It dawned on me last night that I had neglected to properly welcome Alexander Guerrero to the Dodgers. I had originally reasoned that since he played for the club during the season opening series against the Diamondbacks in Australia, there was no need to welcome him to the Blue like I normally want to do. Then it dawned on me, Guerrero had yet to really play in front of True Blue Dodger fans (with all due respect for Dodger fans down under), so his recent promotion is his real homecoming.
With that in mind, I would like to extend a Blue Heaven welcome to Alexander Guerrero.
Alex Guerrero's path to the Majors has been fraught with peril, intrigue and violence. Like Puig he was a Cuban defector, so we may never truly know what he had to go through to escape. Then, rumors swirled that he had signed with the Dodgers in early September 2013, but that was delayed. His agents at the time were not licensed and authorized by MLB, so he switched agents to Scott Boras and eventually signed with the Dodgers in late October.
He soon started his professional career in the Dominican Winter League, but was hampered a bit by hamstring issues. Still, he showed some skill with the bat, and quickly rose up the Dodger ranks throughout 2014. In late May something crazy happened. A scuffle with teammate Miguel Olivo in Albuquerque resulted in Guerrero losing a piece of his ear. To put it bluntly, Olivo Tyson'd Guerrero! I kid you not. Check out my original story about that here.
Guerrero had to have surgery to salvage his ear, went through a long recovery and returned to the Isotopes roster on July 10th. He has since been impressive at the plate.
As you know, he was called up to the Dodgers as a part of the first wave of September call ups yesterday, and got into the game as a pinch-hitter against Gio Gonzalez in the fifth inning. Guerrero struck out swinging. I'm certain he'll get plenty of at-bats like that for the remainder of the season, and might get a spot start to provide some rest for the starters.
In celebration of Alex Guerrero's promotion to the Dodgers I made the above fantasy cards for him. I used photographs grabbed from Jon SooHoo's photog blog and the 1959 Topps Baseball card designs.
Below are the career Minor League statistics for him, via Baseball Reference:
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Love the cup of coffee on the card design.
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