Editorials

Alex Guerrero Wants To Play Every Day, Understands Situation

Alex Guerrero

When one sees the stats put up in limited action this season by Alex Guerrero, one may wonder why he continues to come off the bench for the Los Angeles Dodgers.



Guerrero is hitting .474 with four home runs and 12 RBIs in just 19 at-bats. In the series against the San Francisco Giants, he provided four of the six runs scored by the offense. Even with those numbers, it’s likely that Guerrero will be out of the starting lineup on Friday night.

According to Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times, the 28-year-old wants more playing time:

It’s easy for Guerrero to see starting third baseman Juan Uribe hitting .250 with no home runs or RBIs and expect to start more games; however, it’s only been 15 games and the Dodgers are not going to be making any drastic changes this early in the season.

According to Alex Espinoza of MLB.com, manager Don Mattingly is glad that Guerrero is anxious to play more:

[He] has a little bit, probably, some trouble understanding all of it, which is fine,” Mattingly said. “It’s like everybody, anybody who’s not playing, you want them to want to play.”

Mattingly has “heard” those asking for Guerrero to start, but won’t let that affect his decisions:

I know the people are chanting for Alex right now,” Mattingly said, “but there’s other guys, too, that probably have swung the bat better. From the standpoint of … J.T. hits .340 last year, leads the league in hitting, basically. Now, because he’s not the flavor of the day, we start talking about someone else. That’s where we can’t get involved with what happened over a 10-day period.”

If Guerrero continues to produce as the season rolls along, then it’s possible we may see him more in the starting lineup.

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Vincent Samperio

Vince is currently the Associate Editor and Social Media Manager for Dodgers Nation. Hailing from San Pedro, CA and a student at Cal State Long Beach, Vince has previously written for the Daily 49er and LASF Magazine.

5 Comments

  1. Guerrero should be in the lineup everyday right now, it’s not hurting the team if he’s in the lineup. Donnie is a horrible manager, and he’s proving it even more.

  2. Mattingly will always be the downfall of the Dodgers, he’s an idiot and should’ve been replaced by Maddon when they had the chance to sign him.

  3. Its called playing the hot hand, or in this case Bat! If you think Guerrero is adequate enough defensively playing 3B then let him play. If he cools and goes into a slump you always can go back to Uribe or Turner. We could be missing out on a poor man’s version of Jose Abreu. Which is probably still a lot better than Uribe or Turner right now.

  4. This is not the first time I have said this, but I just want to get this out! I believe that Guerrero is not that bad defensively, and is probably average or above. Last year when he arrived to spring training , he had not played baseball for over a year! This is probably the reason his defense didn’t look good! Also, he had just arrived to a new country, and like other Cubans, he didn’t have first class tickets to get here! Mean while Mattingly told Gordon to try to play second in the winter league, so Gordon might have a shot a second base! Guerrero played shortstop in Cuba, and I don’t really think that the Mattingly truly knows how well Guerrero can play defense! This is the problem that cause really good players, not to be good managers! They don’t have the insight to see the game like players that struggled and had to do their all to play baseball! Bochy is a good example of this, because he was not a great player! Bochy gets the most out of his players, and can understand just what it takes to play in the majors! It seems that Mattingly didn’t take Guerrero’s situation in consideration, that he was really rusty because of not being able to play baseball for while, not to mention his plight! Thus Guerrero has the label bad defensively! Guerrero might just be average on defense, we just don’t know! I’ll tell you one thing it is much easier to learn to play defense, then learn how to hit! One can improve one self defensively, with hard work. I bet Alex can play much better defense, than Hanley did last year, and I know Hanley was lacking, but we let him, because of his offensive upside! Hopefully Guerrero will get his chance!

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