Eddie Guardado 2009

Texas' signing of Eddie Guardado to a one year minor league contract for 2009 sounded like a good idea until I looked at his statistics for the past three years. Admittedly this is in a very limited number of innings, but its so extreme that it can't be ignored. His groundball rates for the past three years have been under 26% each year. That's in 70 total innings, so its not THAT small of a sample size, and he was an extreme flyball pitcher even before that. Coupled with his low strikeout rate and a home run friendly park...this has the makings of a disaster. Guardado is likely to begin the season in a setup role, and if something happens to Frank Francisco could even find his way into some save opportunities. I suspect he will quickly find his way out of any key role in the bullpen, and is likely to be doing mop up duty (or be sent down) by the All-Star Break.