The Dodgers signed Franklin Gutierrez over the weekend. Now, I didn’t realize the Dodgers still had room on their major-league roster, but they probably know better than I do. Here is a list of problems that have sent Franklin Gutierrez to the disabled list over the past several years:

• stomach gastritis
• strained left oblique
• torn right pectoral
• concussion
• strained right hamstring
• strained right hamstring

Related to the above, here are Gutierrez’s year-to-year plate-appearance totals after getting traded to the Mariners:

• 2009: 629
• 2010: 629
• 2011: 344
• 2012: 163
• 2013: 151
• 2014: 0

That zero stands out. Gutierrez missed all of 2014, making the personal decision to sit out so he could focus on treatment. Treatment for what? Treatment for ankylosing spondylitis! Young athletes are not often diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, but Gutierrez was, and there isn’t a cure. It’s a condition he’ll deal with for the rest of his life, and it costs him flexibility and mobility. It’s cruel and unrelenting, and when Gutierrez elected to not play, he couldn’t have known whether he’d ever be able to return.

But he tried in 2015. He tried, and he succeeded, having settled on a treatment plan that left him feeling somewhat okay. Gutierrez batted almost 200 times with the 2015 Mariners, and then he batted almost 300 times with the 2016 Mariners. And the player that Gutierrez turned himself into was and is dramatically different from the player he’d been before.

That’s a comparison of recent Gutierrez to what’s basically peak, healthy Gutierrez. Earlier in his career, Gutierrez was as smooth an outfield defender as anyone had ever seen. He was one of the best defensive players in baseball, and at the plate, he showed some promising pop. Now look at the last two years. Gutierrez has become a negative defensive asset, because he simply doesn’t move so well anymore. For the same reason, he’s seldom aggressive on the bases. So much of that old athleticism is gone, and it’ll never return. But Gutierrez has found a way to compensate. He’s gotten bigger, and he’s made a conscious effort to try to just beat the living crap out of the ball.

Some percentile rankings from the last two years:

• HR/FB%: 100th
• ISO: 96th
• Hard%: 99th
• wFA/C: 99th
• Exit Velo: 96th
• Contact: 7th
• K%: 5th
• Fastball%: 4th
• Def/600: 19th

No hitter in baseball has managed a higher rate of home runs per fly ball. Gutierrez has some of the best hard-contact measures around, having sacrificed contact to get there. At this point, he has a lot of power and a lot of swing-and-miss, and so pitchers increasingly treat Gutierrez like a terrifying threat, avoiding fastballs and avoiding the zone. As far as other things go, Gutierrez can still play the outfield, but he isn’t very good at it. And there will be days he’ll wake up and he simply won’t be able to play. On those days, his condition won’t let him.

The reality is, Gutierrez isn’t getting healthier. And teams are reluctant to sign a player whose availability is unpredictable. From time to time, the Dodgers might end up frustrated, playing games with a short bench. But they know what they’re getting into, and they know what Gutierrez has been able to do since his return. Having lost a lot of his ability to move around, Gutierrez has focused on more light jogs and fewer hard sprints. He remains active with his 34th birthday coming next week, and given where he’s been, that’s almost impossible to believe.

The Dodgers have, and have had for a few years, one of the very best farm systems around. That leads to them receiving a certain amount of coverage, so you couldn’t in good conscience consider the Dodgers’ system in any way underrated. Yet so much attention has been focused on the elites — Corey Seager, Joc Pederson, Julio Urias, Cody Bellinger, and so forth. The major story of the system is the top of the system. Which, in turn, can undersell the best of the others.

We spent time last year singing the praises of Jharel Cotton, who has since been traded away. Cotton kind of got lost in the mix. Similarly, we’ve spent time singing the praises of Jose De Leon, who has also since been traded away. The De Leon perception suffered from the nearby presence of Urias. Maybe the fact that those two have been traded means the Dodgers weren’t big fans after all. Maybe it doesn’t mean that. But they’re major-league pitchers, and if the Dodgers just demonstrated anything, it’s that you can need a lot of those in a summer.

Why, then, deplete the depth? Well, Cotton got another starting pitcher. De Leon got a starting second baseman. Those are good reasons. Brock Stewart is another good reason. Fairly quietly, Stewart surged forward in 2016, by pulling off two very fundamental tasks: throwing a bunch of strikes, and missing a bunch of bats.

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As Ken Rosenthal reported Monday, Sergio Romo has found a home in Los Angeles, signing a one-year deal with the Dodgers and switching sides in one of the game’s most spirited rivalries. Romo will always be associated with the Giants, part of three World Series-winning teams, but he’ll pitch for the Dodgers in 2017 and it’s going to take some getting used to for everyone.

The incomparable Grant Brisbee offered a fascinating detail as he came to grips with the transaction:

(Romo) was recognizable. He was on commercials. He was reliable. He occasionally made opposing hitters look silly, as if they just picked up the sport of baseball. And he was around for nine seasons. Here’s a list of San Francisco Giants who have thrown nine seasons or more since the team moved west:

Juan Marichal
Greg Minton
Matt Cain
Gary Lavelle
Kirk Rueter
Scott Garrelts
Randy Moffitt
Jim Barr
Gaylord Perry
Sergio Romo
Tim Lincecum

How many relievers spend nine seasons with a club nowadays? It’s a rare tenure. But by relocating south to join the division favorites, he will now be part of the group setting up for closer Kenley Jansen, unless manager Dave Roberts blows our minds and begins using Jansen in non-save situations.

Everything from Romo’s demonstrative actions to his pitch mix remains interesting. He’s succeeded with below-average velocity thanks to his slider, a fascinating pitch that proves in the bullpen you can really make a career with one pitch – if it’s outstanding.

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Brandon Gomes is on to phase two of his baseball career. Ten years after being drafted out of Tulane University, the 32-year-old right-hander has moved from the mound to a player-development position. This past fall, he was hired as a pitching coordinator by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

His role is somewhat atypical, which is hardly a surprise given the team employing him. Led by Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi, and Josh Byrnes, the Dodgers front office is as progressive as any in the game. They like bringing on board smart, creative people, and Gomes has a degree in Legal Studies and Finance to augment his five seasons as a Tampa Bay Rays reliever.

Gomes talked about his new job, and some of what’s being done in LA’s newly-created pitching department, late last week.

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Gomes on getting hired by the Dodgers: “After I got released [by the Cubs] in June, I spent about three or four weeks trying to find another Triple-A job. No teams showed interest, so at that point I decided I wanted to pursue this end of things. I contacted [president of baseball operations] Andrew Friedman, who I had relationship with from our time in Tampa, and that kind of got the ball rolling. He put me in contact with [director of player development] Gabe Kapler.

“I spoke with Gabe quite a bit, trying to figure out what shape my role would be if I came on board. That happened in September, when I went out to instructional league in Arizona. I spent a month there, getting to know some of the staff, and build a relationship with some of the younger players.

“My title is ‘Pitching Coordinator, Performance.’ We actually created a department, so we have a couple of pitching coordinators, of different iterations. That’s wise, because it’s a huge undertaking for one person to really tackle the entire situation. Having multiple people who are able to hit it from different angles, the goal is to not miss anything with any of our guys.

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Anecdotally speaking, Clayton Kershaw makes any rotation look good. Empirically speaking, that also appears to be the case. Consider: according to the depth-chart projections at this site, the Dodgers currently possess the best rotation in major-league baseball. The San Diego Padres, meanwhile, have the worst. If one were to move Kershaw from LA to San Diego, the Dodgers would rank only 15th in the majors; the Padres would improve to sixth-best overall.

With Kershaw, the Dodgers have gotten a massive head start when it comes to outpacing the rest of MLB rotations. Despite contending with frequent injury problems over the last five season, the Dodgers have spent their way to one of the top-five rotations in baseball thanks to Clayton Kershaw plus a near-endless supply of arms. This season is unlikely to be any different.

Back in 2014, the Dodgers had a mostly healthy rotation, with Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dan Haren, and Josh Beckett all recording at least 20 starts. The first four members of that group took the mound in 117 of the team’s games that season. Beckett added another 20, while seven other pitchers split the remaining 25 starts. That offseason, however, Beckett retired. The Dodgers paid Dan Haren to pitch for Miami, trading both him and Dee Gordon to the Marlins in a deal that ultimately netted them Howie Kendrick. To replace those two spots, the team signed Brandon McCarthy to a four-year deal and took a $10 million flyer on Brett Anderson. McCarthy and Ryu got hurt, Anderson pitched quite well, and the team ended up using 16 starters — or, essentially 13 different pitchers to fill out the final two rotation spots.

The chart below illustrates how many starters each major-league team used in 2015.

Led by Kershaw and Greinke, the 17.7 WAR produced by the Dodgers rotation represented the third-highest mark in the majors — this, despite the club having been compelled to use more starters than any other team in the league. Including the $40 million the team spent to acquire Alex Wood — including the signing bonus of Hector Olivera and the money added by Mike Morse and Bronson Arroyo — as well as the 15 cents for every dollar that went to the luxury tax, the Dodgers spent roughly $150 million to record those 17.7 wins, a pretty inefficient $8.8 million per WAR.

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Two weeks ago, when I was examining the New York Yankees, I noted that they were the only American League team to feature multiple relievers projected by our depth charts (which are powered by Steamer for now) to record at least 1.5 WAR in 2017. Only seven AL pitchers cleared that mark overall. Looking over at the National League, we find that even fewer pitchers hit that mark, though there is still a single team with two of them: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

One, as you can probably guess, is Kenley Jansen. The other, though, might come as a surprise. It’s Grant Dayton. Unless you’re a big Dodgers fan, the first time you probably met Dayton was in last year’s National League Division Series, when he coughed up the two runs, prompting LA manager Dave Roberts to call on Jansen in the seventh inning — and to bring Clayton Kershaw into the game in the ninth to close things out. So, in a certain sense, perhaps we should thank Dayton. If he escapes that seventh inning unscathed, we might not have been treated to Kershaw vs. Daniel Murphy with a runner in scoring position and the season on the line.

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At long last, the Dodgers found a solution to their hole at second base, acquiring second baseman Logan Forsythe from the Rays on Monday night in exchange for top pitching prospect Jose De Leon. This came after months of rumors around a trade involving De Leon and Brian Dozier. The Dodgers had a surplus of starting pitchers and an opening at second, so it was only a matter of time before they dealt the unproven De Leon.

De Leon’s first crack at the big leagues — a four-start cameo in September — didn’t go quite as well as many had hoped. But he breezed through the minors over the last two years. He broke out in a big way in 2015, striking out an absurd 35% of opposing hitters between High-A and Double-A while walking just 8%. That performance made him a consensus top-30 prospect the following winter.

De Leon battled injuries in the first half of 2016, but began dominating again once he returned to the field. In 16 starts at the Triple-A level, he once again posted a strikeout rate well over 30%, along with solid walk and home-run numbers. De Leon proved himself at the highest level of the minors at the tender age of 23. Pitchers who meet that standard often go on to have success in the majors, especially when they miss bats as prolifically as De Leon did.

De leon grades out exceptionally well by my KATOH system. It projects him for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method (KATOH) and also 10.1 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings (KATOH+). He’s the 13th-highest-ranking prospect by KATOH+ and the third-highest-ranking pitcher.

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What happened to Clayton Kershaw in Game 6 of the NLCS? According to a new study by Northwestern University, maybe it was jet lag.

Looking at 20 major-league seasons and 40,000 games’ worth of data, researchers found that jet lag perceptibly “impairs” player and team performance. The study is likely to be passed around many major-league front offices and strength-and-training departments. In a sport where every team is looking for hidden value at the margins, the value of better rest and recovery is just beginning to be explored, understood and focused upon — and is perhaps a considerable inefficiency in the game.

Dr. Ravi Allada, a circadian-rhythms expert, led the study:

“The negative effects of jet lag we found are subtle, but they are detectable and significant. And they happen on both offense and defense and for both home and away teams, often in surprising ways….

“For Game 6, the teams had returned to Chicago from LA, and this time the Cubs scored five runs off of Kershaw, including two home runs. While it’s speculation, our research would suggest that jet lag was a contributing factor in Kershaw’s performance.”

One of the homers in question:

Of course, Kershaw did pitch on extra rest that start, and Kyle Hendricks himself did just fine after traveling back east, but perhaps the rest could not save Kershaw from the clutches of jet lag.

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There may be no more confounding player in baseball than Yasiel Puig. His natural talent seems boundless. For bursts of weeks and months, Puig will look for all the world like a demigod in a Dodgers uniform, mashing and running and throwing like he was put on this planet to torture pitchers and baserunners.

Those stretches of time have grown scarcer, however. Every year since his blistering 2013 debut, Puig’s wRC+ has steadily fallen. It wasn’t as apparent in his five-win 2014, and frankly nobody expected him to keep up the 160 wRC+ he’d notched the year before. The last two years, though, have been rough. Puig has been limited to just 183 games since the start of 2015. He’s been sidelined by a variety of injuries, and that’s affected both his playing time and (likely) his production. Puig was even sequestered away in Triple-A for a month this year.

The question of who Puig really is as a player might be an easy one, but it feels complicated. Is he still going to be a star? How many offseasons in a row have we had this conversation now? Why do we care so much about a man who may just be a good-but-not-great cog on a great team? There have been plenty of blue-chip prospects who have developed into merely average players before, and there will be again. Puig may be the latest in that long line. It’s a simple answer, and it’s an acceptable one. What is it about Yasiel Puig that captures your attention and imagination?

It’s this.

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Joe Blanton was all kinds of “meh” as a starting pitcher.

In 1,553 career innings a starter – his role during the first nine years of his career – Blanton produced a 4.47 ERA and 4.20 FIP. He was a back-of-the-rotation arm. He soaked up innings. His starts were not going to spike ratings or attendance or win expectancy.

But in 2015 he found himself in the Kansas City bullpen and something strange occurred: he became one of the game’s most effective relievers despite an atypical tools profile.

Blanton was effective in the Royals’ bullpen, and when he was traded to the Pirates at the trade deadline, he was again successful in a relief role. During the following offseason, he signed a modest one-year, $4 million deal with the Dodgers and was, again, successful pitching out of the bullpen.

Since 2015, Blanton has appeared in 107 games, all as a reliever. In that time he ranks 11th in ERA (2.29) among all relievers, 24th in FIP (3.02) and 26th in K-BB% (19.1 points).

So what’s strange — in an era during which we hear more interest and talk about teams relying more heavily on their bullpens, when we saw inspired bullpen usage by the Cleveland Indians and other clubs in the postseason — what’s strange is Blanton remains available in free agency.

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