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.

Padres bolster infield with Eckstein

The internet’s least favorite player is officially a San Diego Padre.

It appears that David Eckstein will become the Padres fourth Opening Day second baseman since the departure of Mark Loretta, following in the depressing footsteps of Josh Barfield, Marcus Giles, and Tad Iguchi.

Eckstein’s spent the better part of the past eight seasons as a shortstop, although he moved to second after being acquired by Moorad’s old team in August. Eckstein’s defense at short has been steadily deteriorating and, according to Tangotiger’s fan scouting reports, his arm strength has been getting worse, bottoming out at 0 this year. Luckily for us, second base is closer to first than shortstop.

Offensively, Eckstein hasn’t done much. He posted a career high wOBA of .335 with the Cardinals in 2005. Never in his career has he posted a slugging percentage over .400 but he’s had some good on-base percentages. Over the past three seasons, his OBP has been .350, which is something the team hasn’t gotten from the middle infield since 2004.

For 2009, the projections for Eckstein look like:

Not good, but that OBP might be a silver lining. And he’ll be back making under $1 million, so we’ve got that going for us.

Something else interesting to come out of this is the appearance of solidity Eckstein gives in the 4 hole. Towers has spent the past couple of months collecting second baseman. Eckstein is the latest name on a list that includes Luis Rodriguez, Travis Denker, Chris Burke, Edgar Gonzalez, and Matt Antonelli. With Eckstein taking over at second, Rodriguez would seem to be the team’s shortstop going into the new season, and Antonelli will likely start the year in Portland. From there, Burke and Gonzalez are utility guys who can play all over the infield and in the outfield, with Burke owning 500 innings experience in centerfield. This leaves Denker, who projects to be a monster, left needing a big Spring Training.

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.

I have.

Now, granted, I don’t actually live in San Diego, so watching isn’t an option for me. But I’ve stopped following the games as closely and the Padre I’m most likely to talk about is Stephen Strasburg (fingers crossed). But that could change.

Accelerating their youth movement, the Padres Monday will install prospect Matt Antonelli as their regular second baseman and promote pitcher Wade LeBlanc into a rotation that will expand to six starters.

“I’m excited to see these young guys,” General Manager Kevin Towers said.

Padres call up cavalry for stretch

Me too, Kev. Me too.

While he came into the season ranked second in the organization by Baseball America, Antonelli’s had a rough year, posting an O.P.S. of just .641 in Triple-A. However, his walk rate has been good and his B.A.B.I.P. has been incredibly low. In August, he posted an O.P.S. of .864, which is more than 200 points higher than his season mark.

While anything’s possible, the Padres aren’t making the playoffs. And it will probably be a chore trying to follow them the rest of the way out, at least as much as it has been for the rest of the season. But with the Padres taking a look to the future, LeBlanc and Antonelli will be joining Will Venable, Chase Headley, and Nick Hundley in San Diego, there’s still room for excitement.

Experience it, please.

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.

Looks like we won’t be dealing with the Cubs. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get Matt Murton.

Earlier today, Buster Olney reported the Athletics are looking to move Murton and Huston Street, maybe to the Rays, or maybe even to OUR San Diego Padres.

The Murton news makes perfect sense. When Kevin Towers falls in love, he falls hard. It comes as no surprise that he’s still after his little redhead. And now it seems like Murton has fallen into the best possible scenario for us to grab him. Last year alone, we turned over Jack Cust to Oakland.  They then returned the favor by trading Milton Bradley to us. Maybe that Billy Beane is just a sweetheart and grabbed Murton with us in mind.

The Street news is more confusing. If there’s one skill Towers has shown an aptitude for, it’s finding relievers. Think back to how Towers acquired Bell and Meredith on the cheap. Something tells me it’ll take more than a Ben Johnson to get Street.

21 days left.

Fresh off of his simmering interview with XX, Towers unleashed this beaut in the Union-Tribune:

“It’s the way you play the game,” said Towers, visibly angry. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the intensity and how you carry yourself.

“We’ve got some hungry players down below looking for an opportunity. There’s not one player in the system who is going to turn it around. If we make changes, it will be wholesale.”

He also said, “We’ve been bad, no question about it. There’s been no signs to tell us or our fans we’re going to turn this around. I’m not going to watch this for another four months.

“Morale shouldn’t be good. If it’s good, we have other issues. If morale is good, they have no expectations of being better. Morale should be horrible.”

“It’s a reflection of all of us. It’s got to be tough for all of our fans. This isn’t pointing fingers at all of the players. It’s all of us. I hope we all have the same feeling it hurts.”

Towers seeing red after tough loss: If changes come, they’ll be big ones, angry GM says

The real stinger, however, was provided by Tom Krasovic, who wrote:

The ballpark vibe recalled Mission Valley, 2003, when San Diego crowds oohed and aahed over the exploits of visiting players and the home team gave little cause to cheer.

Kevin Towers was on XX Radio this morning and talked about the state of THE Chase Headley. Some notable quotes include:

Headley’s the guy that we’ve got our eye on. I mean, he’s really started to heat up with the bat and that’s what we were hoping for. When people were asking “Why isn’t he coming up?” a couple weeks ago, he was hitting about .220 and we want this kid, when he gets up here, to have a great deal of confidence, not only offensively but defensively, and hopefully put him into a situation where there’s not a lot of pressure this guy’s going to be the savior of this ballclub and I think that time is close.

He is the one guy that we’ve got our eye on, just because we’ve struggled in left field. I think if you put Headley in there now with Jody Gerut and Giles, it’s a middle of the order type hitter that should be able to provide a little bit of offense, and I think that’s been the biggest discouraging thing about this ballclub.

So there you have it. Expect Headley sometime before, oh I’ll say August.

There’s a vote of confidence in there as well for the TSB endorsed Gerut. That’s nice.

Doctoring The Numbers (Baseball Prospectus)

Rany Jazayerli points out Khalil Greene’s all time record setting 74 extra base hits coupled with a .291 on base percentage.

Blue Jays, Royals, Indians Bring It Back (MLB.com)

(old-ish news) I’ve long held the belief that the longer a team wears a uniform, the better it gets. These franchises join the Milwaukee Brewers returning to a classic look for a weekly retro home game. The Chargers half-assed it in their recent jersey revamp (though in my opinion, if they were to create a new design altogether I like what they did) .

The Padres’ brown color scheme is classic, fits the mascot, and most importantly, popular among fans. I think the Padres would do well to follow suit. I’ll take 1974-1977 or 1980-1984, thanks.

Padres Uniform Archive (Dressed To The Nines / Baseball Hall Of Fame)

Speaking of uniforms, if you haven’t seen the archives for perusal at the Baseball Hall Of Fame website, check that ish. Here’s a bit more of our sport’s glorious past to get the browsing started.

Interview With Kevin Towers (MLB.com)

These chat transcripts are so much nicer than those articles with 90% fluff we knew about and two or three sound bites, aren’t they? Plus Towers is always so candid, interviews like these are a real pleasure.

The big news is that Towers is still interested in a left fielder to be acquired through a trade.

Towers: The one position that we still may be looking at would be a corner outfielder. This would most likely come via a trade, rather than a free agent signing. As of right now, Jeff DaVanon, Scott Hairston, Paul McAnulty, and Headley are all of our in-house candidates at the present time. That’s not to say that we might still add a corner outfielder before Spring Training starts, more than likely via trade.

The team has talent that could hove above replacement level as it is. Therefore, I think if a move is made we’d see a player capable of more than that, meaning a big time deal is a possibility.

This may happen if Headley has poor showing in left, or Kouzmanoff is part of a deal leaving space for Headley. My hope is that if we do give up a young gun or two, we receive an equal share of young, salary controlled talent in return.

Other topics of the chat transcript include an Estes update, Towers’ thoughts the front running NL contenders, and a provocative tidbit on his trading partners.

Melvin Update: Eff yes:

“We would rather have a younger, controllable player via a trade,” Towers said.

I’m not sure if it’s obvious or not, but damn I love the way this team is run.

Baseball Prospectus Drops ‘Kouzy’ On Us (Baseball Prospectus)

Creative, at best, nickname for Kouzmanoff. Not a lot else new in the article for Padre fans, short of recognition for the 15th best VORP for major league third basemen. “Kouzy” landed just short of Mark Reynolds and Troy Glaus.