Category Archives: Eugenio Velez

MSTI’s 2011 in Review: Second Base

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Second base: where we discuss Aaron Miles and three guys who aren’t Aaron Miles. Good lord. You might want to get a stiff drink for this one.

We’re looking at four players today, and none of them are the guy originally signed to be the second baseman, Juan Uribe, or the guy most likely to have seen time there, Jamey Carroll, who we’ll talk about with the shortstops. Yeah, it was a hell of a season. On the other hand, the four second basemen we discussed last year at this time? Ryan Theriot, Blake DeWitt, Ronnie Belliard, and Nick Green. Yikes. Come back, Jeff Kent!

On the whole, Dodger second basemen – all seven of them – combined to finish 28th in MLB in OPS at .627, ahead of only the White Sox and Twins. Bleecccch.

Aaron Miles (B+)
.275/.314/.346 .660 3hr 0.1 WAR

So right off the bat we have one of the toughest grades of the year, Aaron Miles. On one hand, we expected absolutely nothing of him. Less than nothing, really, because when he was signed as a non-roster invite, I broke my own rule of never making a big deal over zero-cost NRIs, since every team signs dozens and few ever see the light of day:

I am constantly trying to reassure people that minor league contracts are never as big of a deal as they seem, and the inherent lack of risk makes them almost a no-lose proposition.

In this case, I’m not so sure, because Miles is atrociously bad. No, really; among players who have had as many plate appearances as Miles had since he debuted in 2003, only three players in baseball have been less valuable. It’s a special kind of “not valuable”, though. If you’re simply awful, you don’t get to stick around for that long. Miles has really hit the sweet spot of being bad enough to hurt his teams for years, yet not so bad that he gets outright drummed out of the game. It must be his A+ levels of “grit” and “scrap”.

So in the sense of, “was Aaron Miles one of the worst players to ever step on a baseball field,” as we expected, no: he was not. As Casey Blake, Rafael Furcal, and Uribe fell to injury, and as Ivan DeJesus either failed to pan out or wasn’t given a chance (depending on your perspective) Miles filled in ably enough at second and third, and was actually very, very good in June, leading the National League in batting average for the month. For a guy who was an afterthought at best and a joke at worst, he ended up being a useful enough cog for just about zero cost, and that alone creates value. I know the 0.1 WAR doesn’t seem like much, but when you consider that the options behind him might not have even been able to achieve that, it’s helpful. Sometimes, just showing up is half the battle, and so it’s here where we applaud Aaron Miles for being there when he was needed.

Here’s the thing, though: there’s a big difference between “wow, this guy gave us far, far more than we thought, and that’s awesome, even if it’s not really that much,” and “this is a guy who helps us win baseball games”, and Miles is most certainly the former. That fantastic June I mentioned, when he led the NL in average? Yeah, it was the only month all season where he wasn’t unspeakably awful:

Split G PA R H 2B 3B HR BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip
April/March 24 70 9 17 2 1 0 .258 .290 .318 .608 .298
May 22 85 3 23 2 0 0 .274 .274 .298 .571 .299
June 21 67 10 26 2 0 1 .419 .418 .500 .918 .439
July 22 81 7 20 7 0 0 .270 .321 .365 .686 .299
August 24 104 12 23 4 2 2 .242 .298 .389 .688 .250
Sept/Oct 23 83 8 16 0 0 0 .219 .305 .219 .524 .246
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Why the hits fell in during June when they fell in no other month, I cannot say, but this all added up to a wOBA that was in the bottom 15 of the entirety MLB. I suspect that part of his positive public image (aside, of course, from being the “gritty, scrappy, short white guy who plays hard”) is that his hot June pushed his batting average over .300, which is where it stayed for about two months before eventually settling in at .275. For those who look only at batting average, it was a nice number to see on the TV graphic every night, particularly as Uribe and others were disappointing us horribly. Obviously, there was little behind it in terms of on-base percentage, power, or defense, where he was passable at second base and cover-your-eyes awful at third.

Still, Miles deserves the B+ if only for how little we thought of him, and for being there when no one else was. Thanks for your service, Aaron. Hopefully if we see you next year, it’s when you’re visiting Los Angeles wearing the uniform of another team who foolishly gave you a two-year deal this winter.

Ivan DeJesus (inc.)
.188/.235/.188 .423 0hr -0.5 WAR

I’m not sure how you can see this season as anything but a massive disappointment for Ivan DeJesus. You’ve got the infield in tatters, you’ve got Aaron Miles getting nearly 500 plate appearances, you’ve got Eugenio Velez existing and taking up a roster spot for months, and you still can’t make an impression? Not good.

To be fair, it’s not like he got much of a chance; forced onto the Opening Day roster due to injuries, he received just seven starts in six weeks. Sent down in May, he got one cameo at-bat in June, and that was it for the season. That’s a bigger problem than it sounds like, because after not getting a September call-up in 2010, he didn’t get one again this year, seemingly bypassed on the depth chart by Justin Sellers. That doesn’t exactly shout “you’ve got a future here,” does it?

To his credit, he did have a decent enough year in ABQ, hitting .311/.389/.432 in that offense-friendly environment, but if he’s going to have a big-league career, it seems likely it’s going to be somewhere else.

Eugenio Velez (0-for-37)
.000/.075/.000 .075 0hr -0.7 WAR

Oh, holy good lord. How can I even make fun of Velez, record for consecutive hitless plate appearances or not? Just look at that picture. He looks like he’s twelve years old, and he plays ball like he has no arms or legs. He so clearly doesn’t belong in the big leagues that Don Mattingly even admitted as such.

Yet I can’t even rag on him. It’s not fun. Well, okay, it was fun when he first came up and actually started a game in left field, unless you’ve suddenly forgotten about “Baron Ironglove Von Pickoff“, and I did at one point advocate shooting him into the sun.

Seriously, I’m pals with several Giants writers on Twitter, and even with all of the garbage we went through this season, nothing seemed to give them more joy than the continuing trials and tribulations of Eugenio Velez. Think about that for a second. They’ve lived through the Eugenio Velez Experience, and it brings them joy to see him wearing the uniform of their most hated rivals.

I know he’s not really this bad… but I also can’t see a reason to ever have him back in Dodger Stadium ever again, even as an NRI. Or a bat boy. Or a ticket holder.

Juan Castro (inc.)
.286/.333/.286 .619 0hr 0.0 WAR

What can you even say about Castro at this point? He came back for yet another stint with the Dodgers, because of course he did. We laughed when he rejoined the team in May, and while he played in just seven games as a Dodger – none, surprisingly, at shortstop – he did play a part in one of the most unfortunate managerial moments of the season, with Clayton Kershaw sailing against the Giants:

Here’s where the problem comes in. Mattingly’s choices to hit for Kershaw, assuming you don’t want to waste the backup catcher that early, were Jerry Sands, Russ Mitchell, Tony Gwynn… and Juan Castro. None, I will grant, are great options. The clear choice is Sands, who has at least shown some extra base pop and is third on the team in doubles. You could argue for Gwynn, to get a lefty in there against the righty Cain.

But Mattingly chose Castro, and that’s where things went sideways. Castro is historically, unbelievably, amazingly atrocious. He owns one of the worst bats in major league history, and he’s 39 years old. He’s not even a lefty, which you might possibly have been able to argue. Yet that’s who Mattingly chose to hit with the bases loaded. Castro flew out, Carroll grounded out, and that threat was over. If you’re going to hit for the pitcher, that’s fine, but it’s pointless to waste Kershaw if you’re not even going to replace him with someone appreciably better. It’s no guarantee that Sands or Gwynn would have gotten the job done, but it was all but guaranteed that Castro would not. He didn’t, and with Kershaw gone, that’s how we ended up with Cormier in the ninth.

Good times. Castro finally retired in July to become one of Ned Colletti’s 486 special assistants, though he apparently ended up serving as a minor-league instructor. I’m still not convinced we won’t see him suit up again.

******

Next! Juan Uribe can’t live up to massively low expectations! Casey Blake hurt himself while I was writing this sentence! And Russ Mitchell just isn’t very good! It’s third base!

Dodgers Decline Options on Casey Blake & Jon Garland

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This isn’t so much “news” as it is an “absolute inevitability, but the offseason doesn’t really start for another month, so we might as well note it anyway” piece of interest, but the Dodgers did make some roster moves today:

Today, the #Dodgers declined the 2012 club options on both Jon Garland and Casey Blake and also outrighted Eugenio Velez to Triple-A

That costs $1.25m to buy out Blake, and $500k for Garland. It may seem annoying to pay players $1.75m to go away, but remember that the alternatives were $6m for Blake and $8m for Garland, numbers which never made sense on any level. So this was a given.

I don’t expect either back, though it’s not completely out of the question. Ken Gurnick of Dodgers.com noted that Blake “could figure for a bench job if he heals from neck surgery”, while Garland is “ahead of schedule in his return from shoulder surgery”. On the other hand, ESPN/LA’s Tony Jackson said there is “no chance Dodgers try to re-sign” Garland. So there’s that.

As for Velez, it’s merely a procedural move. He’s out of options and would seem to be more likely to be outrighted to a Siberian labor camp than a professional baseball team, so don’t worry too hard about seeing him back next season.

Dee Gordon’s Rehab Delays Are Going to Save Eugenio Velez’ Pursuit of Infamy

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This is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things, though I’m happy to be taking a break from the Andre Ethier firestorm for just a second (though do be sure to check out Tony Jackson’s latest must-read on the subject). Lost in a weekend of Ethier-mania, Matt Kemp walkoffs, and James Loney resurrections was this somewhat minor note that popped up yesterday: Dee Gordon‘s minor-league rehab stint has been extended to three games, rather than two. This is the second time his rehab has been slightly delayed, since he was originally supposed to start the rehab on Thursday and Friday in hopes of returning over the weekend. That didn’t happen, and now the earliest he’s going to be able to rejoin the team is Thursday’s makeup game in Pittsburgh, or maybe even Friday at home against Atlanta if he doesn’t make that long one-day trip to Pennsylvania.

As Jackson notes, it’s simply a “more conservative approach, nothing to be worried about”, and he’s right: alone, it’s barely even worth noting. But what it means is that not only is he not coming off the DL as soon as he was eligible (which was August 25), he won’t be back until Thursday – and Thursday is September 1, roster expansion day, meaning no corresponding move will need to be made in his place. And that means that instead of the long-welcomed DFA of Eugenio Velez (which was almost certainly going to be what would have happened, unless you really think that Justin Sellers was going down instead), Velez is going to be a Dodger for the rest of the season. Much fun as it might be to watch Velez chase down a historic mark for futility, I have a hard time enjoying it in the same way I was rooting for “most left fielders in a season” and “most players in a season”. Watching Velez flail isn’t fun; it’s just sad. He’s clearly not a big leaguer, and he doesn’t belong here. With every out he makes, it’s just more embarrassing for him and the team.

Since we’re talking about September 1, let’s put some expected names out there. Don Mattingly claims “fewer than 10″, though even that seems like a lot since (without doing any research at all) I believe the number has been between 5-7 in previous years. That being said, here’s who I think we’ll see:

C Tim Federowicz
1B/OF Jerry Sands
2B Ivan DeJesus
3B Russ Mitchell
OF Jamie Hoffmann
SP John Ely
RP Josh Lindblom (eligible Sept. 4)
RP Ramon Troncoso

As I said previously, I originally didn’t think Federowicz would come up this soon since they didn’t need to place him on the 40-man roster until after next season, but that plan changed as soon as Dioner Navarro was cut loose. (Since we now know that Navarro’s move was in the works for a while but just required Rod Barajas to be healthy first, I suppose Federowicz is who Ned Colletti was referring to when he said at least one prospect was coming up to get acclimated.) Other possibilities could be Jon Link or Dana Eveland, though neither are on the 40-man roster. I also wouldn’t completely rule out DeJesus not getting recalled, if the Dodgers prefer to see what Sellers can do at second base once Gordon returns to reclaim shortstop.

Dodgers Swept as Rare Display of Offense Fails to Overcome Shoddy Pitching and Worse Defense

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On a day where the Dodgers put up five runs off Philadelphia rookie sensation Vance Worley before fans even got to their seats – uh no, really – the wheels fell off in a hurry, as a lead that was once 6-0 quickly became a 9-8 loss, completing a sweep at the hands of the Phillies. Once again, the Phils proved why they’re the best team in baseball, while the Dodgers proved that they are a mid-range team in the Pacific Coast League.

First, the brief good news: Matt Kemp and Juan Rivera combined for seven hits, including a three-run homer for Rivera in the first, as the Dodgers tied their season high for extra base hits with six. Hong-Chih Kuo retired three of the four batters he faced, entering in a tough situation with two men on in the fifth, and Matt Guerrier, Mike MacDougal, and Javy Guerra combined for 3.1 innings of scoreless relief to finish it off.

On Rivera, and he’ll need his own post shortly, there’s going to be plenty of time for jokes about how he’s playing himself into a starting job for the 2012 Dodgers, and how he’s carving a place alongside recent Dodgers of questionable skill who turned hot debuts into misplaced commitments like Rod Barajas, Jay Gibbons, Marlon Anderson, and Ronnie Belliard. Those are valid concerns which we’ll have to deal with this winter. For now, we need to praise Rivera for his performance since arriving in Los Angeles; I was cautiously optimistic when he was picked up after being DFA’d by Toronto, saying that “this deal probably makes the team better than they were this morning,” if not by much, and all Rivera has done is hit .338/.380/.507 while taking playing time away from the cratering Tony Gwynn and the disappointing James Loney. He’s not this good – he can’t possibly be – and we should know that his BABIP (.357 even before this game) is completely unsustainable. None of that should diminish what he’s done on the field, however, because he’s been excellent. For however long it lasts, upgrading from Marcus Thames to Rivera has been a nice under-the-radar move by Ned Colletti.

As for the bad news, let’s start at the top: Chad Billingsley never had it today. You’ll almost certainly read stories about how Billingsley “can’t pitch with a lead”, but that’s BS: he threw 30 pitches while struggling through the first inning, before the Dodgers even came to the plate. This is the fourth time in Billingsley’s career that he’s failed to strike out a single batter, and the first time this year, but it continues a disturbing trend: he’s struck out just six over his last three starts, after whiffing 10 Nationals on July 24.

While seven runs should always, always be enough for a starting pitcher, it’s also not like Billingsley got a whole lot of support from his defense. In the top of the fourth, he had two outs and Michael Martinez up; Martinez grounded to first, where it went off of Loney’s glove and putting Martinez on second. Worley, the next batter, singled home Martinez for the third Philly run. Should Billingsley have been able to retire the opposing pitcher? Absolutely he should have, but he’s also out of the inning if Loney fields the ball.

The same situation happened in the fifth, as with one out and two on, Billingsley got Hunter Pence to hit a soft grounder to Casey Blake at third – the kind of ball that turns into an inning-ending double play 99 times out of 100. The ball kicked off of Blake’s glove into the outfield, and rather than getting out of the inning without any damage, Billingsley saw a run score on the error and then another when Kuo got Ryan Howard to ground out. None of this absolves Billingsley; nor should it be forgotten.

Still, at the end of the fifth, the Dodgers were ahead 7-5, and that lasted until Blake Hawksworth relieved Kuo with one on in the sixth. Two singles and a Howard moonshot later, the Dodgers were down 9-6, and that was pretty much that, though they briefly threatened in the 9th with a Barajas warning track shot about 10 feet away from a walkoff win. Thanks, Blake!

******

Update: okay, the part below may not be, what’s the word, “true”. The b-ref query I’m using searches by entire seasons, and there’s at least one example where that isn’t true, as helpfully pointed out in the comments – Jose Gonzalez in 1990, who went hitless in 30 Dodger PA before being traded to Pittsburgh where he collected a few. So while he didn’t get any hits as a Dodger, he didn’t go hitless for the entire season. I’ll leave the section below intact, because it doesn’t make Eugenio Velez not suck.

In the continuing exploits of “Eugenio Velez, awful baseball player”… after another 0-2 (on three pitches, no less), Velez is still searching for his first hit in 23 plate appearances as a Dodger. That’s the most hitless PA by a non-pitcher in the entire history of the club. How about when you expand that across all teams?

Rk Player PA H Year Age Tm G AB R BB SO
1 Hal Finney 35 0 1936 30 PIT 21 35 3 0 8
2 Larry Littleton 27 0 1981 27 CLE 26 23 2 3 6
3 David Ortiz 25 0 1999 23 MIN 10 20 1 5 12
4 Kevin Elster 22 0 1994 29 NYY 7 20 0 1 6
5 Ron Hansen 22 0 1958 20 BAL 12 19 1 0 7
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/10/2011.

Well, hmm. I have to say I did not expect to see David Ortiz on that list. Anyway, since our dream of “most left fielders in a season” appears to have died, we still have a statistical oddity to root for: 12 more hitless plate appearances until we can say, that by one measure at least, Eugenio Velez has had the worst season in big league history.

******

No surprise here, but after the game it was announced that Dee Gordon was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to his right shoulder injury. There’s no word yet on a replacement, though the only two infielders on the 40-man roster are Russ Mitchell and Ivan DeJesus. That said, there’s an empty spot on the 40-man and several injured pitchers who could be moved to the 60-day DL (Jon Garland, Jonathan Broxton, Rubby De La Rosa, Vicente Padilla), so if they want to promote someone not on the roster, it won’t be an issue.

Even Clayton Kershaw has a Tough Start Sometimes

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When I saw that today’s starting lineup included the infield foursome of  James Loney, Eugenio Velez, Jamey Carroll, and Aaron Miles (combined career stats entering the day of 98 homers in 9721 career PA, or one about every 100 PA) I joked on Twitter that they were among the least threatening infield foursomes I could ever remember. Then Loney had to go and make me look bad by hitting his first homer in nearly two months, a no-doubter to right-center field. (By the way, that surprised even me. He really hadn’t homered since taking Ubaldo Jimenez deep on June 12 in Colorado. Three of his five homers this year have come in either Phoenix or Denver; four of the five have come against those two teams overall.)

But despite the infield lineup, partially brought on by the shoulder injury to Dee Gordon, it stood to figure that the Dodgers would still have a good shot at their first road sweep of the season, since Clayton Kershaw was taking the hill, coming off of five starts in a row without allowing more than two earned runs. That optimism lasted for about eleven pitches, during which Kershaw walked leadoff man Ryan Roberts, missed with his first seven pitches, and served up Kelly Johnson with a belt-high fastball which Kelly Johnson promptly parked in the seats for a 2-0 Diamondback lead.

Kershaw settled down to retire 19 of the next 22 Arizona hitters, during which time the Dodgers took a 3-2 lead on Loney’s solo homer and run-scoring hits in the 6th inning by Andre Ethier and Juan Rivera. But the wheels came off in the seventh, as Kershaw gave up a single to Colin Cowgill with one out and then let journeyman Cody Ransom crush a ball to left field for a 4-3 lead. (You can clearly see on the video that Kershaw immediately knew it was a mistake; he jumped about eight feet in the air as soon as Ransom connected.) Kershaw stuck around to allow a double to Sean Burroughs, before being relieved by Josh Lindblom, who got the final five outs without much trouble.

I saw a few people online saying that Don Mattingly erred by allowing Kershaw to stay in as long as he did, as he ended up with 113 pitches. I have to say I disagree; after his first inning troubles, Kershaw dominated over the next several innings, and got the first out in the seventh before the single and homer cost him the lead. It’s hard to blame Mattingly for sticking with his ace through the seventh inning, and the troubles came quickly.

With the loss and San Francisco’s win over Philadelphia, the Dodgers fall back to 10 games out.

******

Great (by which I mean, “terrible”) moments in bunting, edition #2931039: with the Dodgers down 2-0 in the top of the 4th, Matt Kemp tried to bunt for a hit and was easily thrown out by Ian Kennedy. I’d love to make a snarky comment about how the guy who is arguably the best hitter in the National League should never give himself up so easily, but I’m not sure I could put it better than KABC’s Joe Block did:

Matt Kemp bunting is like punting on first down

What a waste. I’m not sure if I hope that was Kemp’s idea or Mattingly’s. There’s no right answer there.

******

I may have given Loney the reverse-jinx motivation to take Kennedy deep, but Velez continued his usual path of “not being a major league player”. With his 0-3 today, he’s now failed to get a hit in any of his first 20 plate appearances as a Dodger. That ties him for the worst performance of anyone with at least 20 PA in Dodger history:

Rk Player H G PA Year Age Tm AB R RBI BB SO
1 Harry Redmond 0 6 20 1909 21 BRO 19 3 1 0 6
2 Jack Fimple 1 13 20 1986 27 LAD 13 2 2 6 6
3 Don Thompson 1 34 31 1954 30 BRO 25 2 1 5 5
4 Boyd Bartley 1 9 23 1943 23 BRO 21 0 1 1 3
5 Babe Dahlgren 1 17 23 1942 30 BRO 19 2 0 4 5
6 Tacks Latimer 1 8 24 1902 24 BRO 24 0 0 0 3
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/7/2011.

I’m sure there’s a good reason he’s still on the team, but… well, I don’t really know how to finish that sentence.