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.

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?

All this complaining talking about marketing and creatives got me thinking: how would I promote the team?

First of all, the Padres marketing department is in a tough position. They’ve lost two franchise players over the course of about a year, and will likely lose Adrian Gonzalez via a trade or when his contract expires in November of 2012. Most of their other well known players have been hit by injuries (Chris Young), or are trade candidates (Kevin Kouzmanoff, Heath Bell, [please!]).

Clearly it’s time for a youth movement. But we’ve known that, considering it began halfway through the 2009 season.

Who should the team expect to step forward, not just on the field, but in the eyes of the fans as the face of the franchise?

Some might expect Tony Gwynn to take reigns as team diplomat. Unfortunately, Gwynn has but two things going for him in that regard: his last name, and his 2009 season. Every year from 2004-2008 Gwynn has demonstrated he will never be a starter on a championship team. I hope those in charge have a good think before Franoeuring him into a role for which he isn’t ready.

That leaves three players, each with a chance of becoming stars in Petco Park over the long haul. Though they have yet to prove themselves, Everth Cabrera, Mat Latos, and Kyle Blanks all have bright futures in San Diego, and should be introduced to the public as the future of the Padres.

To do a job for which I’m not being paid, nor was I ever invited to do, I would like to help this effort. As such, I set my creative juices in motion, and present this Cablanktos wallpaper for your viewing pleasure.

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Huge thanks goes out to SD Dirk, who publishes his gorgeous photos on Flickr and licenses them for others to use in their own projects. My work is published under a similar license. Here are his Cabrera, Blanks, and Latos shots.

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

Now that the World Series is finally over, the good part of the season can begin. Some teams have already started, like the Angels, who just signed Bobby Abreu to a new two-year contract, and the Pirates, who traded for Akirnori Iwamura. And while the Padres have already cut ties with Edgar Gonzalez, new general manager Jed Hoyer has yet to show us what he can do.

So, Jed, before you start shopping, would you mind taking a look at my wish list? Thanks.

• Rocco Baldelli
• Kelvim Escobar
• Eric Hinske
• Dan Uggla
• Juan Uribe
• Jason Varitek

I’ll start with the outfielders, Baldelli and Hinske. Both are capable players, Baldelli so much so he could platoon with Will Venable in right. Hinske can  be the strong left-handed bat to come off the bench. Uribe joins them as the backup infielder who can actually play on the left-side of the infield.

Escobar is a great low-risk project for this team. He’s a good pitcher and he’ll be coming off an injury, which means that he’ll come cheap. If he works out, he could be a solid veteran arm for the front of the rotation. And if he doesn’t, the team can part ways with him without losing too much, as the team has depth at young starting pitching.

Then there’s Dan Uggla. I’ll admit that this is a bit of dreaming on my parts, but Hoyer’s pretty dreamy, so excuse me for soing so. I know that Florida is looking to move Uggla, but I don’t know what they’d want in return, I hope they would want Heath Bell. Uggla would fill many holes for us. He’d knock David Eckstein out of the lineup, and he’d be the real-live slugger to hit behind Adrian Gonzalez. This takes the heat off of the youngsters, especially Kyle Blanks. He’d likely become the highest paid Padre, unless Adrian signs an extension, but it wouldn’t be obscene. Plus it would make the reader’s comments section of Union-Tribune articles just a little bit easier to read.

Finally, I threw in Jason Varitek as a welcoming gift for Jed. He’s the Captain, or a captain, he’d be Hundley’s shoulder to lean on, and he’d be someone for Hoyer to hang out with if the other guys are mean to him.

Happy shopping, Jed.

First off, I want to make this clear: I’m a big fan of Milton Bradley. He carried the Padres down the stretch in 2007, and I was disappointed he wasn’t resigned that offseason. That said, I have no idea what the guy was thinking while “fielding” big Kyle Blanks‘ inside the parker last night. Let me explain with a helpful diagram:

A couple notes that need to be mentioned: this screen was taken after the throw was made, so center fielder Kosuke Fukudome may have taken a couple more steps toward right, exaggerating his distance a bit. Also, the frame doesn’t show Bradley’s starting position, so he may have had to run a bit further than his arrow shows.

The ball was hit to left center, so it’s a bit understandable that Bradley wasn’t sprinting towards the landing spot on contact. But once it started rolling towards right, I have no idea how Fukudome could possibly beat Bradley.

Oh yeah, Kyle Blanks is the man. If you’re a loyal Sac Bunt reader, you would already know that. And someone should tell all those Cubs fans if they like their team so much they should just go home.

Melvin Update 8/19: Good news for us Bradley fans. That shot above is misleading. This view exonerates him a bit:

Still up for debate, as far as I’m concerned, is if the right fielder kicking back watching a well struck ball to left-center field is justified, before the ball landed and rolled to right.

It’s been a little over a week since Adrian tweaked his knee sliding into third, and he’s playing like a guy who might just have a tweaked knee.

Over the past week, Adrian’s had an OPS of .494 (which is good for a tOPS+ of 9). And his defense hasn’t been much better. During today’s game, the daily implosion followed a bungled routine ground ball by the Gold Glover.

To the quotes!:

“Right now, things aren’t clicking for me,” Gonzalez said. “I thought I was all over that ball, but it hit off the edge of my glove. It’s a reaction play, one shot.”

Padres hit bottom after being swept in Arizona

Promising. Let’s continue:

Might Gonzalez need a day off now?

“In my eyes, there are two options,” Gonzalez said. “Either don’t play the entire series in San Francisco or let me grind it out.

“I’ve never believed one day off is going to change anything. So those are the only two options I see worth anything. Two days, no.”

Is Gonzalez tired?

“Physically, no,” he said. “Mentally, yes.

One game note that you won’t find in the UT article is that much of Adrian’s problem was indeed mental. After the ball bounced off of his glove, he ran to grab it and picked it up in enough time to maybe toss it to the waiting pitcher at the bag. But he didn’t. Instead, Adrian “The Big Cat” Gonzalez scrambled to first base in an attempt to get the one out. He didn’t make it. You can imagine how the rest of the story goes.

Let’s take Adrian’s threat seriously: It’s either the entire San Fran series or nothing. Should we sit him anyway? WIthout giving you my opinion, I’ll just say that Kyle Blanks has started two games since Interleague play ended, and that the team jumped past the Diamondbacks to the 3rd pick in the draft this afternoon, thanks in large part to Adrian. They had been at 4th.

Once more, take it to the comments.

While Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus weren’t particularly kind in their relative ranking of Padres prospects, Scout.com (home of Padres prospect site Mad Friars) is enjoying a cold glass of Padres kool-aid, Melvin Nieves style.

Our Padres appear in the upper echelon of teams when considering total players on the list, with 4 prospects in the top 100. First base monster Kyle Blanks tops the Padres farm hands at 39, unfortunately a bit low to be considered “elite”. This  confirms with about everyone else that the team lacks star caliber talent.

Right field prospect Jaff Decker follows Blanks, sliding in at 46th. Center fielder of the future Cedric Hunter and high upside pitcher Mat Latos (Only one T, I’m looking at you gaslamp ball) round out the list at 71 and 80, respectively.

Kyle Blanks was the lone representative in Baseball America’s list, at 50. Latos, outfielder Kellen Kulbacki, and Dominican pitching talent Adys Portillo are on the Baseball Prospectus board at 69, 84, and 100, respectively.

There is no question the farm isn’t where I’d like it to be, but this additional source paints the system in a better place than a certain other Sacrifice Bunt writer seems to think.

List here, breakdown here.

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

Organizational Rankings: #25 – San Diego Padres

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

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

Ownership: N/A

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

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

Front Office: B-

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

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

Major League Talent: C-

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

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

Minor League Talent: C-

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

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

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

Overall: C

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

PECOTA’S Standings (Friar Forecast)

Mr. Logan over at Friar Forecast has a nice write-up on the 2009 predictions and they’re actually not that bad. At least, coming off a season during which the Padres won only 63 games, 74 doesn’t sound so bad. Although, PECOTA isn’t quite an exact science; for 2008, it had the Padres winning 83 games. Maybe we’ll win 94 this year? Probably not, although I feel like the Padres are a couple of fortuitous breaks from contention. One such break would be the return of this man.

Prior is ready to give it one more shot; ‘I don’t want to give up,’ he says (San Diego Union-Tribune)

“Cautiously optimistic.” Those are actually Mark Prior’s words, when discussing his 2009. “If he’s healthy, and all the reports thus far are encouraging, Prior is my ace in the hole.” Those are Kevin Towers’ words, and the optimist in me prefers what Towers has to say. If Prior can at least stay on the mound for 20-some starts and hold Baek back from the third spot in the rotation, the team’s chances of success jump up.

Jake Peavy breaks his silence (Gaslamp Ball)

jbox threw up Peavy’s comments on 1090 yesterday, and they’re rather refreshing after the war Peavy and the front office waged on each other this off-season. Especially refreshing is Peavy’s denial that he ever sang “Go Cubs Go.” Ah, much better. Here’s your knife back, Jake. Sorry for the confusion.

Padres by Position (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Starting with Adrian, Blanks, and first base, Bill Center has been documenting the Padres, position-by-position (hey!). While the articles are a bit sparse, Center does a good job of covering the Padres from top to bottom. He even manages to sneak in a couple juicy nuggets, like how the Padres are looking at moving third baseman Logan Forsythe to catcher.

Best outfield arms of 2008 (The Hardball Times)

Remember when I said Brian Giles was one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball, and that pushed him past Adrian as the MVPadre for 08? Well, about that- The Hardball Times has recently published numbers on outfield arms and Giles’ is unsurprisingly atrocious. He can still run them down, and he’s still worth 1.1 more wins than Adrian, so I stand by my MVPadre pick, but, uh, yeah.