December 30, 2009

(Portland, OR) – In a signing meant to solidify long relief and spot starting, the Portland Lions today signed 31 year old starting pitcher Juan Guerra to a one year deal worth $1,630,000.

In 21 starts and 22 relief appearances for 3rd place Burlington in 2009, Guerra went 4-10 with a 5.83 ERA. In his 21 starts, 10 of them went for quality starts.

“Our main concern this offseason was adding starting pitching depth”, GM Blake Stephens said. “With the signing of Guerra and AAA starters Lorenzo Gonzalez, Shawn Roberts, and Michael Gibbs, we feel we now have enough depth in the system to overcome any injuries to our starters we may have in 2010. Guerra can also add long relief for us, which will ease some of the burden on our short relievers out of the pen. We’re happy with the signing. We think it really helps solidify the pitching staff.”

Asked why they decided on Guerra and didn’t delve into bigger named free agents like Dave Henderson or Will Hill, Stephens said, “We had the 2nd best ERA among starting staff in the Giamatti League last season and that was without our highly rated starter Phil Farrell, who went down with an injury early in the season. We’ve got Farrell back now and we felt it wouldn’t make sense to go after any big name starters especially with the asking price of 20+ million a season they were looking for. We felt any major signing like that would tie us up financially and we wouldn’t have the payroll flexibility to make moves before the deadline next season. We think that with the starting staff we have now we can compete. We didn’t see it as an efficient move to pursue a big name starter.”

Asked if the Lions had any other moves in the works, Stephens grinned and said, “We’ll see. We’ve been in discussions about a few players.”

The Lions, coming off a 99-63 season and a 1st place finish in the GL Rickey Division, had the lowest team ERA among all teams in the GL in 2009.