I detoured last week and looked at a few one-category buys for the stretch run. This week, though, back to an adjustment post, looking at a veteran pitcher going through a bit of a dry spell in Milwaukee. At age 33 with a 5.18 ERA since the All-Star Break, it’d be easy to feel that Junior Guerra is wilting down the stretch. I wouldn’t buy him in dynasty, but I’d hold or add him in redraft leagues for the stretch run, as added deception has enabled him to post some interesting peripherals amidst the miserable results.
The Case for Junior Guerra
No doubt, Junior Guerra has been terrible of late. Post All-Star Break, he’s thrown 33 innings with a 5.18 ERA and mediocre 17.1% strikeout rate. Look only at the surface numbers, and it’s easy to see why his Fantrax ownership rate is dropping. Cutting bait on Junior Guerra now is probably a mistake, though, since he seems to be working through a mechanical tweak which, underneath it all, is showing signs of progress.
First, though, the basics. Guerra hasn’t pitched nearly as poorly as his recent results would indicate. In those 33 innings, he’s allowed an inflated batting average on balls in play and had trouble stranding runners, both of which should regress in his favor even if his talent level doesn’t actually improve. He continues to induce ground balls, but more interestingly, he’s generating quite a few swings and misses recently, even if they haven’t led to strikeouts yet.
Over the past 30 days, Guerra ranks 13th in swinging strike rate, alongside some of the hotter pitchers in baseball. Nor has he been out there slinging the ball all over the place; he ranks top 20 among qualifiers in first-pitch strike rate. Getting ahead of hitters? Check. Showing putaway stuff? Check. There’s more to being a complete pitcher than throwing first-pitch strikes and generating whiffs, of course, but it’s a pretty nice place to start. Looking at the season as a whole, the eight qualified starters who rank in the top 20 in both first-pitch strikes and swinging strikes, as Guerra does over the past month, consists of seven aces and a promising young starter: Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, James Paxton, Justin Verlander, Luis Severino, Aaron Nola, Nick Pivetta.
So that leaves us with two questions. Is this new version of Guerra sustainable, and is he desirable? After all, as mentioned, his bottom line results have been terrible. To gauge sustainability, we’d want to see if Guerra’s doing anything differently. As it turns out, he is. Consider Guerra’ month-by-month pitch mix data, courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
He’s leaned on his splitter more heavily in August than in any previous month this season. There’s a reason for that.
Guerra’s splitter is by far his best swing-and-miss pitch. It all seems straightforward enough. Throw your best swing-and-miss pitch more often, induce more whiffs.
It’s not quite that simple, though. After all, the value of Guerra’s splitter is in making a hitter believe it’s a fastball before it dives three inches below the hitter’s barrel. Every offspeed pitch is only valuable to the extent it deceives a hitter looking for something straight. If hitters know that Guerra is using the splitter more, they should be more likely to look for it, so you’d expect the whiffs per pitch to decrease as the usage increases. The more common the pitch is, the less likely you are to fool an opposing hitter with it. So how has Guerra managed to simultaneously use the splitter more and see better results on it? He seems to have increased deception. Consider Guerra’s month-by-month release points.
While his fastball and slider tended to come from a similar arm slot, Guerra’ splitter was noticeably different. Through July, Guerra’s splitter came from higher up and closer to his body. Whether an intentional effort to drive the ball down in the zone or simply a persistent mechanical bugaboo, his splitter was released from noticeably over the top, while his other offerings came from a lower slot.
That’s no longer the case. Compare his first three months with August, and it’s clear that Guerra’s harmonized his release points. The visual becomes even more apparent when looking at Guerra’s scatter charts.
In his first three months, his splitter’s release point is noticeably different than for his fastball. In August, though, the yellow splitter dot joins the clump of black fastball points. A change like this may seem subtle, but MLB hitters are fantastic at picking up identifiers in a pitcher’s delivery, so it’s possible, if not probable, that some hitters could identify the splitter before it ever left Guerra’s hand based on his arm action. Recently, his splitter delivery more closely mimics that of his fastball, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s getting more swings and misses with both pitches. Hitters are just having a harder time picking out which pitch is which.
This answers the first question, but the matter of Guerra’s terrible results remains. Some of it is poor timing and batted ball results, as discussed earlier, but maybe he’s deserved to get knocked around? It doesn’t seem like it. His average exit velocity allowed over the past month, per Baseball Savant, is five miles per hour softer than it was earlier in the season, so it’s not as if he’s being battered consistently. Mostly, it seems that he’s just been paying for his few mistakes dearly, surrendering six home runs in his most recent four outings. That’s concerning, but probably unsustainably high.
More to the point, five of those homers have come in either two-strike counts or 0-1 counts, at-bats in which Guerra had the upper hand on the hitter. Unfortunately, his failures in execution have come at the least opportune times. It’s hard to believe that Junior Guerra truly has some mental block that inhibits his ability to pitch with men on base or in two-strike counts, though, so his recent struggles seem, on the whole, fluky.
Altogether, Junior Guerra looks like the type of player owners should buy for the stretch run. His stock appears to be down because his recent results have been bad, and while some of that is his own poor execution in big spots, that’s likely not a trend. What does seem like it will last, though, are Guerra’s new mechanics, where he better mirrors the release points on his splitter and his fastball. The adjustment’s magnitude has been hidden by some of Guerra’s other struggles, but, in some ways, he’s better than ever right now. We can only hope his results reflect that soon enough.
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