Remember how nonplussed I was with the Tejada trade? I couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a witty title. Now look at the title for this post. So witty. So plussed.

Earlier today, the Padres pulled the trigger on a trade for Ryan Ludwick, getting him away from the Cardinals in a three-way deal that also sent Jake Westbrook from Cleveland to St. Louis.

After flirting with Jayson Werth earlier in the week, the Padres may have made a better deal. While Ludwick doesn’t have Werth’s mighty beard (Werth doesn’t have it anymore either), he’s got the type of numbers that should make you excited.

Ludwick’s in the middle of another solid season, posting a 123 wRC+ with an 8.8 UZR. From 2007 (his breakout season) through 2009, he had a line of .280/.350/.512 while playing in the new Busch Stadium, which is not hitter-friendly. It’s no Petco* but there’s no reason to fear that Ludwick will collapse once he gets to San Diego.

Defensively, Ludwick is a great right fielder who will likely bump Will Venable over to left field. Since 2007, his defense’s been worth +15.7 runs (that’s with a little left and center sprinkled in. At right alone, he’s been worth +12 runs). While he doesn’t have the best range, which should be interesting moving to Petco’s humongous right field**, he’s got the kind of arm you want from the most storied position in Padres history.

While I would have loved for the Padres to acquire Jayson Werth, he would be a two month rental as Werth is a free agent at the end of the year. Ludwick isn’t. Ludwick is a player that we can pencil into the four hole for the next year and a half and watch as he offers Adrian the type of lineup protection that he’s never received in his career. If Adrian wanted the team to show him they’re serious about winning, then he got his wish.

But wait, it gets better! For everything I just spelled out, the Padres gave up nothing. Were you worried about having to part with Simon Castro or Corey Luebke to improve them team? Then you’ll be glad to hear that the Padres received Ludwick in exchange for Corey Kluber*** and Nick Greenwood. If you’re asking who those guys are, my point exactly. And we’ll tell you, just not right now****. Along with Kluber and Greenwood, the team also sent some money St. Louis’ way. That’s right, us broke-ass busters sent another team money. And Ludwick’s arbitration eligible and likely to become the highest paid player on the team next year. Anyone questioning whether or not Moorad’s going to open up his pocketbook can stop asking.

If you wanted proof that the new regime is serious, here it is.

*Keep in mind that Petco makes hitters look bad, but it doesn’t make them actually bad. The Padres offense is currently ranked fourth in the NL when you take park factors into consideration, and I’d bet that you don’t believe me when I tell you that.

**Not to editorialize, but I wouldn’t be against the Padres putting Ludwick in left. With a starting trio of Ludwick-Gwynn-Venable, I’m not sure anything would fall in that outfield.

***With Luebke and Kluber, and the once rumored Corey Hart, this year’s been the Deadline of the Coreys for us.

****Coming soon!

In Tim Sullivan’s article on the Miguel Tejada acquisition, Adrian Gonzalez was quoted as saying:

“We position ourselves in the right place and then the ball’s hit nearby most of the time. We haven’t made a lot of spectacular plays out there this year. We’ve just always been in the right place. And that’s because the pitchers can execute their pitches. … There’s not a lot of range needed.”

According to UZR, the Padres as a team are second in the league in range runs at +31.6 and they’re tenth in out of zone (OOZ) plays with 286. In the infield alone (excluding first base), the Padres have +10.8 range runs and 109 OOZ. In both categories, the team ranks near the top of the league, ahead of the great defenses in San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Arizona.

Adrian’s had a better view of the infield than I have this season, but I can’t help but feel like he’s selling his guys a little short.

Let’s get this out of the way: Miguel Tejada is no longer the player you remember. In fact, he is no longer a good player.

This season, Tejada has been worth 0.1 wins, making him a slight upgrade over current awful Padres Everth Cabrera and Matt Stairs (-0.1 wins) and Oscar Salazar (-0.3), and assuming that he takes Everth’s shortstop job, Tejada will become the worst hitter on the team and it won’t be close (-10 runs). The next lowest position player is Salazar at -3.6. While all current Padres have Petco Park pulling their numbers down, Tejada has Camden Yards lifting his up. Yet he’s still only managed a wRC+ of 81. On the road, that number drops to 60.

But wait, it gets worse. Tejada will likely become our everyday shortstop, a position where he couldn’t find a job last offseason. In the 16,000+ innings he’s logged at short in his career, Tejada has been worth -30.2 runs on defense (-3.6 UZR/150) and from 2007-09, the last three seasons (almost 3,800 innings) he played at the position, he was worth -6.3 runs (-5.3 UZR/150). We don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions, but early returns on Tejada’s play at the hot corner have not been inspiring (-7.3 UZR/150 in 808 innings).

Sounds awful, right? Why would Hoyer make this trade? For starters, it didn’t cost a whole lot. While Wynn Pelzer, our contribution to this trade, was ranked seventh in our system by Baseball America before the season, his lack of control and modest projections make him a small loss. And despite his apparently fading abilities, Tejada has maintained his reputation as a great teammate, earning high praise from none other than Mark Loretta:

Loretta said Tejada was one of the best teammates he ever had.

“He’s just a fun guy to be around,” Loretta said. “He really pulled for his teammates, kind of one of those guys that people are drawn to. Funny, plays every day, plays hurt. He’s a gamer.”

I don’t think I need to tell you that no one, save for Bryan Cranston, has benefited from chemistry like these 2010 San Diego Padres and it sounds like it just got better.

Ultimately, this is an uninspiring-but-inoffensive trade. The team didn’t add the missing piece, but they didn’t just trade Wilson Ramos for Matt Capps either. Tejada hasn’t been a good player so far this season and while it’s possible that a jump into the fire could do him good, he’s still replacing a player worse than him even if it doesn’t.

If nothing else, Tejada makes this team that much easier to build on MVP 2005, so let’s call it a win.

Special note: this post doesn’t have a lot of jokes. In exchange for your forgiveness, please accept this photo of Padres prospect Blake Tekotte. Thank you.

When looking at statistics, there are two major pieces of information to learn.

• How much has a player contributed to his team in the past?
• How much will a player contribute to his team in the future?

Often times, the ability of a player to contribute to his team in the future is called “true talent level”. This is a player’s raw ability, with other factors such as luck and the ballpark environment in which he plays stripped from the conversation. This is where the concept of sample size is most important. Without using an adequate sample size in measurement, all the stuff that doesn’t affect a player’s future performance might mess up our opinions. Sample size, among other things, is what gets us there.

While fun and interesting, when talking about things a particular baseball squadron should or should not do, a player’s contributions in the past generally aren’t relevant. Sure there are exceptions–when a lifelong Padre player is negotiating his final contract–for instance. But those are rare.

My stupid example: flipping a coin

Suppose you ask me to call heads or tails as you flip a quarter in the air. I choose heads, and wouldn’t you know it, the quarter lands heads up! Does this mean I will know the result of all future coin flips when asked? In other words, do I have a perfect “true talent level” of calling coin flips? Of course not, and we all understand why. Because of luck.

Along these lines, each measurement (or statistic) has its own requirements for sample size. If you flipped a second coin, and I guess correctly a second time, that still doesn’t prove my coin guessing. We simply haven’t reached the number of coin flips necessary to filter out the luck. As you approach 50 coin flips and calls, my successful calling rate will likely be pretty close to my true talent level of 50%.

Back to baseball: wOBA and UZR

The same applies for baseball measurements. Different stats require different amounts of trial before they eliminate noise. I’m not a stat expert, so I can’t expressly say exactly how many tries one should use for each stat. For me, 3-5 years of wOBA (my favorite hitting stat) is what I want to see when looking at a player. 500 plate appearances at minimum.

When measuring defense with UZR, however, things are different. 3 years of UZR data is worth about 1 year of hitting data. That means when determining a defender’s true talent level, as I understand it, you really ought to look at 9 years of data. I’m completely serial. 3 years of UZR at minimum.

So please, everyone from message board posters to SDUT staff writers, be careful when making judgement about a player’s future potential using statistics. Especially UZR.

Your pal,

Melvin

After tonight’s game, the Padres will be a third of the way through the season and they could potentially have the best record in the NL, so it’s only fitting that tonight’s game wil be against the two-time defending NL champion Philadelphia Phillies, with superace Roy Halladay on the mound. But how have the Padres done against the other good teams in the league? Good question, Ray! Let’s take a look:

Record

This list is made up of all the teams at or above .500 at the end of play on June 2nd.

The team’s .559 winning percentage isn’t too far off of their .604 overall mark, which means that they’re doing the fair thing and treating all team’s equally. Less sarcastically, it means that the team isn’t just beating up on the bad teams, but that they are more than stepping up when necessary. In fact, the Padres have played more than twice as many games against the better teams in the league, making their run even more impressive.

Hitting

To assess the team’s hitting, I looked at how they matched up against the top teams in the league by OPS.

As should have been predicted, the team has not hit very well against the better team in the league, but then the team doesn’t hit well against any teams. There are exceptions but none are memorable. Overall, against teams over .500, the Padres have hit below their season average but not by too much, so that can be the silver lining. But really, this should not be a surprise.

Pitching

To assess the team’s pitching, I looked at how they matched up against the top teams in the league by ERA.

In a funny way, these numbers are almost disappointing. There’s nothing wrong with them, as they’re still pretty good. A team ERA of 3.36 would still be good for third in the NL and fourth in the entire league, it’s just 35 points higher than the overall mark and this team’s kind of spoiled me. Though it’s encouraging to see the team do well against the teams that have seen them the most (save for Colorado and Coors Field).

With two-thirds of the season left, this really means nothing and it’s very possible that the ground will start coming up on the Padres. But as far as Halladay and the Phillies are concerned, they are about to start a series with a team that has shown that, so far, it can hang with the big boys.

“Journalists” who write their eyes know more [than] defensive [metrics] are simply telling you they don’t care

-Peter Gammons via Twitter

Here’s a table I made for fun.

Even the people who think Eckstein deserves a starting gig mostly extol his ability to woo teammates into better playing.  They shy away from discussion of his ability to create runs at the plate, so why is he batting before the team’s best hitter?

I usually don’t waste effort talking about batting order, the amount of time it gets discussed far outweighs its actual impact on the team. But batting Gwynn Jr. and Eckstein first and second exemplifies a poor approach to decision making. Can every second baseman since Mark Loretta truly meet some supposed criteria making them appropriate number 2 hitters? I feel the same about hitting Eckstein and Gwynn at the top of the order as I do about using leeches to cure diseases.

“People before me did it this way therefore I cannot be criticized for it.”

Oh yeah. Happy opening day. I could go for a California Burrito about now.

Photo by Dirk Hansen

I didn’t see this one coming.

It’s true, the Padre blogosphere likes to rag on the San Diego Union Tribune’s baseball coverage from time to time. I’ll admit, it can be fun to snicker from the back of the room while the mainstream media, who once derided new technologies like blogs and analytical approaches to evaluating baseball.

That said, critics from traditional news outlets do make some good points. One of them is that sitting in the back of the room shooting spit wads doesn’t contribute much to a conversation.

The Union Tribune appears to be coming around in its coverage using these new tools, though this process took a step backward when the most forward thinking of the bunch, Tom Krasovic, was let go.

This story begins in mid January, after the Padres traded Kevin Kouzmanoff to the A’s for Aaron Cunningham and Scott Hairston. Due to Kouz’s excellent fielding percentage last year, members of the traditional San Diego media (and others) called for him to be awarded a gold glove. The UT’s Tim Sullivan described his defense as “near flawless”. Here was my response, via Twitter (You do follow The Sac Bunt, right?):

@sdutSullivan Thinking Kouzmanoff is a defensive whiz because of fielding percentage suggests range isn’t important.

Fielding percentage by itself is a bad way to measure fielding. It doesn’t consider range, an important aspect of a player’s ability to turn his share of batted balls into outs.

Much to his credit, Mr. Sullivan made a note of this information in a subsequent article:

Though fielding percentage is often a misleading metric, in that it makes no allowances for the relative range of different players, Headley’s .907 rate was the lowest among big league third baseman who started at least 25 games last season. The frequency of Headley’s errors — he made five of them among 54 total chances — occurred at nearly six times Kouzmanoff’s clip.

Although he isn’t completely off the hot seat considering his “results” from Headley’s 54 total chances aren’t worth the pixels they’re read on. But I digress.

Ultimate Zone Rating, or UZR, is the most reliable freely available defensive metric. Unlike fielding percentage, it does consider range. UZR rates Kevin Kouzmanoff average to above average defensively, over the necessary sample size of a multiple seasons.

My attempt to contribute something positive to the discussion, no matter how helpful rolled up pieces of paper shot through a straw may be:

Shout out to @sdutsullivan for reminding readers that fielding % is misleading. Good work. Next up, UZR!

And wouldn’t you know it? Here comes a primer from Bill Center of the Union Tribune on UZR, published at 12am last night by that party animal.

It’s a good article which covers the positives and negatives of UZR, including its inability to measure the context of player positioning at the start of a play, and that catcher defense is still a challenge.

There is this note from 3rd base and infield coach Glenn Hoffman that gives me a giggle:

“So much of defense is based on what you see and what you feel over pure statistics.”

Well, ok. Statistics are an attempt to quantify what we see. They allow us to compare players using the same criteria over tens of thousands of performances. I don’t want to discount the important of scouting, especially if information is only available in small samples or unique immeasurable circumstances. But lets just say if they were my millions of dollars at stake, I’d have a second thought about basing decisions on things people “feel”.

But I don’t want to distract from Bill Center’s effort with this article. I’m glad for the opportunity to hear from players, coaches, and front office personnel about UZR. Cheers to Bill Center and the Union Tribune. This is a strong step in the right direction.

Also, someone at the UT owes me a beer. Or a job. I’m good for either.

Tom Tango always has fun projects he puts together before the baseball season starts. This time, he’s putting the knowledge of those newfangled programmaphone machines that have weaseled their way into baseball against the One True Source of all baseball knowledge: the average fan.

Who knows more about whether a pitcher will be in the starting rotation or the bullpen: an algorithm or a true fan? Who knows more about the number of games an injured Joe Nathan will play in 2010: an algorithm or a Twins fan? There are certain human observation elements that are critical for forecasting. That’s where you can come in, and why you are here. Thanks for helping.

So go put your knowledge to the test. David Eckstein 4 eva!

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.