Not sure how anyone would possibly be aware of this rumor, since The Sacrifice Bunt hasn’t yet reported on it. But Brewers and Padres fans’ respective imaginations have been a buzz the past few days from news of Milwaukee’s supposed interest in trading for Jake Peavy.

The rumor seemingly stemmed from Tuesday’s report from the Union Tribune’s Bill Center:

The Milwaukee Brewers, who have plenty of offense and prospects but are short on pitching, are now said to be interested in Peavy.

Note Center’s use of the vague, unhelpful passive voice in his language. “The Brewers … are now said to be interested.” Said? Who is doing the saying here Bill? Your imagination? Your poor reporting skills?

The only other published source I can find relating to such a “rumor” comes from a Peter Gammons article published last Sunday. Gammons writes:

One reason for Billy Hall’s expected resurgence is the laser surgery he had in the offseason. “It makes all the difference,” Hall says. “I can see again.” Hall believes the Brewers will be in on Jake Peavy, when and if he goes on the market.

According to MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy, this short piece of non-news was Center’s only source for the report he published quoted above. McCalvy goes on to explain that Brewers GM Doug Melvin expressly denies any conversation with the Padres regarding Peavy, and calls the rumors “disruptive”.

It’s easy to see why Center might want to be so vague in his wording, if in fact he is reporting a someone else’s published speculation as something more substantive.

It appears Center’s only source is his quest for relevance. Don’t forget: this man has a Hall of Fame vote.

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.

(This is the second installment of what I hope will be an ongoing discussion between us here at the Sac Bunt and new Padres owner to-be Jeff Moorad. Maybe one day, he’ll talk back to us.)

It’s no secret that you’re acquiring a Padres team that has seen better days. They’re coming off a 99-loss season with a repeat looking likely. Your predecessor, John Moores, is going through a very public divorce that seems to have forced the team down to a $40 million payroll, and that payroll has already made casualties of Trevor Hoffman and Khalil Greene (although anyone crying about Khalil should not be listened to), with Jake Peavy looking like he’s next in line.

And to top it all off, there’s not a whole lot to look forward to, with our minor league system getting lukewarm reviews. Keith Law recently ranked our team 19th in the league, while John Sickles and Baseball Prospectus have both assessed the Padres as having depth but without much impact talent coming up.

The current administration has already started taking steps towards making it up to the fans. Among the perks us fans can look forward to this season at the Pet are seven 2-for-1 days, which is two tickets for the price of one, and 5-for-$5 at every home game, a deal that comes with a dog, a soda, peanuts, popcorn, and a cookie. If I recall correctly, all of the 2-for-1 days last season were day games during the week, so I guess that’s nice, but I’ll definitely be looking into the 5-for-$5 deal. And I do hope that something’s done to ensure that these deals go better than last year’s dollar days.

But there is something even better that you, Mr. Moorad, can do to immediately get us fans behind you: bring back the brown.

Before I get ahead of myself, I pose this question to you: what do the Padres have in common with the Brewers, the Red Sox, and the Rays? Clearly, it’s not a playoff berth in 2008, it’s the use of dark blue as a primary color. The Brewers even use gold as a secondary color, one that looks just a bit like the Padres sand, and they’ve used it since the mid-90s. So the Padres fans not only have to deal with futility on the field and a lack of excitement in the minor leagues, but they don’t even have a look to really call their own.

Bringing back the brown, a color that this team used until the early 90s, gives this team an identity. In all of the big three sports, only the Cleveland football team wears brown. Is it because it’s ugly? No. Probably. But what’s ugly? Personally, I think the current Padres look is embarrassing in its blandness and after five years of it, I’m ready to move on. The Padres have a history of brown, having worn it for their first 20 years, and now is the time to come back to it. I’ll even make a deal with you: the mustard, which was as much a part of those jerseys as the brown, doesn’t have to come with it. Keep the sand. In fact, keep the sand jerseys. I like them, although we need to lose the bowtie script. Just bring back the brown.

The Friar was never meant to wear blue.

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

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

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

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

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

Graham’s response:

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

Old_Padre:

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

Graham:

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

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

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

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

Cheers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian Giles. At least, he should be.

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

That sounds harsh, so let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fielding – The sum of a player’s UZR.

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

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

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

Value Wins – Value Runs converted to a wins scale.

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

This how is Giles and Adrian stack up:

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

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

Having brought you Tom Tango’s fan scouting report, we now present the Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System, or simply Marcel 2009. In plain speak, here are projections for your/our 2009 San Diego Padres. At least, the players still on the team as of this writing.

FIP by the way stands for Fielding Independent Pitching. It uses strikeouts, walks, and home runs, 3 results all pitchers have direct control over, to evaluate performance. It is scaled to look like ERA so it’s nice and easy.

These stats were all compiled using Fangraphs.com, a Sacrifice Bunt endorsed website. Fangraphs also features another series of projections by Lord Bill James. We chose Marcel for reasons of totality: it simply projects more players. And these two are definitely independent projections. While some are eerily close, others are far off.

Where Marcel predicts Jake Peavy with a 3.25 E.R.A. and 9.00 K/9, James has the Peavs at 3.26 and a 9.00 K/9. Not all players are so close. Marcel predicts Chase Headley posting a .772 O.P.S. where James puts him more than 75 points higher at .848. James also sees Will Venable at .688, 71 points lower than Marcel.

Clearly, prognostications should be taken for what they are, especially since Marcels is touted by creator Tom Tango as “the most basic forecasting system you can have, that uses as little intelligence as possible.” But let’s assume that this are true predictions. What/who jumps out?

(Besides Travis Denker. WTF?)

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.

History says trading Padres ace Jake would be a huge mistake

This Nick Canepa article is chock full of unintentional lulz. Here’s his contention:

I’m beyond tired of seeing San Diego stars either shipped off or simply allowed to walk away. In this regard, our history is horrible.

Essentially he says good players have played for San Diego sports teams. Then they played for teams in a different city. How inconceivable.

Next, Canepa gives us examples that apparently apply specifically to the possibility of trading Jake Peavy, even though his evidence comes from different decades, ownership groups, payroll sizes, even different sports.

Of course, he doesn’t mention that one could come up with a similar list of good players for any city across the country who have moved from one team to the next.

Don’t forget, this is supposed to be evidence for why the Padres should not trade Jake Peavy. Why trading him would be a bad idea. Here are my favorite parts.

Drew Brees, the Chargers’ Pro Bowl quarterback, left with very little compensation. Everyone knew Philip Rivers was going to be the guy, so the team should have traded Brees the year before, when he was healthy and at peak value.

The Chargers allowed running back Michael Turner to leave, and he’s not having a bad time in Atlanta, where he’s gained 655 yards in seven games. He should have been dealt after the 2006 season.

The Bolts seem poised not to re-sign linebacker Shawne Merriman when his contract expires after the 2009 season. If Merriman’s healthy, this would be a grievous error. He’s the NFL’s most dynamic defender. Let’s hope, at the very least, if the Chargers decide they’re not re-signing him, that they trade him, rather than cut him loose and get last week’s bagel in return.

The Padres should not trade a star like Jake Peavy because (somehow this makes sense) San Diego teams should have traded other stars.

There’s more:

The 2007 Cy Young winner makes a lot of money, he’s vocal, and the team lost 99 games with him. He has a violent delivery, and pitchers have been known to be brittle. But, while having a few problems, Peavy hasn’t had arm or shoulder surgery. And, at 27, he’s hardly out of his prime. He may not have entered it.

Those are some pretty good reasons to go through with a trade. The Padres lost 99 games with Jake on the roster, that goes to show how one player does not necessarily make a successful season. Also his violent delivery causes serious concern for injury, and pitchers are injured more often than position players.

But don’t worry! All of those reasons are completely negated because Jake is 27 years of age, and while he had injury trouble last year, surgery is not immediately required.

In reality, 27 year olds (Jake will be 28 most of 2009) can and do get injured.  And not needing surgery (yet) doesn’t alleviate concerns about a pitcher with elbow trouble. Finally, Canepa doesn’t bother to attempt a rebut to the argument that Peavy will likely take up 20% of the team’s payroll and still can’t do enough to save a 99 loss season.

Isn’t the generally accepted practice to provide evidence in support of your opinion, not against it?

Photo by Jim Epler

I don’t think Jake Peavy knows what he wants.

Here are his comments that kicked off this whole song and dance, as reported by the North County Times more than a month ago:

“I want to be here, but I want to be here with a chance to win a World Series,” Peavy said. “If someone says, ‘Hey, we’re going to rebuild, that’s not going to be our top priority’ you certainly would wonder what your other options are.”

There’s no way of knowing if the front office considered trading Jake before this, though my guess is they had. But once Jake made that statement the team called his bluff and announced the Padre ace may be available in a trade. Since Peavy controls his own destiny with a no-trade clause, he and his agent Barry Axelrod have been vocal about his desire of various things since then:

• Stay in San Diego
• Play for a team that isn’t rebuilding
• Pitch in the National League
• Play for the Dodgers, Astros, Braves, Cubs, Cardinals
• Gain complete no trade powers (His no trade powers decrease in 2011 and 2012)
• Make more money than his current contract provides

Some of these priorities are mutually exclusive, which makes me wonder about their order of importance. For instance, Jake says he wants to stay in San Diego but not necessarily if the team rebuilding. Jake must not be familiar with Pythagorean record, which uses runs scored and runs allowed to come up with a better model for wins and losses.

Because Houston’s expected record puts them at 77 wins and 84 losses this year. In other words, we would be more likely to see 77 wins from Houston than 86 wins if they play the season over. Yet Jake may prefer pitching for the Astros if the Padres dare play Venable and Headley next year.

Does he really expect the team to make a deal with so many restrictions? What the a;ldjfoisdf is going on here? It’s so hard to tell. I think Jake’s comments quoted above were just an emotional outburst to a losing season. Considering Peavy’s propensity to wear his heart on his sleeve, that scenario makes sense.

So if Jake really does want to stay, that makes it even harder on my emotions to admit the right deal* for him would be good for the team.

*Nothing less than one of Tommy Hanson or Jason Heyward in package form from Atlanta, for instance.