
The Twins would be legitimate contenders this year if they had accepted a Hughes/Cabrera offer. But long term, the team will be better with Guerra/Gomez. Guerra projects as another Hughes (they even have similar size and motions). But, whereas Cabrera’s upside is a league-average center fielder at best, Gomez will be a star for a lot of years. Also, the Yankees were reluctant to give up anything more than those two. Humber and Mulvey can be useful pieces in the near future.
Hughes being on the table does not mean the Yankees public maximum offer of five years would have been accepted by Santana/Greenberg.
No contract = No trade.
GET OVER IT.
cmath — agree 100% with that last post!
sane — my gut feeling is exactly that. Twins and Yanks reached a deal, but Santana nixed it. I have nothing to go on but my gut (although it seems to be proud of itself lately, the way it’s swelling with pride…) and we won’t know for certain for 10/20 years, but it would sure make sense.
We don’t know long term it will be better. As somone pointed out to me yesterday, you can’t predict the future that well. No one can.
One thing for 100% certain, the Twins are worse off this year, and every year Hughes pitches in the majors and Guerra doesn’t. The present also counts, not just the future.
sane and GBG: I thought the contract was the sticking point for both the Yankees and the Red Sox. But why not at least agree in principle to a deal and let Santana try to come to an agreement with the 72-hour deadline in effect? If they make the deal at the winter meetings and Santana can’t work something out, they still have a couple of months before pitchers and catchers report to work a deal with another team.
On the other hand, perhaps Smith wanted a preliminary agreement on the rough terms of a contract before making a deal. If Greenberg made demands and both Theo and Hank said no way to them, Smith might have needed to go back to the drawing board and try to string the Mets along hoping they’d add Martinez to their deal. In the end, they didn’t add to it, so he got what he could.
One thing’s for sure, the contract was a huge reason why the Twins did not get what people expected them to. Still, under the circumstances, they got quite a lot for him, imo.
usafchief, Bartlett’s role was as a tablesetter. And you forgot to mention his 23 SB’s.
Sure his stats were rather unspectacular, and expectations were higher.
But he had an injury problem, meaning that he didn’t leave you with disgust re the SS position like when there is a true hole….and hopelessness.
That’s what DH and 3B made us all feel like last year.
Bartlett wasn’t close to being a “hole” last year, he was just a disappointment.
GENO, you’re right about me being on the pessimistic side.
But using Harris and Lamb to fill the holes at 2B and 3B reminds me of the Ponson and Ortiz hopes from last Spring. Just kind of a stop-gap thing.
And someone else blogged that Gomez should start at AA and begin to learn a major league swing. Not even a stop-gap thing with him. More like a hole in progress.
It’s still interesting and okay to be a fan, but not a euphoric one.
BS should have moved progressively and pulled the Santana-trade trigger at least a month before he did and then made a serious effort going after the likes of Rowand or Bedard….if he wanted a chance at a euphoric season.
As it is, it’s a stop-gap season with prospects for 2009 looking okay.
Call it whatever you want, disappointment or hole, it’s all the same to your original point, which was ‘3B and SS collectively this year won’t be any better than last year.’
The simple fact is Bartlett DID put up those stats last year, so whether or not he SHOULD have done better is irrelevant. SS was a problem last year, offensively AND quite possible defensively as well.
If Lamb just puts up a .750 OPS and doesn’t stumble over every other ground ball, those two positions combined almost have to be better than last year, regardless what Everett hits.
Bartlett rated at or near the top of AL shortstops in all advanced metrics, which factor in errors. Everett is even better defensively, but he won’t come close to what Bartlett brings offensively, disappointing or not. All things considered, Everett is much better than Harris at short, that’s why the Twins signed Everett after acquiring Harris. Thus Bartlett is way better than Harris. Still, it’s worth it to give up Bartlett to get a star caliber hitter in Young.
Romer: I could see sending Gomez to AAA, but why AA? He dominated in AA in the second half of the year two years ago. Last year he more than held his own in AAA before getting called up to the majors, where he held his own before getting hurt.
A couple of months of Span or Pridie and you’ll be crying for Gomez. Lots of guys struggle in spring training. Let’s give him a chance to get hot before we send him to Siberia.
Yanks sign another centerfielder…. Melky available
YANKEES TO SIGN BILLY CRYSTAL, STAR OF STAGE AND SCREEN, AND INVITE HIM TO MAJOR LEAGUE SPRING TRAINING
The New York Yankees today announced that they will sign Billy Crystal, star of movies, television and Broadway to a one-day contract and invited him to Major League spring training.
Crystal will join the Yankees on Wednesday, March 12 to work out with the club at Legends Field in Tampa, Fla., and then play in the Yankees’ game on Thursday, March 13 vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates at Legends Field. Commissioner Selig approved the Yankees’ extension of the contract to Crystal.
Crystal, who will turn 60 years old on March 14, will don uniform No. 60 with the Yankees. He has created one of the most versatile and prolific careers in the entertainment industry, finding success in front of the camera, as a performer in film and television, and behind the scenes as a writer, director and producer. The Hollywood icon has starred in movies such as Running Scared, Throw Momma from the Train, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers, Mr. Saturday Night, Forget Paris, Hamlet, Deconstructing Harry, Analyze This, Monster’s Inc. and America’s Sweethearts.
“I’ve been waiting 50 years for this call,” Crystal exclaimed. “I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of the Yankees and Commissioner Selig. I know this’ll be tougher than the Broadway Softball League, but I’m looking forward to helping the younger players…which, by the way, is all of them. Oops, I have to go, Scott Boras is on the phone.”
A captain of his Long Beach (N.Y.) High School baseball team, Crystal batted .348 in his senior season. He is regarded as one of the best baseball players in Hollywood today.
“The Yankees are excited to welcome the newest member of our team known for his humor and wit as well as his undying love for the Yankees,” said Lonn Trost, Yankees Chief Operating Officer. “The Yankees are very grateful to the Commissioner’s office for allowing us to extend this special invitation to Mr. Crystal.”
In 2001, Crystal directed and produced the film *61 which chronicled the historic seasons of Yankees greats Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they sought to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. The film garnered 12 Emmy nominations including nods for “Best Director” and “Best Made for Television Movie” and also earned Crystal a prestigious Director’s Guild nomination.
Crystal made his Broadway debut in 2004 with 700 Sundays, an autobiographical one-man play that became the highest grossing non-musical in the history of Broadway and garnered Crystal the Tony Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the prestigious Drama Desk Award. A dedicated human rights advocate, Crystal co-hosted, with Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg, all eight “Comic Relief” telethons on HBO which brought the plight of the nation’s homeless to the public and raised over $40 million for housing and medical care for the needy.
A native of New York, Crystal has been married for 37 years to Janice, with whom he has two daughters, Jennifer and Lindsay, and granddaughter’s Ella and Dylan. He proclaims himself to be a lifetime fan of the New York Yankees, idolizing Mickey Mantle during his youth.
If the Slowey - borrowed hat story is true, some reporter needs to ask Slowey who he blames for his becoming an ass?
Is it his father, his mother or himself?
Cmath, do you really pay any serious attention at all to the “Advanced Defensive Metrics” available? IMO all of them combined, plus a couple bucks, will get you a cup of coffee.
I would be shocked if even one major league team pays passing attention to them. GIGO.
By the way, are you working for Gomez’s agent or something?
do you really pay any serious attention at all to the “Advanced Defensive Metrics” available
Yes, I do. I’m not a fan of Range Factor, but Zone Rating and its derivatives are the best we have to go on. So I trust them the most. They’re still flawed. But just because Copernican astronomy was flawed, wise scholars didn’t abandon it in favor of Ptolemaic astronomy.
USAFChief,
What is your choice for defensive skill measurement? Fielding average?
Make one putout and then avoid making any more plays for the season and you have just produced a 1.000 (perfect)fielding average.
Nobody buys into that metric.
Rectal thermometer reading would be a better measurement of defensive skill.
Yeah but Bartlett was part of the trade that brought in Delmon who is a huge upgrade over what we had in LF last year.
usachief, I said “Bartlett’s role was as a tablesetter. And you forgot to mention his 23 SB’s.” And a .367 OBP (2006) followed by an injury-ridden .349 (2007) ain’t bad when compared to Everett’s .290 and .281 in those years….not to mention his 33 SB’s in 843 AB’s vs. Everett’s 13 in 734 AB’s in those years.
But you perhaps tire of objective analysis. So I’m hoping Everett breaks out of his National-League-8th-in-the-order prison and STARTS to approach Bartlett’s offensive production in the special role he will have and that Bartlett DID have.
And as others have shown you, Bartlett was already decent in approaching Everett defensively.
And I remember a few games lost last year when Cirillo/Buscher/Watkins/whoever couldn’t spear the line drive/hard grounder down the line and/or over the bag last year and opposition runs would score. Santana got “screwed” a couple times like that.
Expect the same from Lamb. He’ll never approach the superb Punto defensively. Can he make up for it with his offense? Looks like a wash to me, in “pointer” of fact. Hence, about the same from 3B as last year.
And I am, despite usachief’s black-washing of Bartlett’s stats, not encouraged by Everett’s .182 BA this ST. But I’m hoping he gets going.
3B and SS don’t look like big problems to me. But they could be the last nail in the coffin because of the big problems at 2B and CF.
If my prognosis is correct, let’s see if BS — unlike TR — moves to fill these holes with all that extra payroll and AAA starting pitching.
Or if we wait — with higher ticket prices — until 2010 for these problems to be resolved.
Expect the same from Lamb. He’ll never approach the superb Punto defensively. Can he make up for it with his offense? Looks like a wash to me, in “pointer” of fact.
Seriously? You think Lamb’s defense is so terrible that it actually offsets the upgrade offensively comparred to Punto?
If the Slowey - borrowed hat story is true, some reporter needs to ask Slowey who he blames for his becoming an ass?
Well, this all but confirms that story is false. I’ve seen reports that was a shoe, and now a hat…
Yeah, it didn’t happen.
Sy: To answer your question, I prefer to judge defense with my own two eyes, or better yet, rely on the eyes of those who have spent their adult life around the game. I do not believe defense in baseball can be reduced to numbers, as things such as positioning, reaction time, intuition, soft hands, arm strength and accuracy, ’smarts’ etc don’t measure easily but play a large role in determining how good someone is defensively. Offense is relatively easy to measure. Defense isn’t.
I mistrust most defensive metrics, and I think anyone who takes a hard look at how most of the data is collected will mistrust them as well (the newer defensive metrics rely on human beings observing play–via watching the games on TV in the case of BIS–and are subject to the same biases and judgements that affect error rates). I do have some faith in the purely numbers-based rates such as team defensive efficiency.
If you like them, fine. I don’t.
As to the original point, I stand by my opinion that the Twins will get more from the combination of 3B/SS this year than last. Time will tell.
OK then. By my eyes, Jason Bartlett was the best shortstop in the league and Brendan Harris was the worst, defensively. How can you refute that?
This is why metrics are important: They allow us to have a framework with which to talk to each other when we disagree. And they help us identify biases that we didn’t even know we had. They’re not perfect, but I think we all could use a little humility and accept that our scouting eyes aren’t perfect either.
But I agree that, all things considered, the Twins are better on the left side of the infield this year than last year. Bartlett is only slightly better than Everett. But Lamb is much better than Punto. Lamb’s offense will more than offset his defensive liabilities relative to Punto.
Punto was not that great a third baseman by the metrics. He looked good, diving around and hustling for balls in the shortstop position that Bartlett had in his back pocket. But he oled a lot of balls over there. He ranked 13th in baseball for ZR, which is solidly mediocre. And his hitting was historically bad for a third baseman–one of the five worst hitting lines in the history of the game over there.
I agree that no useful fielding metric exists. The human eye has its biases also, but the opinions of many (including experts and ourselves)can be tuned into a consensus that tells us: Joe Mauer is good, Matt LeCroy is not - no metric required.
Comparing offense plus defense for Lamb and Punto defies metrics or consensus.
I think you can get more fine-grained than that, sane. I do think that fielding metrics come with a large margin of error. So, for example, Everett and Bartlett are close enough to make it tough to say one is better than the other range-wise. The difference, then, is errors, which is a significant difference.
And I think you can say that Punto is a much better defender than Lamb at third, based entirely on metrics. But he’d have to be Brooks Robinson to overcome his offensive deficiencies relative to Lamb. And he’s not, despite DickNBert continually hyping his glove over there.
Cmathewson,
Your examples are confirmed by consensus AND metrics (although not as obvious as Mauer vs LeCroy).
I guess the real test of methods is an example of disagreement between metrics and consensus. I am trying to think of an example but I just haven’t paid enough attention to metric results.
Cmath, do some research into how the data used for the “advanced” defensive metrics and then get back to us. Tell me now a guy can go from bad one year to all world the next (see Coco Crisp, for example).
As I said before, GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). BIS’s PBP info, for example, is derived from guys watching every major league game ON TELEVISION, and then trying to plot balls, including velocity and trajectory, from TV. Even if you could somehow do that, not every game is plotted by the same person, so the data is very flawed.
I would agree Bartlett was a pretty good shortstop defensively, btw. Shaky hands but good range. I also would agree Harris was a bad defensive shortstop.
Trying to turn that into a specific number of runs (which most of the current metrics try to do), and then making decisions based on that data, is where you lose me.
I also think you lose anyone in a decision making role in baseball. I seriouly doubt any GM or manager in baseball is making decision solely (or even in large part) based on UZR or plus/minus.
That first sentence should read…”how the raw data used…is developed and then…”
Proofread, chief, proofread!
Geno:
It’s old news…
Brian Cashman sure thought Phil Hughes was being offered in a possible trade for Santana. So was Kennedy, at one point, and Cabrera. The reason most knowledgeable people who can read knows this is because Cashman said he was opposed to trading Hughes, Kennedy and the other kids, several times.
BTW, how do you know Guerra is mature beyond his years?
roundabout,
You are likely correct, but there is an alternative possibility.
Maybe the Cashman-Steinbrenner disagreement was internal and the discussion was what COULD BE offered for Santana, rather than what WAS offered to the Twins that Cashman wanted to retract.
Cashman’s statements would have been appropriate in either scenario.
