The Cincinnati Reds have announced that they’ve signed right-handed pitcher Tayron Guerrero to a minor league contract with an invitation to big league spring training. Guerrero last pitched in the big leagues in 2019 with the Miami Marlins.
Last season the 32-year-old pitched in Japan for the Chiba Lotte Marines where he threw 46.0 innings in 49 appearances and posted a 3.52 ERA. The righty struck out 63 batters, allowed 20 walks and 34 hits, and gave up just two home runs. In 2021 he pitched in Triple-A with the White Sox organization and struggled, posting a 6.63 ERA in 18 games.
During his big league career he’s pitched in 113 games over parts of three seasons, but really it’s just two years. In 2016 he pitched in one game and threw 2.0 innings for the San Diego Padres. Then in 2018 and 2019 he appeared in 60 games and 52 games for the Marlins. He had plenty of strikeouts – picking up 111 of them in 106.0 innings, but he also allowed 15 home runs and walked 66 batters in that time. Control was an issue for him.
While we don’t have any recent Trackman or Hawkeye data for Tayron, we do have some from his time in the big leagues. And that data shows a guy who averaged over 99 MPH with his fastball. In 2018 he topped out at 104.7 MPH. He also threw a change up in the 92-94 MPH range, and a slider in the upper 80’s.
With a fastball like there, there’s clearly plenty of upside. But if he’s had a fastball like that in the past and has gotten the results that he’s had, it probably tells us a lot about his control and his secondary offerings.
On a minor league deal there’s nothing at all wrong with this kind of signing. Maybe his time in Japan helped him move in the right direction with some things, and maybe with the Reds coaches in spring training he can take another step forward and compete for a spot in a bullpen that has an infinite amount of questions about it once you get beyond Alexis Diaz.
