That’s the only way I can read Canepa’s newest piece without honest to goodness, not a trace of snark, feeling sorry for the guy. Then he called me a geek.

Baseball has lost some of its charm

When we were kids, baseball players played baseball, so that’s what we did…

Regardless of the outrage you’re haplessly manufacturing, baseball is still played. It’s not like a game of quidditch broke out on the field. There is a pitcher and batter, the batter hits a pitched ball with a bat. Fathers watch with daughters. Kids play in the park. I managed to drink a beer yesterday without dropping my calculator. None of the stuff you hate takes away from the things you claim to like. Even this response to your argument is cliche by now.

The Grand New Game — if that’s what you want to call it (I prefer the old one) — is being overanalyzed into embalmment. Baseball history always has been driven by stats, which is why the steroid era has smacked it in the mouth and it’s still bleeding. But we never knew what an OPS or UZR or any of these other geek formulas were. And, if we didn’t know, the real ballplayers didn’t know. They didn’t need to. They just went out and played.

Go into Padres manager Bud Black’s office and you’ll find him sitting at his desk, laptop open. Used to be, when you went to see a skipper after a game, his fly might be open — or he might be naked. How I long to see Dick Williams in there, two legs propped up, stripped down to his sanitaries and a few other things, sipping Chivas Regal out of an 18-ounce beer cup, speaking in a tongue salted by a lengthy stay in baseball’s inn.

Man, how I miss that.

Yikes. You did see the primer printed in your very own newspaper on UZR? I don’t think I need to point out the name calling implications toward your own readers.

Joe Banks, eighty-two years young, has come to this pond every day for the past seventeen years, to feed the ducks. But last month, Joe made a discovery. The ducks…were gone. Some say the ducks went to Canada. Others say, Toronto. And some people think, that Joe used to sit down there, near those ducks. But it could be, that there’s just no room in this modern world, for an old man…and his ducks.

Oops, that quote isn’t from your article.

Sorry Nick. This piece is 10 years late. It is cliche by now. You are cliche. These sappy, emotionally manipulative, empty space where content is supposed to be pieces are what strangled your beloved newspapers. Strangled past tense. You don’t deserve to earn a living writing about baseball. Readers have already voted with their feet.

It’s your own fault. It’s not numbers, players, “society”, or any other imagined entity you think is to blame because people don’t listen to you anymore. Silly words of yours on a computer screen in a pitiful attempt to convince yourself and your readers you are not at fault will not change that.

It has been laundered by too many statistics, too many Ph.Ds, and too much money has nearly washed it clean of characters.

“The players are bigger, stronger, faster than we were,” Coleman says. “You can’t knock today’s players. I don’t think they play the same game we did. They don’t use their brains the way we did, but they’re better players than we were.

Honestly, I don’t even know what this article is supposed to be about. UZR is ruining little league? There are too many “Ph.Ds” in the game, but Jerry Coleman is complaining that “They don’t use their brains the way we did”? Stats were fine and dandy until OPS came around, but that was the breaking point? Did you read this? Do you ever read your stuff?

You don’t like baseball anymore? Then stop writing about the subject and quit embarrassing yourself with this shit. I’m sure you can still find Dick Williams’ open fly around somewhere. Have at it.

Photo by Dirk Hansen

I didn’t see this one coming.

It’s true, the Padre blogosphere likes to rag on the San Diego Union Tribune’s baseball coverage from time to time. I’ll admit, it can be fun to snicker from the back of the room while the mainstream media, who once derided new technologies like blogs and analytical approaches to evaluating baseball.

That said, critics from traditional news outlets do make some good points. One of them is that sitting in the back of the room shooting spit wads doesn’t contribute much to a conversation.

The Union Tribune appears to be coming around in its coverage using these new tools, though this process took a step backward when the most forward thinking of the bunch, Tom Krasovic, was let go.

This story begins in mid January, after the Padres traded Kevin Kouzmanoff to the A’s for Aaron Cunningham and Scott Hairston. Due to Kouz’s excellent fielding percentage last year, members of the traditional San Diego media (and others) called for him to be awarded a gold glove. The UT’s Tim Sullivan described his defense as “near flawless”. Here was my response, via Twitter (You do follow The Sac Bunt, right?):

@sdutSullivan Thinking Kouzmanoff is a defensive whiz because of fielding percentage suggests range isn’t important.

Fielding percentage by itself is a bad way to measure fielding. It doesn’t consider range, an important aspect of a player’s ability to turn his share of batted balls into outs.

Much to his credit, Mr. Sullivan made a note of this information in a subsequent article:

Though fielding percentage is often a misleading metric, in that it makes no allowances for the relative range of different players, Headley’s .907 rate was the lowest among big league third baseman who started at least 25 games last season. The frequency of Headley’s errors — he made five of them among 54 total chances — occurred at nearly six times Kouzmanoff’s clip.

Although he isn’t completely off the hot seat considering his “results” from Headley’s 54 total chances aren’t worth the pixels they’re read on. But I digress.

Ultimate Zone Rating, or UZR, is the most reliable freely available defensive metric. Unlike fielding percentage, it does consider range. UZR rates Kevin Kouzmanoff average to above average defensively, over the necessary sample size of a multiple seasons.

My attempt to contribute something positive to the discussion, no matter how helpful rolled up pieces of paper shot through a straw may be:

Shout out to @sdutsullivan for reminding readers that fielding % is misleading. Good work. Next up, UZR!

And wouldn’t you know it? Here comes a primer from Bill Center of the Union Tribune on UZR, published at 12am last night by that party animal.

It’s a good article which covers the positives and negatives of UZR, including its inability to measure the context of player positioning at the start of a play, and that catcher defense is still a challenge.

There is this note from 3rd base and infield coach Glenn Hoffman that gives me a giggle:

“So much of defense is based on what you see and what you feel over pure statistics.”

Well, ok. Statistics are an attempt to quantify what we see. They allow us to compare players using the same criteria over tens of thousands of performances. I don’t want to discount the important of scouting, especially if information is only available in small samples or unique immeasurable circumstances. But lets just say if they were my millions of dollars at stake, I’d have a second thought about basing decisions on things people “feel”.

But I don’t want to distract from Bill Center’s effort with this article. I’m glad for the opportunity to hear from players, coaches, and front office personnel about UZR. Cheers to Bill Center and the Union Tribune. This is a strong step in the right direction.

Also, someone at the UT owes me a beer. Or a job. I’m good for either.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. -Henry Hazlitt

“FCC ruling may let more Cox rivals carry Padres” reads a Union-Tribune headline, sitting atop a story that the Federal Communications Commission will change a rule about what deals Cable companies are allowed to make with content providers. The clause allowed companies to negotiate exclusive deals with content providers, and would render the Padres’ own exclusive TV deal with Cox Communications illegal.

The fact most relevant, is that the Padres voluntarily signed the deal with Cox, and likely received compensation in exchange for exclusivity. Instead, reporter Mike Freeman frames the topic as a matter of the FCC saving the day from evil corporations, referring to the clause in question as a “loophole” when in reality the parties acted within the stated intentions of the legislation.

After one to takes a broader, long term look at such an intervention, the consequences become apparent. In the long term, this may hurt fans more than help them. Such disruption in the affairs of content creators and service providers is a strong incentive to avoid creating content that people enjoy and to stop investing in infrastructure so they may have access to it.

Freeman does not print a direct quote in response from a Cox executive, though one appears near the bottom of a previous piece on the topic. Cox’s response clearly reveals the major hitch in the FCC arguments:

“AT&T has the iPhone and doesn’t allow other wireless providers to offer it to their customers, and DirecTV has exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket,” Ceanna Guerra, a spokeswoman for Cox in San Diego, said in an e-mail response to questions. “We lawfully negotiated and paid for the rights to distribute Padres content when no one else wanted to make the investment, and now because of the success of our vision, AT&T wants the law changed so that it can benefit from our investment.”

A more personal perspective

Imagine if Cox offered The Sacrifice Bunt a large sum of money in exchange for exclusive distribution rights of the blog. Then the FCC informs us we aren’t allowed to make such a deal.

Ray and I work hard, invest our own time, money, and hard work, all of which is done at our own risk, to develop and grow The Sac Bunt’s content and reader base. We should the right to do with it what we wish, no matter how dumb of a deal I’m likely to sign if given the opportunity. The same applies to The Padres, Cox, and anyone else who risks their own resources to provide goods and services to others, in exchange for a voluntary fee.

Cox’s exclusivity is likely to change when the contract is up come 2012.

In July, Padres President Tom Garfinkel told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the exclusivity of the Padres’ deal with Cox may be on the table when the contract comes up for renewal.

“Our goal is to make our broadcasts available to as many fans as possible in the future,” Garfinkel said.

Supporters say the FCC’s actions are necessary to create competition:

AT&T and satellite TV providers have long complained that cable companies are using the loophole to gain a competitive edge. They say local sports such as Padres games are “must have” content for many potential subscribers. By blocking access, Cox has hamstrung its competitors.

Should it be a surprise that those making the case for it such an action are the ones who stand to gain the most? AT&T’s operations in San Diego demonstrate the competition does exist, and will likely have every opportunity to challenge Cox’s exclusivity through the same type of negotiation that occurred when the original deal was signed.

The “need” to intervene

Thanks to our country’s (mostly) market economy, there is no need for government intervention based on the “best interest of the fan”. Why? Because fans are the Padres customers. It’s in the best interest of the Padres to keep the best interest of the fan in mind. If the Padres alienate the fans, the Padres’ lose even more. And since those fans only exist because of the work, investment, and risk of the Padres, it is the Padres who have earned the right to market the team how they choose.

Who knows, perhaps the money the team receives in exchange for exclusive TV rights contributes largely to player payroll. At that point, the decision of what is or is not in the fans’ best interest becomes quite blurry.

I don’t know what this guy did with Tim Sullivan, but I’m liking it. What a fair review of Sandy Alderson’s tenure.

Before their recent retrenchment, the Padres maintained a $73 million payroll that ranked 19th among the 30 major league clubs in 2008. Without greater payroll flexibility or more impact prospects, the Padres were probably destined for a dramatic fall. As Moores grew more detached from the club’s operations, many fans focused on Alderson as a convenient scapegoat and as the symbol of a failed strategy.

Much of that criticism was misguided. The strategy Alderson has sought to implement with the Padres, one founded on statistical analysis, is much the same approach that has brought two world championships over the past five seasons to Fenway Park. The major difference between the Padres and the Boston Red Sox is fiscal rather than philosophical, and that difference is profound.

In November of 2006, the Red Sox spent more than $51 million for exclusive negotiating rights with Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, a sum greater than the Padres will spend on their entire 2009 major league payroll.

Although I don’t like the idea of lumping all of the philosphy under “statistical analysis”. That really isn’t what it is, and never has been. The philosophy is finding undervalued assets.

Often, this involves advanced metrics other teams don’t believe in or havn’t caught up with yet (See Heath Bell and his BABIP). But it isn’t always that. More recently, we saw the Padres grab a string of shorter players in the amateur draft, whom teams may have passed on more due to bias than evidence. This is what the philosophy is about.

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.

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?

On June 22, San Diego Union Tribune writer Tom Krasovic published an article covering the year long ineptitude of the San Diego Padres.  Of course, any writer could find evidence of this printed on a bottle of baby powder, the way the team’s poor play slaps viewers across the face.

Unfortunately Krasovic chose to stretch the limits of traditional statistical analysis by addressing the rather infamous topic of hitting with runners in scoring position.  To throw fuel on the fire, he mixes that with some hot strikeout hating action.

Compared with the National League average, [the Padres] are 13 percent more likely to strike out with a man in scoring position.

One short line, no big deal, right?  The problem, is he is dead wrong.

Tom Krasovic is the UT’s expert. He misinformed readers who trust him to teach important statistical concepts and instruct fans about the game.

Strikeouts

We’ve covered the strikeout controversy already.  Mark Grant’s criticism prompted a post that ranks 2007 teams by total strikeouts.  We found that more playoff teams were actually in the top half of the league in strikeouts rather than the bottom.  One reason is because striking out is often an essential ingredient to hitting for power.  Big guys have to swing hard.  And sometimes, you miss hard.  (Have “that’s what she said” jokes gone out of style again yet?)

Another reason strikeouts don’t keep good teams from winning is that with runners on base, a strikeout is not the worst a batter can do.  That honor belongs to hitting into a double play.  And the double play, believe it or not, has never happened off a strikeout.  Strike-em-out throw-em-outs don’t count.  Because I say so.

With runners in scoring position

Every study I have ever seen on “clutch hitting” comes to the same conclusion: there is no such thing.  Allow me to take a small page from these studies and present a comparison.

There is clear evidence that the Padres strike out less with runners in scoring position, not more.

It does appear that striking out less with RISP is normal.  And while they may strikeout more than the league average in general, don’t complain to the 2007 Diamondbacks, Indians, or Phillies.  Those teams struck out the third, sixth, and seventh most in all the majors last year, you can see how shitty things turned out for them.  They all made the playoffs.

Conclusion

Krasovic’s data may be factually correct, but it signifies very little about the Padres hitting ability.  Which is odd, because you don’t have to look hard to see how bad the team has been.

I sent Tom an email to clarify what he meant by the statement. It is indeed his contention is that a higher strikeout rate with runners in scoring position is in fact an example of poor hitting, which just isn’t the case.  Readers who depend on sportswriters to provide accurate information deserve better.