It’s been a month since the Dodgers reportedly struck an agreement with Cuban right-hander Yaisel Sierra, but the team has yet to announce the move. While Dodgers fans may be apprehensive about that silence, given what happened with Hisahshi Iwakuma earlier this offseason, Jon Heyman tweets that the Dodgers’ deal with Sierra remains “on track” with “only paperwork remaining.” Sierra was reportedly guaranteed between $30-35MM over a six-year term at the time of the agreement, and Heyman narrows the scope a bit, saying the final number will fall in the $30-31MM range.
Here’s more from the NL West…
- The Padres announced yesterday that they’ve hired former Major League right-hander Hideo Nomo as an advisor to their baseball operations staff. “We are proud to welcome Hideo to the Padres organization,” general manager A.J. Preller said in a statement announcing the move. “His career as a Major League pitcher speaks for itself. His expertise and passion for baseball will be a significant asset to the Padres and I look forward to having his input going forward.” Nomo will assist in the club’s player development process but also in expanding the Padres’ reach in the Pacific Rim, per the release. Nomo joins Moises Alou, Trevor Hoffman and Mark Loretta as former big leaguers that are now working with the Friars’ baseball ops department in some capacity.
- Padres ninth-inning hopeful Fernando Rodney has been dealing with a hamstring strain of late, but Preller believes that he’ll be a full go for Spring Training, tweets Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Padres gave Rodney a $2MM guarantee, and he’s perhaps the favorite to win their closer’s role following the trades of Craig Kimbrel and Joaquin Benoit, plus the move of Brandon Maurer back to the rotation.
- Another somewhat minor but potentially impactful Padres note comes from MLB.com’s Corey Brock (on Twitter), who notes that new manager Andy Green has asked right-hander Andrew Cashner to make some mechanical fixes, which Cashner has embraced. The goal of the tweaks is to regain some sink on Cashner’s two-seam fastball, per Brock. Cashner still maintained a very solid ground-ball rate in 2015 (47.4 percent), but that number is down from the 52.5 percent mark he registered in 2013. How well Cashner incorporates those fixes will be worth keeping an eye on, as the 29-year-old stands to enter next year’s free agent class as one of the most appealing arms on the market.
- Tyler Clippard told the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro that he was somewhat surprised by the lack of interest he received on the free-agent market this offseason but is happy to have landed with the D-backs, whom he identified as a team on the rise earlier this offseason. “I felt like I would have gotten more offers,” Clippard said. “I thought there was going to be a little more activity early on in the offseason.” Clippard voiced excitement over joining a team that has “[taken] the steps in the direction of becoming a championship organization,” referencing the club’s additions of Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller.
Hurry up Dodgers and trade Alex Guerrero
I drink to that!
If they trade him, they won’t get much back because he will be a 1 year rental.
Who would be interested in him? He can’t play defense well enough to justify his average and obp, and he doesn’t hit well enough to be a full-time dh. Then, there’s the salary on top of it, the fact that he can’t be optioned without his permission, and the fact that as soon as he is traded be becomes a virtual free agent at the end of the year. He is a sunk cost for the Dodgers.
Someone with a weak defensive infield. By no means would he be an upgrade. But he could DH and platoon at 3rd, lf, or 2nd. I see the Angels very interested, they would stay under the luxury tax if the dodgers paid most of the remaining for mid to low level prospects.
This. Guerrero could be a very inexpensive experiment with some potential for a big payoff, especially for an AL team.
A non contender should pick him up and let him start for half the year. If he does well then maybe a team wants him at the deadline. From what he showed last year hes not even a good depth piece.
Sierra deal appears to be another massive overpayment by Dodgers
How “massive” can it be at $6M/year? What do teams get for that kind of money these days? BTW your comment sounds eerily like what I heard about Ryu when he was signed. That was also supposed to be a massive overpayment.
” last December”
Whoops, check that. It was last October.
Nice that Mr. Saito was hired by someone. Now, it’s Mr. Fuji’s turn.
What is funny is that when you look at Pitch F/X, Cashner didn’t lose any drop on his sinker. He increased it from 5.7 to 6.5. He did lose some lateral movement on the sinker as it didn’t fade into RHB quite as much. -8.6 vs -8.2
The change that needs to be made is where the sinker was called for in 2015 by Norris. Over 40% of all 2 seam FB called by Norris were called in the upper half of the zone or higher which resulted in a 20% increase in line drives on the pitch. Its most effective use is inside to a RHB and down in the zone. It also was called for just 7% of 1st pitches. What is better for a pitcher than getting some guy to ground out on a sinker low in the zone early in the count?
Cashner needed to make changes to the release point on his slider which Norris called for 40% more of the time than Padres catchers had in 2014. The slider accounted for most of the home runs given up in 2015 even though it was just 22% of the pitches. It’s not a good pitch and never has been a good one for Cash.
Which brings us back to the fact that Norris needs to change the way he calls the game or the pitchers need to ignore him and go back to what they did in 2014 because all of them had a worse year in 2015 with Norris behind the plate.
I didn’t know Norris was the one pitching.
Even though Norris wasn’t pitching, he was still calling the game. And the pitcher is more than likely to follow his battery mates call. But as a pitcher you should start seeing what’s working and what isn’t. So the blame kind of falls on both here.