Padres add Stairs for veteran presence (ESPN)

According to Jerry Crasnick, the Padres have signed Matt Stairs to a minor league deal with an invite to the big league camp.

I like this deal, but I like having a left-handed power-bat on the bench. This seemed to be the offseason to get one, with a couple of veterans finding themselves disregarded, but following Jason Giambi’s return to the Rockies and the AL Central’s interest in Jim Thome, the pickings still seemed slim. Truth be told, Stairs was not very good last year, or the year before, his monster bomb off of Broxton in the NLCS not withstanding, but he has dropped 30 pounds. If Stairs comes into Spring Training as serious as his weight-loss suggests, he would be a great addition to our already impressive bench.

Headley at hot corner a heated decision (Union-Tribune)

Tim Sullivan fills us in on some behind the scenes gossip behind Chase Headley’s move to third.

“Buddy (Black) and I were on the same page,” Towers said recently, describing the Padres’ philosophical divide before his dismissal as general manager. “I’d keep Kouz and trade Headley. But DePo (Paul DePodesta) has always been a huge Headley fan. Huge. As was Sandy (Alderson). Headley was kind of our poster child.”

To which Black responded with a diplomatic “That serves no purpose.” Because of course he did.

I hope that someone gives Towers a studio job, just so we can watch him react to Padres updates as they happen.

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.

Today, the Padres traded Kouz for Sean Gallagher, Craig Italiano, Ryan Webb, and Aaron Cunningham. Sort of.

The more accurate way of saying it is that the Padres traded Kevin Kouzmanoff to the Oakland A’s for Aaron Cunningham and Scott Hairston, the same Scott Hairston they traded last July for the three aforementioned pitchers.

The initial reaction here is positive. While the squashing of the earlier rumor that Gio Gonzalez would be involved deflated things a bit, this is still a good return for a trade from a position of strength. Headley can now move to third, and AJ will (likely) see a lot of playing time with Hairston as his platoon partner in center.

While Kouzmanoff was not the favorite player of The Sacrifice Bunt, it’s still a bit sad to see him go. He may not be a world-beater, but he’s a solid 2.7 win player who could really be something if he could just learn to take a walk every now and then. Good luck, Kouz, and speak fondly of us.

UPDATE: Eric Sogard is on his way to Oakland as well.

But hold on, we’re not done with you yet!

We were waiting for the right time to tell you, and I’d say that this is it, about the brand new Sacrifice Bunt Facebook page! As you may have noticed, our style of in-depth, hard-hitting, and beautifully written baseball analysis doesn’t lend itself so well to breaking news, so we’re branching out. On our Facebook page, you’ll be able to stay up on all of the Padres breaking news with us. Think of it as The Sacrifice Bunt To-Go: you can just wait in the parking lot, and we’ll bring the Padres news to you!

Be a fan. We’d really appreciate it.

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

Antonelli’s Blog

Why didn’t someone alert me? I demand answers!

The Padres prospect second baseman, and former first round selection (17th overall) in 2006 has been sharing stories and thoughts with all of the Internet except me.

It’s neat that Matt does the writing thing at Blogspot rather than MLB.com, similar to the format of Paul DePodesta’s work. Those MLB blogs are a cool way to interact with fans, but they feel like MLB’s PR division has sifted out any fun or interesting details.

Take Matt’s thought on the crowd environment at games:

I wished the atmosphere at a baseball game could somehow resemble that of basketball game. It would add an element to the game that is only really present in post season play. I’d love to try and take a page out of Garnett’s book, the way he slams his head into the pad underneath the basket a few seconds before tip off, or skips to the side of the court and yells at the fans to get them to stand up and get excited. I think If I tried something like that before the first pitch of our games someone would call the police and then a shrink.

If Matt tried a stunt like that at PETCO, the first response I would expect is a polite tap on Antonelli’s shoulder and request to “keep the noise level down. Also, no standing!”

The other response might be loud cheers right away that die down by the time the pitch is delivered.

This place is a goldmine of awesome, home movies and photos. Here’s video of Antonelli, Headley, someone I think is Drew Macias, and Callix “gangsta cowboy” Crabbe clowning around a Tuscon rodeo in full cowboy getup.

Antonelli: Someone back there just asked me if I was in the rodeo

Camera Guy: That’s just ‘caus you’re so damn good baby, so are so [fucking] money and you don’t even know it

Antonelli: Oh, I do know it

Also, bribing little kids.

During this past offseason, I wrote an article suggesting that the Padres bring back Milton Bradley. I didn’t need much more evidence than his performance over the 2007-08 seasons. Unfortunately, before I could hit the Publish button, Bradley was off the market, signing a three-year deal with the Cubs.

I, of course, bring it up because he’s back on the market and the Padres have been brought up as a team of interest by both Buster Olney and John Heyman. While such rumors need to be taken with grains of salt, it does raise the question:

Do we want Milton Bradley back?

The first thing we need to address is that corner outfield is not a hole on this team. With Headley, Blanks, and Venable, the team would seem to be set. Where they’re not set is centerfield. While Gwynn, Jr. has been dependable in the field, his hitting leaves a lot to be desired, which would seem to explain Venable starting game after game out there. Unfortunately, while he’s been hitting, Venable has not shown the range you want out of the position (-17.6 UZR/150 in limited time).

The second thing we need to address is Milton Being Milton. Before insulting his way out of Chicago, he went after an announcer in Texas and prompted a season ending Rock Bottom from Bud Black here. It’s not a question of if something will happen but when, and how bad. But while we can only hypothesize about what happens behind closed doors, Ron Washington has said that he would welcome Bradley back to Texas and the Padres offered Bradley a contract following his injury shortened 2007 season, both suggesting that Bradley left these bridges intact.

Then there are the leftover concerns, such his injury history and the two year commitment the team would have to take on. But here’s how I see it:

The Padres do not need Milton Bradley for 2010.

As I said, there’s really nowhere to put him. Assuming that Headley moves either to third base or to another team, that leaves left field for Blanks and right field for Venable, and Bradley can’t play center. But Venable hasn’t shown that he can either, but that hasn’t stopped the team from running him out there everyday. Now, ideally, this offseason sees the Padres trading for a center fielder in the tradition of Mark Kotsay or Mike Cameron. But if the team thinks Venable is their man and the team is without a right fielder, Bradley could work. He would need regular time off, and regular coddling, but he has shown that he is unintimidated by Petco Park, and he could do some damage hitting in front of Adrian.

(This all assumes that the Cubs eat most of the contract and accept a marginal prospect in return.)

RAY UPDATE:

“I haven’t had any calls from Jim about him,” Towers told ESPN.com. “But I think people kind of know what players we target. We have to take chances sometimes. We took a chance on Milton the first time we had him, and he actually played pretty well [before the injury].

“We could be in the market for an outfielder. I’m not saying it’s necessarily Milton. But our experience with him was rather a positive one. It wasn’t really a negative one.”

Padres would take chance on Bradley

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.

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.

You know what is fun, edgy, hilarious, and entertaining? You’re absolutely right, it’s roster construction. So get yourself a beer, a Sparks engery drink, a party hat, a kazoo, and whatever else kids these days use to have a good time, and lets get constructin’!

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my years of life and learning, it’s that even  seemingly innocuous decisions have crazy, unfathomable complications that arise when trying to figure stuff out by just looking at them. Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but intuition is no good at everything.

It seems like whenever I hear people talk about roster construction, they generally glance at the players available, look at the number of roster spots, and use intuition to try to reason their way through the decisions. Or, as I like to call this process “making it up as you go along.”

Usually when the rosters come out and a move is made, we hear mostly vague and unhelpful generalities from team brass. “We’re carrying 12 pitchers, ‘caus pitching wins championships and is teh awesome.” I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a rundown of the best way to construct a roster from an analytical perspective. Until today. Because I am teh awesome.

Mitchel Lichtman, or MGL to those of use who are cool with him like that, goes into detail explaining how he would best construct a roster. He does admit that this type of analysis isn’t usually his forte, but frankly I’ve never seen much else to go on. MGL consults with an MLB team, has written a well regarded book on baseball analysis, and frankly is a smart dude. I’ll take that over the glorified guesswork that usually gets thrown around.

Here’s how the roster looks at the moment, courtesy of Padres.com:

One Tool In The Shed

I don’t see any problem with a player who functions only as a pinch runner and late inning defender (I think that you at least want both). I would think that you would want your pinch runner to be a good basestealer as well. Not all fast runners are good basestealers of course, especially young ones.

MGL’s first paragraph gets the Padres off to a good start, as it addresses and confirms the team’s most debatable roster construction choice. That is, giving Everth Cabrera, with no experience above A ball, a spot on the team. He has the speed to serve as a pinch runner, and hopefully his 73 stolen bases last season signify an ability to do so beyond just fast running. His defensive game saw mixed reviews over spring training, though he does have experience at both second and shortstop.

Scott Hairston serves as a solid defensive backup in the outfield as well, as he’s capable of passable defense in center.

The Good News Doesn’t Last Long

That being said, an NL team definitely needs more bench players than an AL team. No question about it. As we have said many times, teams do not pinch hit for the pitcher nearly enough. To do that, you need plenty of pinch hitters.

I also don’t think that any team needs 13 pitches, which you don’t normally see anyway. I doubt many teams need 12 pitchers either. I would probably carry 11 pitchers in the NL and 12 in the AL.

Well, shit. So much for the successful start. The Padres are currently using 13 pitchers on the roster, though I think that will change when Cliff Floyd comes off the DL.

Who Needs The Backup?

You really want to tailor your pinch hitters and bench players to your starting lineup. By that, I mean if you have a particularly bad defender in your starting lineup, it makes sense to have a good defender who can come in the late innings when you need to preserve a lead. If you have several weak hitting lefties in your lineup, it makes sense to have a strong right-handed hitting PH or two. Etc.

The team is constructed well enough in terms of platoons at the plate. They don’t have a capable left handed bench bat at the moment, but again I think that will change when Floyd returns. The outfield is manned by two capable lefty bats, plus two capable righty bats and Floyd. I suppose left handers up the middle would be nice, but so would bringing back brown uniforms, so I’ll pick my battles.

It bears mentioning that Chase Headley’s switch hitting ability and positional versatility leaves a lot of options. A backup third baseman isn’t needed, so there’s room to stock up on a myriad of middle infielders to throw against a wall and see what sticks.

Southpaw Middle Children

It also does not make sense to have fewer than 2 lefties in your pen. There are really only 3 reasons to make pitching changes in a game: One, to get the platoon advantage. For that, you want at least 2 RHRP and 2 LHRP. Having 1 LH and 6 RH relievers makes no sense at all. Anyway, the second reason for a pitching change is to pinch hit for the pitcher in the NL. The third reason is to bring in a better or worse reliever as the leverage of the game changes.

Raspberries. Not much commentary necessary here, the team has no lefties in the pen. MGL puts a heavy emphasis on platoon advantage, the Padres graduated from Screw The Pooch College on this one.

Allow Me To Preach Some More

Only occasionally will you need to remove a reliever because he is tired. Managers making pitching changes based on a pitcher getting “lit up” for an inning or two is generally a waste of time, although some people would disagree with me there.

Not much to do with the topic at hand, I’m only including this because it bugs me, and complaining about things on the Internet is the American way.

There’s no reason to think that just because a reliever gives up a couple hits in one inning that he is somehow rendered incompetent for that entire outing. Never in the history of mathematics has there been a smaller sample size than this situation. The dude is fine, unless you have a reason to change relievers, leave him in.

It’s All In Their Heads

Even with the bullpen, you need to tailor it to your team. By that, I mostly mean the number of relievers. If you play in a hitters park and/or your starters tend not to go deep in games, either because they are bad, they are not durable, or both, then you obviously need more relievers. In fact, on second thought, I might suggest that a team with good/durable relievers and/or that plays in a pitcher’s park, carry 11 pitchers, and the rest of the teams carry 12.

MGL, stop rubbing in the heartbreak! I hadn’t considered it before, but it makes total sense for a team in an outrageously pitching centered ballpark to carry more hitters on the bench. Someone should send Towers a fax, or a telegram on this one.

Mothers’ Basements Have Feelings Too

I am also a big fan or platooning. There are many teams who have a player at a certain position who is a marginal hitter (for that position). The best solution for that is to platoon with him another marginal hitter who can play that same position. In doing that, you also get a built-in tandem pinch hitting situation. Platooning is an underused strategy and for some reason has really fallen out of favor lately. I am not sure why.

Sounds like MGL would like the Padres’ outfield. He does mention other “soft” considerations, such as ego problems with platooning a star or former star player. I’ll leave room here for a Paul DePodesta joke about a Player Pride Index computer simulation.