The Dodgers have made a few final roster decisions in advance of their opening contest, as reflected on their transactions page (h/t Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times, on Twitter). Speedy outfielder Terrance Gore has been selected to the 40-man roster, while young righty Dustin May was optioned to the team’s alternative training site.
It’s easy to see the merits of carrying a speed demon like Gore with expanded rosters early in the season. The 29-year-old has never hit much at any level, but he’s among the fastest players in recent MLB memory. Gore’s pinch-running prowess was on full display with the 2014-15 Royals World Series clubs, and he’ll give the Dodgers some additional range in the outfield should they wish to use him in that capacity as well. Gore seems like the type of player who may eventually be set to alternate camp when the roster is trimmed to 28 and eventually 26 players, but he’ll give the club a unique weapon off the bench early in the year.
As for May, he’ll head to alternate camp to continue getting some work in while the Dodgers rely on a more experienced starting staff that features Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Alex Wood, Ross Stripling and Julio Urias. There are some obvious potential service time benefits to sending May down to begin the year, but given that he already accrued more than a third of a season of service last year, that might not be the sole motivation. He’d need to spend several weeks in the minors to fall shy of a full year and extend the club’s control over him.
May, 22, is considered one of the game’s premier prospects and turned in a 3.63 ERA with a 32-to-5 K/BB ratio in 34 2/3 frames as a rookie in 2019. He maintains that rookie status into 2020.
Can anyone explain to me how Dustin May had -0.1 WAR last year with a 3.63 ERA, 2.90FIP, 8.3 SO/9 and 1.3 BB/9 in 34.2 IP? His ERA+ was 115… how is that not an above replacement pitcher?
Because of the issues and limitations of the WAR stat. Turns out that WAR isn’t the stat that rules all others.
Anyone who says WAR is the end all, be all is wrong. That said iterations of WAR are the most accurate public-facing representation of player value out there. That said, as you call out, it has issues and limitations (especially for RPs and Catchers) and it’s important to understand those when discussing it.
Any stat that attempts to capture the total value of a player’s on field contributions and consistently outputs Mike Trout as the best player in baseball and Verlander, Scherzer, Cole, etc. as the best pitchers in baseball is probably mostly right.
I’ve been in enough discussions around here to know many believe that citing WAR (in one of its many flavors) immediately ends all debate. No stat is that good and not especially one that makes value assumptions that few know about or understand.
Because RP WAR is generally considered the least well understood and least accurate even by those who model it for a living.
May gets dinged by bWAR for having a strong defense behind him, playing in large stadiums in the NL West, playing against the weak teams in the NL West, and for being an RP who generally have much lower ERAs than SPs.
fWAR (0.9) was much higher on him as it uses FIP and not ERA as it’s base.
WAR penalizes red hair. Duh.
Dodgers Player Pool team will win a wild card spot.
Yeah you could form a pretty good Major League team out of the players the Dodgers have sent to training camp.
Nice line abcrazy!
Maybe it’s a service time issue? He and Lux will return soon.
I agree it has everything to do with service time. Even the Dodgers with there money delaying free agency on certain players
Had nothing to do with service time. If the Dodgers cared about May’s service time he wouldn’t have been called up in 2019.
I tend to disagree regarding the Dodgers and service time manipulation, it’s not their history but maybe the Betts signing and the need to extend Bellinger soon has influenced them this year?
I don’t see how the two are related. And you ignore the part about how if the Dodgers wanted the extra year on May they wouldn’t have called him up in 2019.
No it’s not. The Dodgers don’t do the service time thing. Plus, if they really wanted the extra year they wouldn’t have called them up down the stretch in 2019.
I have a feeling Gore will be used almost exclusively as an extra inning pinch runner. Whichever team has Billy Hamilton (Giants?) will probably look into that as well. Man, it’s really hard to keep track of who is on what team anymore.
Yes Hamilton is with the Giants, and for the same reasons Gore is with the Dodgers. Light-hitting pinch runners who can play OF.
Gore this season:
2 PA, 11 SB, 1 CS
362829.6 WAR
WAR is pretty good for barometer for position players but is certainly lacking for pitchers.
My biggest problem with WAR is its reliance on defensive metrics. They are generally a mess. Some things are not easy to model and that is one of them. Also I would like to see a study to determine if collective team WAR correlates with actual teams wins over the course of a season. This seems like such an obvious method of validating the stat but I have never seen it done.