In case you aren’t following us on Facebook, you may not have noticed that the team signed Jerry Hairston, Jr. to a one-year deal worth $2.125 million.

Along with giving Mark Grant more opportunities to say “BroBI,” JJ (as he will henceforth be referred) will fill the team’s utility role. On his career, JJ has logged 400 innings at every defensive position other than first and catcher, and he’ll be the most versatile Padre since Damian Jackson in 2005. But his natural position is second base. You see where this is going.

David Eckstein is a horrible baseball player. I don’t doubt that he is a fantastic presence in the clubhouse, but he’s a very poor one on the field. Last year, he was worth 0.7 wins, worse than every starting second basemen in the league not named Kaz Matsui. Amazingly, CHONE projects Eckstein to be even worse this year, with 0.3 wins. So let’s start JJ, right?

Right. But indulge me, and allow me to explain why.

Eckstein is not a good hitter. At all. Last year, he ended the season with a wRC+ of 87, and Bill James and CHONE both project him to fall down near 80 this year. Unfortunately, JJ’s not much better. With the exception of 2008, when he exceeded his career BABIP by 75 points, he’s never been an above-average hitter and he’s not projected to be one this year. For all intents and purposes, he’s not a large step up offensively. Just defensively.

While Eckstein is not a good fielder, he’s not terribly experienced, with only a season’s worth of second base under his belt. The results haven’t been good, but we don’t have enough evidence to be conclusive. JJ, on the other hand, is a very good fielder. In over 4500 innings, Hairston has been worth +5.6 runs a year at second. But JJ’s not bad at most of the positions he’s played. What about his valuable versatility? In today’s Union-Tribune, Hoyer was quoted as saying “Jerry is one of the most versatile players in baseball and a great fit for our club. He will see action at nearly every position on the field.” If he was brought in to give the team options at every position, is it for the best to cement him in just one?

Yes. It is.

(Before I go on, let me just say that if the team is looking at JJ to take a lot of the load off of Blanks and Venable, then it might not be for the best. And if JJ isn’t built to last a whole season [he's only played 130 games twice], then it might not be for the best. But let’s act like everything’s copacetic, and move on.)

I don’t know how practical this is. Eckstein is a respected veteran, and he’s one of the most popular players on the team, both inside the clubhouse and up in the stands. He’s very good at the things I can’t plug into my calculator. But he’s also very bad at the things I can. At this point, as a member of 2010 Padres, Eckstein’s value is as the backup second basemen, who can fill in for JJ when he’s needed elsewhere on the diamond.

This trade’s not about Kouzmanoff or Hairston. Not really.

That’s not to say that it has nothing to do with them. The Padres traded a consistently solid third baseman for the right-handed center fielder they were looking for. There’s also Eric Sogard and Aaron Cunningham, but you get the idea.

No, this trade is more about Chase Headley and Tony Gwynn, Jr.

Headley’s benefit is obvious: he gets to go back to his original position. Along with the extra weight he’ll be able to put on, Headley’s value will go up just by getting out of left field. To quantify it, the positional adjustment for left field in WAR is -7.5 runs. Third base is +2.5 runs, meaning that by simply changing positions, Headley could gain 10 runs of value.

To put things more specifically, Headley was worth 1.4 wins last year (or 13.8 runs). Swapping out his -5.5 positional adjustment for Kouzmanoff’s +2.2 puts him up to 21.6 runs, or 2.2 wins. And that doesn’t take Headley’s awful outfield defense into consideration. If he had been a defensively neutral third baseman, he would’ve been worth nearly 3 wins. This leaves out a lot of nuance, but it helps to show how valuable a position can be.

For AJ, it might be even more obvious: he gets in the lineup. As the team stood Friday morning, the Padres were likely looking at an outfield of Headley in left, Will Venable in center, and Kyle Blanks in right. With Headley now in the infield, Blanks will likely slide to left and Venable to right, opening centerfield for AJ. This is what I said a couple of months ago:

Of the San Diego Padres not named ‘Adrian Gonzalez,’ AJ was the second best in terms of wins above replacement in 2009, with a WAR of 2.8. He achieved this despite being worth negative 1.7 runs offensively, because he was valued at plus 13.6 runs defensively. In fact, AJ’s UZR/150 of 12.2 was best for fifth in the league, amongst fielders with 800 innings played.

This is where I say that AJ’s 2009 success does not mean that he’ll have a similar 2010. He could easily come into the coming season and find himself exposed by opposing teams. Luckily for him, and us, the Padres have gotten him some help.

AJ found that a lot of his problems came in the form of left-handed pitching. He ended the season with an OPS of .693, but his splits broke down to a .501 OPS against LHP and a .763 OPS against RHP. This is where Hairston and his career .867 OPS versus left-handed pitching comes in. And Hairston’s no stranger to platoons.

In 2008, following Jim Edmonds’ departure, Hairston teamed up with Jody Gerut to give the team a .900 OPS (or so) out of centerfield, no small feat given Petco’s .796 park factor that year. And for good measure, the two of them chipped in a UZR of 9.1. Now, to expect AJ to have a season like Gerut’s 2008 is unrealistic, but to expect the team’s two solid center fielders to excel while playing to their own strengths is not. Combine their potential production with Headley’s position change and the team may very well shipped 2.7 wins to Oakland and received 5 in return.

Fangraphs has now added the 2010 Marcel Projections, to go along with the other ones we’ve already covered:

Kouzmanoff’s name is long enough to throw off my graph (and force me to shorten it) but not long enough to have a comical uniform. What’s that about?

Happy 2010 everyone.

As they do every year before the season, Fangraphs has added projections for the 2010 season. Now, on every player’s page, they are listing the Bill James and CHONE projections, and while they haven’t gotten around to everyone yet, they have also started listing projections made by the fans.

(Also, projections projections projections)
Here’s how the starting 10 for the 2010 Padres might look:

Adrian Gonzalez

David Eckstein

Everth Cabrera

Kevin Kouzmanoff

Chase Headley

Tony Gwynn, Jr.

Will Venable

Kyle Blanks

Nick Hundley

I’ll go ahead and say what we’re all thinking: AJ is popular enough to get voted on by the fans? I like it (but I like AJ).

Overall, there’s not a lot of surprise here. The experts have Adrian coming down from his monster 09 campaign, putting him more in line with his very good 2007 and 08 seasons, while the fans put him somewhere in-between. Headley and Blanks are also looking good, and that’s about it.

Personally, I’m glad to see that Cabrera projects to stay average. I’ll take that from a toolsy shortstop who should only be in Triple-A.

*wRC+ is essentially wOBA on the OPS+ scale

You can’t trade bad players just because they’re bad. If baseball were that easy, Padre fans would never have the pleasure of telling the thrilling tales of Mark Bellhorn. You trade players when their perceived value is greater than their actual value.

-Melvin Nieves, 08/11/08

Following Khalil’s MVPadre winning season of 2008, we at The Sac Bunt made the case (cases, really) for why he should be moved. His value was at an all-time high and it wasn’t really representative of his actually production. For all of his power prowess, and Khalil hit 27 home runs that year, his complete inability to draw a walk more than evened things out, leaving him with a wOBA that season of .322. Yet the Padres attempted to sign Khalil to an extension, one that he fortunately turned down, and now he’s working through his problems both on-field and off, in St. Louis.

Lesson learned, right?

In a recent blog entry on Kevin Kouzmanoff, Paul DePodesta aptly quoted Mark Twain, saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” DePo was using Twain’s words to discuss Kouzmanoff random success after May 14th, but it might work better if used to talk about the third baseman’s current trade value.

In his discussion, DePo points out the tear Kouzmanoff’s been on since May 14th, which includes 9 home runs in 140 at-bats. Stretched out over a full season, that’s more than 30 home runs, an especially impressive feat playing in Petco. But DePo noticeably fails to mention Kouzmanoff’s 27 strike outs and 5 walks over the same stretch. That’s a BB/K of 0.19, which is consistent with Kouz’s 0.17 mark in 2008. It’s also lower than Khalil’s 0.25 in 2007.

At the time, trading Khalil wasn’t as simple as simply finding a trade partner. There was no one in the system to take his place, so the team would have to go outside to find a replacement. With Kouzmanoff, the same problem does not exist.

As we’ve discussed, Chase Headley has become a bit of an enigma in this organization, though he’s been hot over the past couple of weeks. He’s also a more-than-viable option for this team at third base. And it would seem that a decision is begging to be made, with the outfield becoming suddenly stuffed. Along with Headley, the Padres have the newly unretired Tony Gwynn, Scott Hairston, Brian Giles, Kyle Blanks, and Will Venable. While it seems that the sand in Giles’ Padres hourglass is just about out, there’s no benching an active Hall of Famer or the team’s best non-Adrian hitter. And Towers has also pledged playing time for Venable, while Blanks’ presence demands some as well.

(For our coverage of Blanks’ call-up, search ‘Chase Headley’ in our archives and look for articles from June of last year.)

The best reason to trade Kouzmanoff, though, is because this team isn’t any good. We’re currently 32-41 and something like seven games out of the Wild Card. We also have a Pythagorean of 28-45 and are absent our two best pitchers (although Kevin Correia has really turned it on as of late). While some of the young talent are playing surprisingly well, the aforementioned Tony Gwynn and Everth Cabrera leading the pack, by no means should the team think that this dinner party is going end without someone getting piss drunk and saying something inappropriate about someone else’s wife. Let’s just take it easy, explore what the market for Kouzmanoff is (the Indians recently traded Mark DeRosa for Chris Perez and a PTBNL, for instance), and get ready for 2010 and beyond.

I know it’s usually Melvin’s thing to highlight the ridiculousness of the Union-Tribune’s sports reporting, but I’m the one with the degree in journalism, damnit! 

As you, a devoted reader of the Sacrifice Bunt, knows, Petco Park is the hardest stadium on hitters in the entire major leagues. And it’s not even close. But today, we’ve learned that Nick Canepa’s yet to bookmark us. 

The Padres have just begun their sixth season in Petco Park, and it appears they’ve finally called off the exorcists. Extensive and expensive studies by engineers have revealed the place is an expanse of grass and dirt, with fences along its outer edge. There is no cemetery beneath it. They don’t sell voodoo dolls in the gift shop.

It’s difficult to judge any baseball team after a few days, although it’s apparent to just about everyone who doesn’t believe in witchcraft that these particular Padres aren’t going to arrive in Cooperstown in the same bus. But there are enough new faces probably unaware of the Petco Curse, what with so many of the complainers having grabbed their Tarot cards and left the building.

This is not – not – the Petco Triangle.

No more singing the ballpark blues

Let us be very very clear: Petco hurts hitting. It’s very likely that it is in the hitters head, from Nevin and Klesko on up, but for good reason. From 2004 through 2007, Petco suffocated runs by almost 20%, and 2008 was worse. Any hitter that complains about the effect Petco has on their hitting is well within their right. Which is, presumably, why Canepa didn’t talk to any for his article.

Instead, to help show how the team has truly exorcised the hitting hurting demons, he interviewed Peavy and Black.

“I’m so tired of hearing that stuff,” Padres ace Jake Peavy was saying. “We can win here; we’ve won here. So it’s not a bandbox. Matt Kemp hit one off the batter’s eye against me the other day. Hit it hard. I’m tired of ballpark excuses.

For a little bit of context, here’s what Peavy had to say following Monday’s home opening loss:

“Today’s game was nothing new to me,” Peavy said. “It’s always been this way. I’m not knocking any hitters that we’ve had in the past or our hitters now. We’re just going to play low-scoring ballgames. That’s the makeup of our teams here.”

Exactly. For good measure, Peavy pointed out that the other guys don’t have a problem, and Black backed him up.

“There are ballparks that play bigger than this. Guys will tell you Pac Bell, or whatever it is (now AT&T in San Francisco), is harder to hit in. The guys who’ve been here are not going to let the new guys get in a negative frame of mind. This team has moved past that. It’s not like the Dodgers were batting in Arizona and we were batting here.”

——–

“We don’t need players who have the ballpark in their heads,” Black said. “I feel as though our players are strong mentally, so the ballpark shouldn’t come into their heads. You’re playing a baseball game. Play the game.

“Eighteen players play at the same time. It’s a baseball game. When the wind blows out in Chicago, the same guys are playing. I hear about Safeco outs and Citizens Bank home runs and Great American Ballpark home runs. So what?”

Peavy being Peavy. I want to give Black the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s not telling the hitters to man up, but Canepa didn’t intend for that interpretation. I’d be curious what Edgar Gonzalez, who recently told the North County Times that it’s already Petco 3 – Gonzalez Bros. 0 and counting, thinks about Peavy and Black’s comments. 

If only press passes weren’t so hard to come by.

RAY UPDATE:

Whine and ye shall receive.

The North County Times is reporting that Moorad and new president Tom Garfinkel are looking at bringing in the fences.

Asked on XX 1090’s morning show Thursday about the possibility of moving in the fences, Moorad said he’s scheduled to meet with former president Dick Freeman to get an insider’s perspective.

Everything in this article is pretty ambiguous; it says that Moorad and Garfinkle “want to learn all they can about the outfield dimensions at Petco Park,” though I imagine Alderson knew a good amount without doing anything about it. But the implication is there.

In the comments, I threw in a quote from Adrian showing that he knows what’s up, and the NCT throws in some more:

First baseman Adrian Gonzalez favors bringing in the fences, particularly in the gaps. Gonzalez said he’s fine with the depth in right field but would like the gaps in right- and left-center field to be shortened to 385 feet. The current distances are 400 feet in right-center and 401 in left-center.

Gonzalez said the change not only would result in more home runs, but also would affect the way outfielders chase long fly balls.

“If he catches it, he’ll run into a wall,” Gonzalez said. “He’ll have to deal with the wall. Instead he’s running, he’s running, he’s running, and he catches it and is still short of the wall.”

And, to top things off, here’s a very fun fact:

This winter, Padres researchers discovered that fly balls hit more than 325 feet at Petco result in a .278 average as opposed to a major league average of .405.

PECOTA’S Standings (Friar Forecast)

Mr. Logan over at Friar Forecast has a nice write-up on the 2009 predictions and they’re actually not that bad. At least, coming off a season during which the Padres won only 63 games, 74 doesn’t sound so bad. Although, PECOTA isn’t quite an exact science; for 2008, it had the Padres winning 83 games. Maybe we’ll win 94 this year? Probably not, although I feel like the Padres are a couple of fortuitous breaks from contention. One such break would be the return of this man.

Prior is ready to give it one more shot; ‘I don’t want to give up,’ he says (San Diego Union-Tribune)

“Cautiously optimistic.” Those are actually Mark Prior’s words, when discussing his 2009. “If he’s healthy, and all the reports thus far are encouraging, Prior is my ace in the hole.” Those are Kevin Towers’ words, and the optimist in me prefers what Towers has to say. If Prior can at least stay on the mound for 20-some starts and hold Baek back from the third spot in the rotation, the team’s chances of success jump up.

Jake Peavy breaks his silence (Gaslamp Ball)

jbox threw up Peavy’s comments on 1090 yesterday, and they’re rather refreshing after the war Peavy and the front office waged on each other this off-season. Especially refreshing is Peavy’s denial that he ever sang “Go Cubs Go.” Ah, much better. Here’s your knife back, Jake. Sorry for the confusion.

Padres by Position (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Starting with Adrian, Blanks, and first base, Bill Center has been documenting the Padres, position-by-position (hey!). While the articles are a bit sparse, Center does a good job of covering the Padres from top to bottom. He even manages to sneak in a couple juicy nuggets, like how the Padres are looking at moving third baseman Logan Forsythe to catcher.

Best outfield arms of 2008 (The Hardball Times)

Remember when I said Brian Giles was one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball, and that pushed him past Adrian as the MVPadre for 08? Well, about that- The Hardball Times has recently published numbers on outfield arms and Giles’ is unsurprisingly atrocious. He can still run them down, and he’s still worth 1.1 more wins than Adrian, so I stand by my MVPadre pick, but, uh, yeah.

In case anyone missed the comments section from this post, Sac Bunt reader Old_Padre had some concerns about my use of the tRA statistic in forming my opinion on a Jake Peavy trade. Here’s what he said:

How much of a predictor of future performance is a stat if it has swung back and forth by at least 20% over the last four seasons?

I responded that what I like about tRA is the way it breaks down a pitcher’s results into components for which we can more accurately apply credit or blame. Unfortunately I was not able to add much more to my answer because I am not a statistic guru, I merely enjoy sharing what I have learned with others who might not have the time, interest, or whatever other reason to follow sabermetrics news.

I suggested Old_Padre get in contact with Graham MacAree, the main developer behind tRA for a better answer to his questions. Awesomely, Old_Padre did just that, and thanks to both gentlemen I learned a lot in the process. I would like to re-post their e-mail conversation, in full, so hopefully more readers can benefit from Old_Padre’s diligence.

Mr. Macaree,
I was recently introduced to tRA through a blog post elsewhere written about Jake Peavy. I got into a bit of a conversation with they blogger who suggested I pass my question on to you.
His implied belief about tRA is that because it analyzes all components of the batter/pitcher interaction is that it is more useful as a predictor of future performance. The question I asked in the comments is “How much of a predictor of future performance is a stat if it has swung back and forth by at least 20% over the last four seasons?”
Now, as I read your primer, I don’t know that you would make the assertion that it’s a more accurate predictor of future performance just because it paints a more accurate picture of past results. However, if you DO feel that’s the case, could you help me understand why I saw such significant variance (I say that without having enough time or competence to truly do regression analysis or to look at deviation numbers) in the year-to-year tRA numbers for Peavy and the other guys I listed in the comments.
I’ll admit I’m not that bright (I’m a Padres fan, how smart could I be???) and it’s been far more years since I used SPSS than it was months that I used the damn thing, so my statistical prowess is not, ahem, remarkable. However, I would love to try to understand better.
THANKS!

Graham’s response:

tRA obviously isn’t a perfect future performance indicator – but nothing that we have is a perfect performance indicator. Every stat suffers from large swings year-to-year – if you look at the variation in ERA and compare it to tRA’s, you’ll find that the former’s is much higher. In fact, tRA is something like 2.5x as stable year to year as ERA, and also beats FIP (the most common ‘advanced’) pitching stat by a fairly healthy margin. So although it’s prone to large variations, it’s still more predictive than looking at other stats. Baseball is just too variable for any statistic to remain static.
I hope that clears things up.
-Graham

Old_Padre:

Thanks, Graham. I appreciate that you replied SO quickly!
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that I thought there was no value, or that because it has some variance, it isn’t predictive at all. I guess my beef is more with the tack taken by the blogger… look, his tRA ballooned last year, quick trade him before anyone notices.

Graham:

It may be of some interest to you that one of the alternate names for tRA in development was ‘the Jake Peavy is amazing stat’.

Personally, I think that a ballooning tRA is a large red flag, but it’s certainly not the only thing that should be considered.

Definitely fun to hear our favorite Alabaman was on Graham’s mind when working on tRA. Thanks again to Old_Padre for contributing such great dialogue, and to Graham MacAree for his insight.

I would also like to clarify that I don’t base my opinion that the team should make the right deal for Jake based solely on his 2008 tRA. In fact, that reason would probably land at #4 or #5 on my list. I put Jake’s violent, all effort delivery, age combined with injury risk, the large percentage of team payroll his contract covers, and the holes on the roster that need filling before the tRA thing. Sorry if that wasn’t clear in my original post.

Cheers.

Jake Peavy has a secret buried deep within his 2008 performance. The secret isn’t easy to see, although that has to be true because it’s what defines a secret.

Sabermetricians are pretty good at finding this type of hidden knowledge. One method of finding truth and escaping prejudices in a player’s pitching ability is to use a statistic called tRA. This metric breaks the result of every plate appearance down to a level that allows us to accurately assign credit or blame to the pitcher.

Some of these plate appearance results tRA takes into account are line drives, fly balls, pop-ups, home runs, strikeouts, and walks. Again, the purpose here is to value as accurately as possible the influence on run prevention that pitchers have direct control over. tRA is park and league neutral, and set to the same Runs per 9 innings scale as ERA, a statistic that does poor job predicting future success compared to tRA.

This is a similar process to the FIP stat, though tRA incorporates more detail. Here is more information on tRA, along with some background from Dave Cameron about why ERA isn’t as great as you might think.

Ok, I promised a Jake Peavy secret, and you want one ASAP, am I right? Here you go:

See that there? See the number that jumps out a little bit? Maybe a little jumping? Holy crap. I flipped a lid when I saw that 2008 number.

Seriously, don’t tell anyone. Call me paranoid and delusional, (ok, I’ll call myself paranoid and delusional) but it isn’t an accident this wasn’t posted until after the deals with Atlanta and Chicago fell through.

Though he probably employs more complex metrics than tRA, this information clearly corroborates why Sandy Alderson has held tight to his position that trading Jake is first and foremost a baseball move.

Of course Peavy’s unsightly tRA isn’t the only reason to make the trade. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, his age, the many needs within the organization, a poor chance the team will compete next year, and the injury risk of pitchers are all motivating factors.

When you couple this reasoning with the the Padres passing on trade opportunities with two teams, and at least one passable offer from the Braves, it makes me think that someone making the case that trading Jake is primarily about lowering payroll has a lot more explaining to do.

An ERA that seems likely an abberation, and the other reasons mentioned above mean that now is a good time to make the right deal for Jake Peavy. Unfortunately, neither the Cubs nor the Braves seem prepared to offer value the Padres prefer. Hopefully Jake’s hidden slump doesn’t manifest itself in a higher ERA come July next season.

Brian Giles. At least, he should be.

We’ve written before on the ridiculousness of this award, and I expect this year to be no different.

That sounds harsh, so let me explain.

If Adrian Gonzalez doesn’t win this year’s M.V.Padre award. I will be greatly surprised. He hit 36 home runs, drove in 119 runs, raised most all of his important numbers, and even won a Gold Glove. He’s a legit player and he hits in one of the most ridiculous stadiums in the league. But he wasn’t the best player on the team this year.

Offensively, it could go either way. Adrian leads the standard categories, jumping above Giles in home runs, RBI, doubles, slugging, and OPS. In the fancier categories, Giles catches back up, leading Adrian in wRAA, wOBA, and EqA, though he’s really not that far up on Adrian in most. Where Giles pulls away is on defense.

When it was announced, I wrote briefly on the ridiculousness of Adrian’s Gold Glove win. Adrian is not the best fielding baseball in the National League. Far from it. Lance Berkman, with a UZR of 11.2, was the best in the National League. Down the list at -7 was Adrian.

Giles, meanwhile, was one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. And when this is taken into consideration with his offensive contributions, the choice becomes very clear.

Fangraphs has recently added a value section, which includes the following:

Batting – wRAA (Runs Above Average) with a park adjustment.

Fielding – The sum of a player’s UZR.

Replacement – The replacement level adjustment set at 20 Runs / 600 PA.

Positional – The positional adjustment set using Tangotiger’s values (see this link)

Value Runs – The sum of Batting, Fielding, Replacement, and Positional.

Value Wins – Value Runs converted to a wins scale.

Dollars – Value Wins converted to the following dollar scale: 2008 – $4.5m / win

This how is Giles and Adrian stack up:

I threw in Gerut for some perspective. When all things are considered, Giles was so much the best player on the team that Adrian is closer to Gerut. And this is to take nothing away from Gerut, who had a surprisingly fantastic season.
Adrian is absolutely the face of the franchise. He’s the Padres first transcendent hitter since Petco opened, and he took the Gold Glove away from such players as Berkman and Albert Pujols. That is exceptional company to keep, and I don’t mean to come off as iconoclastic. Giles was simply the Most Valuable Padre in 2008.

(With all due respect to Jake Peavy, the most potent part of the offense.)