In a year of unlikely successes, Chris Denorfia might be the unlikeliest. A career minor leaguer*, Denorfia made his way to San Diego in mid-May when Scott Hairston went down, I can only imagine the team advised him to go ahead and buy an apartment. Since then, he’s been the second best hitter on the team with a wRC+ of 134. He’s hit nine home runs in a little more than 200 at-bats, and he’s done it with a BABIP-LD% of 12.9**. Come October, Denorfia will be in the starting lineup and he’ll have earned his place.

I just wish the team would stop putting him in center.

While not quite the second coming of Brady Clark, Denorfia’s highlight reel is a little shorter than the average centerfielder. According to UZR, he’s been below average this year, posting a -3.1. Dewan’s +/- is harder on Norf, placing him at -5 DRS (defensive runs saved). But with Anthony Junior out the rest of the regular season, it looks like Denorfia has little to worry about with his job security.

There are other options, though NL Manager of the Year-to be Bud Black has shown little interest in them. Over the course of his Padres career, Hairston has made 98 starts in center and has a +5.3 UZR*** in center. But with his regular scheduled second half slump (.490 OPS), S dot has found his playing time severely limited. Then there’s Luis Durango and the recently reacquired Jody Gerut, but neither of them are good enough to muscle their way into the starting lineup. That leaves us with one obvious option.

Will Venable is no stranger to centerfield, having made 42 starts at the position since 2008. But I’m not going to bother drawing any conclusions from those 300+ innings. Really, there’s very little evidence to draw any conclusions about Venable’s defense, but in sixteen hundred total innings, he’s saved 13.7 runs out there. He’s been tasked with Petco’s right field and he’s come out on top. At least, so far.

One troubling trend I’ve noticed as this season has gone on is the slow phasing out of the youngsters from the lineup. Of the Baby Pads who started the off this year, only Chase Headley sees regular playing time. Venable is next but a couple of hundred at-bats behind. In 2011 and beyond, this team is going to needs these youngsters to pick up where Adrian and co. leave off. Finding out if Venable is capable of delivering 20 home runs out of center is a good start.

Denorfia’s a great story, and he’ll remain one in left field. Let’s see if Venable’s ready to play.

*Denorfia 208 major league at-bats coming into 2010, compared to 2630 of the minor league variety.
**This means that only a little luck has been on his side.
***In 921 innings.

With the Padres the proud owners of the best record in the NL (and tied for the second best in all of baseball), the tone of our story has changed. Where everyone had been wondering when the team would trade Adrian Gonzalezand Heath Bell, now people are beginning to wonder if we’ll be buyers instead.

Jed Hoyer started off the talk mentioning he’s not completely happy with the way the offense has been playing:

Frankly we’ve been fortunate to score as many runs as we have given some of the guys we’ve had struggling. The way our pitching staff has thrown has allowed us some patience. At some point our hitters will have to pick up our pitchers. We’re not going to continue to pitch at this rate all season. I think it’s unrealistic to think that.

The team, as of the writing of this article, ranks 23rd in the league in wOBA (13th in the NL) at .312. The team leader is Scott Hairston at .371, followed by backup catcher Yorvit Torrealba at .360, Adrian at an underachieving .359, and Chase Hadley at .349. Everyone else is well below average, with the most egregious offenders being sophomore slumping Kyle Blanks at .305, Evert Cabrera at .250, and Jerry Hairston at .234*.

To this point, the pitching (1st in ERA and xFIP) and defense (2nd in UZR) have led the way, but as Hoyer noted, we can’t just count on getting by with a below-average offense. So who are some candidates to come fix this thing?

TSB favorite Tim Sullivan starts us off throwing Carlos Lee, Jose Guillen, and Jermaine Dye’s names into the hat. Sullivan adds that the price tags hanging from Lee and Guillen might push them out of range. This leaves Dye, who’s become something of a boogeyman around baseball. Following a disappointing contract year (-0.4 WAR), Dye failed to find a job this past offseason. He received interest from a couple of teams (the Cubs and Milwaukee were mentioned) but its believed he’s priced himself out of different situations, which makes it all the more interesting that he’d be willing to come here:

“San Diego was one of the places Jermaine was excited about playing,” (Dye’s agent) Bob Bry said Tuesday. “He continues to work out every morning and hits most days and is still waiting for an opportunity with a team that has a chance to advance to the playoffs. San Diego, seemingly, would be a good fit.”

Right.

Dye’s bat could bring some added oomph to this lineup. Even last year, in a down season, Dye hit 27 home runs with a .344 wOBA. Unfortunately, he was also the worst defensive player in all of baseball. His UZR/150 was -26.4 and on his career, Dye is a -16.3 outfielder. This team definitely needs some offense, but what happens to our pitching and defense with Jermaine Dye roaming around the spacious confines of Petco Park?

Moving on.

Another aging former All-Star whose name is in the mix is Andruw Jones. You might remember him from the monster bombs he hit in Petco as a member of the Atlanta Braves. Or you might remember him from the monster bomb he was as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. With his/Jake Peavy’s Chicago White Sox off to a 14-20 start, Jones has made himself into a trade candidate with his .260/.360/.604 line. MLB Trade Rumors has made up a list of teams that might have interest, and said the following about ours:

The Padres have Kyle Blanks in left field, Tony Gwynn Jr. in center field, and Will Venable in right field. Of the three, only Blanks profiles as a top prospect, so the other two could be vulnerable to a Jones acquisition, should San Diego remain in the race.

I’m assuming they mean that AJ and Venable are vulnerable to losing their spot in the lineup to Jones, and not their spot on the roster. At $500K, Jones is a steal not a deal for the production he’s put up, but will it last? I dunno, but Fangraphs took a shot at figuring it out:

Why so pessimistic? Because at this exact point last season, 111 PA, Andruw’s production ceased. For those first 111 PA he hit .278/.405/.544, which amounts to a wOBA, .424, that is nearly identical to his mark this year. Yet from his 112th PA through his 331st, he produced very little. His triple slash sat at .183/.282/.419, a .320 wOBA. His only saving grace was power, as he hit 12 home runs and produced a .236 ISO during that span. Other than that, though, he showed few redeeming qualities.
—
Yet even if he avoids the drop-off he experienced last year, there’s almost no chance he continues at his current pace. Even during his prime years he never produced a .400 wOBA. His peak year came in 2000, when he produced a .390 mark. He came close, too, in 2005, when he hit 51 home runs and produced a .382 wOBA. He might be able to help a contending team, but it won’t be with the numbers he’s producing now.

Jones is a gamble, more so than Dye, because it’s hard to know who exactly we’ll be getting. While he’s slimmed down, this is still the guy who almost ate himself out of the league. He still has the power he’s ever had and if the stars align, he could be the big bopper to help Adrian see more fastballs, but that’s a big if.

As the season progresses, teams will start seeing their dreams of success slip away (but not us) and more and more players will start falling off the tree, leaving us with a better idea of what’s out there. It is only May afterall. Still, isn’t it nice talking about the stars we could trade for instead of the ones we could trade away?**

*Making matters worse, Hairston is fourth on the team in plate appearances. This jack of all trades is truly the master of none: he’s also contributed a -0.9 UZR.

**Buster Posey and Dustin Ackley are future stars, jes’ sayin’.

With Bud Black busy eating burritos and drooling over Eckstein’s intangibles, I thought I’d give him some help with the state of the lineup and what he could to do make it better.

Last month, Black was pressed to name his batting order for this season, and we’ll forgive it because he was pressed. To further help bail Black out, I have come up with a proper batting order for the skip.

1. Everth Cabrera, SS

Don’t worry Bud, I’m not going to get all weird on you. The baseball constitution dictates that every team must utilize a fast player to leadoff (I think) and I will gladly go along with it. Everth is the fastest player on the team, but he can also get on-base, if only relatively so. Last year, he had an OBP of .342 with a walk rate of 10.5%, and most major projections see him keeping up his pace if not exceeding it. I can see questions arising regarding Cabrera’s age and lack of experience, but what could it hurt to challenge him?

2. Tony Gwynn, Jr./Scott Hairston, CF

AJ and Hairston, Sr. should see time in a platoon this year and they bring differing skill sets. Against right-handed pitching last year, AJ posted an OBP of .379. While his slugging was only .385, he still had a wRC+ of 118 in the split. At .378, Hairston has a similar OBP in his left-handed split, but his slugging was .543. During his previous stay, he was Adrian’s M&M buddy in the middle of the order, but another of my concessions to Bud is that one spot in the order is equal to one position on the field – the center fielders are hitting second. And with Hairston, the heart of the order could frequently find themselves at-bat with runners in scoring position, if not already in.

3. Chase Headley, 3B

If I didn’t put Headley in this spot, I would’ve put him at second. Not only do I value his OBP higher in the order, I don’t trust him hitting behind Adrian. Now that he’s back at third, Headley should hypothetically see an improvement in his offense: he’ll be able to concentrate more on his hitting as a result of concentrating less on his foreign position and he’ll be able to put back on the weight he lost to better run around the outfield. Add to that Headley’s hot-ish second half (.798 OPS) and there’s reason to have confidence in Headley.

4. Adrian Gonzalez, 1B

Right?

5. Kyle Blanks, LF

Stay with me.

On one hand, I feel like there’s no explanation necessary. Last year, in 148 at-bats, Blanks hit 10 home runs with a wOBA of .372. Stretch that out over a full season and Blanks could hit more than 30 home runs. That would make Blanks only the second player to accomplish such a feat in Petco Park. This guy has prodigal power. But then those are the only 148 at-bats of Blanks’ career. He could still be a bust, or we could be lucky and he could just suffer through a sophomore slump but if it doesn’t work out, the team could still try Headley or Venable, or move Hairston to a more permanent position.

6. Will Venable, RF

I’ll let you know right now, the batting order gets pretty predictable from here on out. While I’m not a big believer in Venable, he has 20 homer potential and he’s left-handed, which only makes sense coming after the right-handed Blanks.

7. Nick Hundley, C

I’m not going to try to sell you on Hundley. It comes down to not being:

8. David Eckstein, 2B

I feel that it’d be better if I didn’t say anything at all.

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