Brewers: Is Junior Guerra the most underrated pitcher in fantasy baseball?
By Gavin Tramps
In October 2015, Milwaukee Brewers’ GM David Stearns made his first official roster move by claiming 30-year-old journeyman pitcher Junior Guerra from the White Sox.
It seemed a surprising move for a rebuilding Milwaukee Brewers team but proved to be inspired, as Junior Guerra produced 20 solid starts in the 2016 season with a 2.81 ERA.
A highly sought after commodity in the offseason, the Brewers fended off many approaches for the Venezuelan and are set to start 2017 with a Guerra/Zach Davies one-two at the top of their rotation.
He is the 76th starting pitcher off the board and doesn’t even have an ADP on Yahoo. He could be the most underrated pitcher in fantasy baseball.
The right-hander pitched outside the USA between 2009-2014 in Venezuela, Mexico and even Italy and Spain before landing with the White Sox in 2015.
He struck out 26 hitters in 19.2 Double-A innings before being promoted to Triple-A Charlotte Knights, where he split time between starting and relieving, and even secured seven saves. In 63.2 innings, he struck out 79, a rate of 11.2 SO/9, with a 3.39 ERA.
More from Fantasy Baseball
- 5 fantasy baseball waiver wire pivots to replace Triston McKenzie
- Fantasy baseball mock draft 2023, 12-team: Aaron Judge over Trea Turner?
- 3 fantasy baseball sleepers being drafted too late
- NBA DFS picks December 25: Merry Bucking Christmas
- Fantasy Baseball: Hot pitchers worthy of starting this weekend
He joined the White Sox’ bullpen for his first taste of the majors, giving up three runs in four innings over three appearances. This was the entirety of his Major League experience before joining the Brewers’ rotation in May 2016.
He started 20 games for the Brewers with a 9-3 win-loss record, throwing 121.1 innings while giving up 38 earned runs with 43 walks and 100 strikeouts. According to Brewers’ manager Craig Counsell, Guerra is a lock for the rotation.
If Guerra had appeared on top-prospect lists perhaps he would be getting more love from fantasy owners but currently he is floundering outside of the top-260 picks and represents an excellent opportunity for draft day value.
Ground balls and strikeouts: the secret to Junior Guerra’s success.
Clayton Kershaw is undoubtedly the best pitcher in the game at the moment. He has many outstanding characteristics but the two that we will focus on for this article are ground ball percentage (GB%) and strikeout rate (K%).
Ground balls are good. Ground balls don’t go for home runs. And with a good infield, ground balls mean fewer base runners.
Strikeouts are good. Period.
Thanks to the Fangraphs leaderboard splits tool, we can see the top-10 starting pitchers last year with ground balls above 45 GB% and a strikeout rate in excess of 20 K%.
As you would expect, the list features some of the very best pitchers in the league.
- Clayton Kershaw (5th)
- Rich Hill
- Kyle Hendricks (3rd)
- Jake Arrieta (9th)
- Jon Lester (2nd)
- Johnny Cueto (6th)
- Aaron Sanchez (7th)
- Junior Guerra
- Noah Syndergaard (8th)
- Masahiro Tanaka (8th)
The figure in parenthesis is their position in the 2016 Cy Young Award voting. Nine of the pitchers are ranked in the top-30. The name of Junior Guerra looks out of place.
When Guerra joined the Brewers’ rotation in May 2016, he introduced his four-pitch arsenal to the wider baseball world. His fastball tops out over 97 mph, his slider gets strikes 33% of the time but it is his split-finger that is the most interesting pitch.
Brewers’ beat writer Adam McCalvy, offered a possible explanation for the success of Guerra’s splitter.
"The pitch is effective because of its extraordinarily slow spin rate, which is a positive trait for pitches that dive. Statcast™ registered 252 splitters from Guerra in 2016, with an average spin rate of 1,013 revolutions per minute that ranked third-lowest among the 25 pitchers who threw the pitch at least 100 times"
If anyone has a good take on a pitcher’s stuff, then it is the catcher and last year before his trade to Texas, Jonathon Lucroy commented about the rookie.
"“He has a true split-finger. It’s almost a borderline knuckler, the way it moves at times. It’s hard to catch because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Not many guys throw a pitch like that.”"
Craig Counsell knows what a weapon his right-hander possesses, stating that “The thing we learned (in 2016) is that the split-finger is really the pitch that makes him dangerous”.
Guerra’s splitter generates swings 48.64% of the time with an impressive 19.85% whiff rate and he acknowledges that it is the pitch he throws when he needs a strike.
Last year, the Yankees’ ace Masahiro Tanaka and the Angels’ increasingly impressive Matt Shoemaker both utilized their splitter with great success. Yu Darvish of the Texas Rangers is planning to re-introduce his splitter back into his pitch repertoire.
Next: Ryan Braun and Reasons to Worry in 2017?
Guerra has made three starts in Spring Training, allowing just one run on three hits with five strikeouts over six innings. There is plenty of skepticism about whether he can reproduce 2016’s stellar stats but there is no argument that the splitter, as one of his three-plus pitches, makes Guerra a very intriguing pitcher to fill out your rotation this year.