A little more than four years ago to the day, on June 2nd, 2005, Miguel Ojeda started the day’s game in right field. Though he was a backup catcher, Ojeda starting in the outfield wasn’t entirely out of a line, as he had a handful of starts in left earlier that year. The craziness comes in who Ojeda was starting over.

Xavier Nady was drafted by the Padres in the second round of the 2000 draft and was named the Padres number one best prospect by Baseball America in 2003. yet in his three years with the big league club, Nady never received consistent playing time, and was shipped out to New York in 2005 for Mike Cameron. Since then, Nady has jumped to Pittsburgh and then to the Yankees (the other New York team), breaking out last year with a .374 wOBA in 148 games, a career high.

On that fateful June day, Nady sat on the bench and watched Ojeda run out in right and go 0-for-3. And then five months later, he was gone.

Get to the point, Ray

Right.

The Padres have had a tremendous lack of success in developing homegrown talent. Outside of Jake Peavy, the second best player the Padres made for themselves this decade was Khalil Greene, and we all know how that turned out. Most of them busted, but at least Sean Burroughs got a chance. Nady never really got that chance in San Diego, and I’m beginning to worry about how big of a shot Chase Headley’s going to get.

Kevin Towers went on XX Radio last night for his weekly call-in. The topic of Headley, and why he’s been sitting so much, came up. Among other things, Towers said that he thinks Headley’s confidence level is down, that the strike outs are a concern, and that the team is out there trying to win games. He also said that it’s up to a player to make adjustments in game, and that maybe Headley should go back and look at video from the minors to see what’s changed.

Let’s start at the beginning: the team is out there trying to win games. Towers brought this up to explain why Headley’s sitting for Scott Hairston, but it begs the question: What are Kevin Kouzmanoff and Brian Giles doing in the lineup night-in and night-out?

Now, Giles has run into a hot streak, posting an .899 OPS in the past two weeks, which has raised his season mark up to .568. That’s an OPS+ of 52. He’s also played in 50 of the team’s 53 games. Kouzmanoff, meanwhile, has an OPS of .503 over the past two weeks, with a season OPS of .612, or an OPS+ of 63. He’s played in 51 games.

Giles’ recent hot streak and Kouzmanoff’s hot defense are two valid reasons for why these guys are still in the lineup, but I wonder why it comes at the expense of Chase Headley.

Like Nady, Headley is a former number one prospect, taking the title in 2008. And he’s also only 148 games into his major league career, but confidence in him already seems to be dwindling. In yesterday’s Union-Tribune, Headley was quoted as saying:

I’ve never had so few at-bats over a month. Since I hurt my shoulder, I haven’t played every day. I haven’t been given a chance to battle through this.

For a good number of my at-bats in May, I was fighting to get through the weakness in my shoulder. It was really weak. I had to change my stance because I couldn’t hold my hands in the same position.

Headley returns after Hairston hurt

Headley is referring to a shoulder injury he sustained in early May when he ran into the wall in L.A. This knocked him out for a couple of games, but based on Headley’s use of the past-tense, it doesn’t seem to still be bothering him. Surely not as much the position he’s found himself in.

He goes on to say:

It’s frustrating, the circumstance I’m in right now. I didn’t forget how to hit. I feel I have the capability. I think that in any capacity, I can help this team out. But this wouldn’t be the capacity I would choose.

That doesn’t sound to me like a player whose confidence is down.

Why is the team sitting on Chase Headley?

Headley’s supposed to be one of the young cornerstones of this franchise, but he’s sitting in favor of a 38-year-old in the last year of his contract. I hear Towers say that Headley’s strike outs are of concern, but more so than Kouzmanoff’s inability to draw a walk? Headley may be striking out 30% of the time, but his BB/K is still well above Kouzmanoff’s. Headley’s been the superior player of the three all year, but I don’t expect to hear the front office say so.

Finally, with Hairston on the DL, a spot in the outfield opened up. But last night, the newly recalled Will Venable got the start in left field over Headley, going 0-for-4 with an error.

One can only assume that Henry Blanco forgot his outfield glove at home.

A large portion of The Sac Bunt’s search engine traffic comes from searches for Padres, and strangely non-Padres various walkup musics. If you’re here for that reason, welcome. I also write about other useless and esoteric sports subjects, like the amount of time viewers spend looking at advertising watching a game. With promotion like that, who could not check it out!?

Getting to the meat of the situation, Adrian is still riding his classic Pitbull, then mariachi music. Brian Giles is keeping it current with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”. Chris Burke, apparently missing something in his past as much as I miss college, hums along to Kenny Chesney’s “I Go Back” on his way to the plate.

Tony Gwynn Jr. rocks “Nothin But A G Thang” by Snoop and Dr Dre, taking a page out of ex-Padre Greg Vaughn’s book. Scott Hairston keeps it hip with the cool kids using TI and all those other people’s “Swagger Like Us”.

And as a special retro walkup music feature too fantastic not to include, is Gary Templeton’s “Smooth Operator” by Sage. Marvelous.

The Padres walkup music page is updated accordingly.

Also, I think I have the poll fixed. Please vote your heart out. If it doesn’t work, tell me the error you get so I can fix it my heart out. Thanks.

Remember how delusional Grady Fuson got when Baseball America announced the farm system as 29th in the league? I anticipate the team’s response following this:

Organizational Rankings: #25 - San Diego Padres

Our much revered Fangraphs has begun listing all 30 Major League clubs in descending order and, as you don’t even need to click to see, the Padres ended up at 25th. 

The grading was broken down into Ownership, Front Office, Major League Talent and Minor League Talent. Some highlights:

Ownership: N/A

This is an ownership group in transition, and we just don’t have enough information to give them any kind of grade.

This one seems kind of obvious. They go on to say that there is a sense of shadiness behind the sale to Moorad, as he still had a stake in the Diamondbacks. Personally, I think it’d only be appropriate if a conflict of interest blows up in our face. Nothing’s impossible.

Front Office: B-

Kevin Towers is a smart, likable guy, and currently the longest tenured GM in the game… However, there’s some serious question marks about how the team will be run going forward. With Alderson on the way out, does he take Asst. GM Paul DePodesta with him? Can Towers avoid being fired if the team struggles in 2009, especially with new ownership?

Really, not to be a bloodsucker, but it seems like they went a little soft on the front office. Towers’ legacy in San Diego speaks for itself, but he had a rough 2008. Go through our archives and you won’t see too many “Hey, we signed this guy!” articles, unless they were followed by a “Hey, we traded this guy for not a whole lot!” article. Then there’s our impossibly disappointing minor league system, the uncertainty going forward, and our general 2009 awfulness, and that B- grade seems a bit generous. 

Major League Talent: C-

Regression needs to be expected from both, and there just isn’t much in the way of run production for the Padres outside of (Gerut and Giles) and Adrian Gonzalez. Chase Headley is a solid enough young player, but when he represents the hopes of your future line-up, things aren’t great.

Fangraphs makes a potentially dubious statement in “the pitchers aren’t as good as advertised, and the hitters are a bit better than everyone thinks.” I’m not sure why the pitchers are flat-out not as good but the hitters are just kinda sorta better. Petco Park still eats statistics for breakfast. The Three-G’s all had a road OPS near .900, with Adrian topping out at .946. Only Giles made it over .800 at home. Maybe the scrub seatholders are only a bit better on the road, but I don’t like defining the team by them. 

Minor League Talent: C-

There aren’t any position prospects here that everyone loves, and the ranks of the pitching prospects are full of guys who throw 87 MPH and try to get by on smarts. It isn’t a horrible farm system, but it’s not a very good one either, and for a team in need of a talent injection, that’s a problem.

Hey, “isn’t a horrible farm system.” That’s pretty good! But seriously, this cuts to the core of this team’s problem. We can talk all day about the missing $30 million and how that’s hindering the team, but the fact remains that this team needs that $30 million because it has yet to start producing its own talent. While other teams in our league are filling out their lineups with homegrowns, the Padres have Chase Headley and Nick Hundley. And with the exception of Kyle Blanks, no one’s really close. I think this fact needs better representation in the Front Office grade.

I’ll leave you with Fangraph’s summation of this team’s fortunes going forward. Have a good weekend!

Overall: C

 If you’re a glass half full guy, you can hold onto the fact that the D’Backs were very well ran while Moorad was in Arizona, and that the front office is full of guys who could run a team well. If you’re a glass half empty guy, then you see an organization that lacks talent, has only a couple of really valuable players (two of whom have full no-trade clauses), and who plays in a division with two teams that are better, younger, and have greater revenue steams. I have a feeling that San Diego is in for some tough times ahead.

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.

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.)

Have you ever had two friends who dated each other? Two friends that both hung out with you in the same group, that you had many mutual friends with? Did they ever break up?

That’s what Jake Peavy and the Padres are doing.

As Mel pointed out, Peavy’s desires are all over the place. He wants to play on a contender, but he also wants to play on the Braves and Astros, and he wants to stay in San Diego. This we can easily chalk up to confusing. Break-ups are hard to go through. But then there are the comments his agent is making. Comments like:

“It’s a big decision,” said Axelrod, who noted a no-trade clause would have to be part of any trade. “You have to look at all the factors and moving parts. We’re usually pretty deliberate. … At times, (Peavy’s frustration) bubbled over. He’s a fiery competitor. You don’t want to take that out of him. You don’t want to tame that too much. But I heard Jake say it, I heard Brian (Giles) say it and I heard Trevor (Hoffman) say it —- they’re not that far away. I think if they kept (Mike) Cameron, (Geoff) Blum and (Doug) Brocail, they’re in it last year —- 84 games wins this division.”

Cooling off period for Peavy talks

Oof.

Much like the break-up of your friends, this has gotten ugly. Jake has always been one to tell Kevin Towers how to do his job/suggest better alternatives to his own teammates (like Kenny Lofton). I’m even surprised Jake’s agent didn’t throw Milton Bradley in everyone’s face. But those two aren’t done yet. They’re piling on:

“One of the things we will want to look at some point is, ‘Who are you giving up? How much are you weakening your team to make this deal?’” Axelrod said. “If Team X trades three starting pitchers and a starting shortstop to get Jake Peavy, that lessens their chance of being a successful team.”

Peavy throws a curveball into Padres’ trade talks with Braves

The specific player in question is Yunel Escobar, who is looking more and more like the centerpiece of a deal with Atlanta.

It was one thing when Jake told Towers what to do. But now he’s telling Frank Wren, the G.M. of the Braves (the team Jake is not on), how to do his job. What if Wren had a plan that didn’t involve Escobar? Jake’s all but gone from San Diego, but he’s also making it very difficult for the Padres to send him anywhere else.

It’s almost as if he’s playing a game of chicken with Towers. “Trade me for nothing or keep me. Your call.” The scary part is that Towers might actually blink.

The preliminary results of Tom Tango’s fan scouting report are in. And like much of the Padres 2008 season, the results aren’t pretty:

Even players one would think play decent defense are lower than expected. Brian Giles at 18 and Tadahito Iguchi at 29, for example.

The fan scouting reports are a great resource. I’m sure you’re aware of the inherent bias in making judgments only based on whatever we happen to remember of a given set of events. But what’s cool about this report is that these biases are on their way to being eliminated by aggregating the data between hundreds of fans, so no one idiot messes things up.

Though he is a smart guy, I wouldn’t rely exclusively on Tango’s collected data. Check out The Hardball Times’ revised zone rating and out of zone for a complimentary (and free!) view of a dude’s defense. Myron Logan over at Friar Forecast converted the Padres 2008 numbers into the easy to read +/- system as well.

Addendum: I should note that judging a player from his MLB rank prima facie might be a bit confusing at best and flat out wrong at worst. It definitely confused me since I’m throwing this in after the fact rather than including it in the original report.

The rank isn’t the Padres player compared to the league average at that position. The rank is out of all the players who saw just a few innings there (I don’t know for sure what the minimum is, but some guys have as few as 190 innings). For instance, there are 52 players included in the rankings of second baseman, including guys like Argenis Reyes. So don’t freak out too much.

Introduction: Padres 101
Part 1: Rebuilding Through the Draft

A proper discussion on the misconceptions surrounding the San Diego Padres has to begin with their hitting. At the end of the 2008 season, the Padres ranked dead last in the league in runs. Since moving into Petco, the team has been consistently at the bottom of the league in this category.

From this information alone, it would be safe to assume any number of things, from the players on the team are poor to the management has no idea of how to put together a team to compete in this ballpark. What needs to be considered is that the Padres are not the only team that plays in Petco.

What are park factors?

Simply, park factors indicate the difference between runs scored in a team’s home and road games. As the same hitters and the same pitchers are doing the playing, the difference in runs scored is dependent on the park the game is played in.

Park factors do tend to vary some from year to year. That’s why I have compiled the combined park factors for every stadium from 2004 through 2007, save the two Nationals and Cardinals parks. I used a basic version of the park factor equation: (home runs for + home runs against) / (road runs for + road runs against). And the numbers are:

(And, as you should’ve assumed, Petco Park this year was again last in the league at 0.796. First in the league for 2008 was Rangers Ballpark, at 1.142.)

What does this mean? In layman’s terms, Petco is the hardest stadium in baseball to hit in. Not just by a little, but a lot.

The Padres don’t just play in a pitcher’s park, they play in an extreme pitcher’s park.

This is the lens under which the Padres low run totals should be viewed. Nineteen percent less runs scored in Petco than in the average park. The next toughest stadium, Safeco Field, is more than half that distance away at 8% less. The only gap greater than the 11% between Petco and Safeco is the 15% between Coors Field and Chase Field. You may know Coors Field as the place that kept baseballs in a humidor to try to even the odds between sides.

From 04-07, the two most productive Padres were Adrian Gonzalez and Brian Giles. In their most productive seasons, their home and away OPS splits were:

And then this season:

(More of the same from Gonzalez, although Giles’ numbers aren’t so bad. Another good reason to resign him, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

When the stadium built, it was said to be Bonds-proof. Barry’s response:

“It’s not Bonds-proof. It’s baseball-proof.”

While it’s not quite baseball-proof, it’s close. The home stadium puts hitters at a ridiculous disadvantage, and there’s no easy solution.

The fences are too far and the air’s too thick and it’s just too drat hard. On the plus side, the fences were brought  in before the 06 season, albeit barely (thanks wrveres), and the front office likes to drop little teases that they could be moved in farther (thank you, Jody Gerut). On the less plus side, Sean Connery from The Avengers hasn’t been called to do something about the thick marine air.

Until (read: if) something is done to neutralize Petco Park, the 25 Padres taking the field are going to have to make due with what they’ve got. And so will all of us sitting in the stands.

Craption this pic:

My entry: Extra support for the troops!

The trade deadline has passed and the Padres completed the following deals:

-Tony Clark to Arizona for Evan Scribner
-Randy Wolf to Houston for Chad Reineke

Exciting, huh?

As we detailed earlier, getting Reineke and Scribner are classic Kevin Towers moves. They’re both under appreciated arms that will likely come out of the pen. Think about Heath Bell (acquired, with Royce Ring, for Jon Adkins and Ben Johnson), Cla Meredith (acquired, with Josh Bard, for Doug Mirabelli), and Scott Linebrink (selected off of waivers). Given that the Padres bullpen E.R.A. has gone from 3.01 in 2007, first in the league, to 4.47 in 2008, 28th in the league, it’s no surprise that Towers took this course of action.

What is surprising is that this was the only course of action taken.

Many Padres heard their names being tossed around in trade rumors, from Brian Giles to Greg Maddux. Besides Clark and Wolf, the only player that seemed to come close to leaving the team was Maddux. But with a trade to the Dodgers never coming to fruition, Maddux will likely continue not winning games for the Padres for the rest of the year.

Maddux handcuffed the Padres when he let them know that he would only accept a trade to a team on the West Coast. Through the process of elimination, this left us with just the Dodgers and, as we’ve already detailed, he won’t be returning to L.A. anytime soon.

At 42-67, the Padres are just behind the Mariners and the Nationals for the worst record in baseball. They’ll have to go 39-14, a .736 winning percentage, to get to .500 by game 162. And while we’re filling in a lot of the blanks here, we think it’s safe to say that the moves not made by the team signal that they’re in it to win it/remain competitive next season.

Giles is a big chip. He is a good hitter with a great O.B.P. and he’ll only get better the further away from Petco he gets, and his name was mentioned in trade rumors with the Mets, Cardinals, and Brewers. Clearly, nothing came true and Giles will remain a Padre for the remainder of the season and, likely, next season as well.

There’s two ways to look at the Giles situation. On one hand, he is this team’s three hitter and is one of the best defensive right fielders in the game. On the other, he is 37 years old and has shown a susceptibility to injuries. In 2006, he finished the season with a slugging percentage of .397, and his .415 mark this season isn’t much higher. The Padres, it would seem, are banking on Giles’ O.B.P. to stay strong into next season, which is risky.

The biggest name to mention in all these trade talks, however, is the one player who wasn’t traded but still isn’t in the Padres organization. On May 9th, Jim Edmonds had an O.P.S. of .498 and was cut by the team. He was picked up quickly by the Chicago Cubs and went Kevin Kouzmanoff, raising his O.P.S. to .757 on July 31st. Edmonds OPS+ was 39 With the Padres. With the Cubs, his OPS+ stands at 132. And the Cubs didn’t have to send a single player to San Diego to get him.

Of course, this move wasn’t so black and white. The management has said that they wanted to see what they had in Jody Gerut (OPS+ 118) and Scott Hairston (OPS+ 117) and you can’t fault them for that. You could say that Edmonds was traded for Gerut, but that’d be disingenuous. Gerut was already on the team and with left field being the game of musical chairs it was, it’s not like there wasn’t room for Gerut. Given the lack of return this team saw at the trade deadline, it would’ve been nice to get something back for Edmonds, even if it was just salary relief.