Before we get started, there is an excellent article on baseball blogging and bloggers called The Disposable Baseball Blogger over at Dodger Thoughts. I tend to get a bit uneasy when the folks reporting the news become the news, but Jon has done a nice job of addressing the subject. If you’re at all interested in baseball blogs (and I can only assume that if you’re reading this, you are), head over and give it a read.

That said, we now turn our focus to the 1995 Big Bad Baseball Annual. If you missed it, this was an excellent baseball annual published under various names from 1989-2000. Essentially it was the successor to the great Baseball Abstract books Bill James had produced from 1977-1988. Some of the folks behind BBBA have since made a significant contribution to baseball on the Web: You should certainly know of Jim Furtado’s Baseball Think Factory and Sean Forman’s Baseball Reference.

There is a great deal of information contained in this volume’s 493 pages. Along with team essays and player comments, there is a look at players who were born in 1895 (hint: Babe Ruth leads this group with 17 shutouts and is second with 94 wins as a pitcher), as well as studies on pitcher workload and lineup optimization. It also, as a sign of the times, reprinted David Grabiner’s Frequently Asked Questions About the 1994 Strike. When the book went to press, there was a very real fear that there would be no 1995 season.

Of course, there was, and so we can go back and re-examine some of the things they said in the book. We’ll stick to stuff that is near and dear to the hearts of Padre fans. First, some player comments (with my own comments in italics following the original):

Brad Ausmus: Sophomore Slump stripped him of his power. There are worse catchers, but not many who start all year. (Ausmus, who had come to San Diego with Andy Ashby and Doug Bochtler for Greg Harris and Bruce Hurst in one of Randy Smith’s best trades from the 1993 Fire Sale, followed up his poor .251/.314/.358 showing in 1994 with a solid .293/.353/.412 line. He also stole 16 bases for the Friars in 1995 before being shipped to Detroit for the considerably slower John Flaherty midway through the following season.)

Ken Caminiti: His weaknesses as a cleanup man had a lot to do with the inefficiency of the Astro offense the last couple of years. Now with San Diego, where it doesn’t matter where he hits. In the middle of the pack as a starting third baseman. (Caminiti hit .302/.380/.513 in his first year with the Padres; he won the NL MVP the following season.)

Andujar Cedeno: …He’s frustrating to watch, because he makes big, flashy errors, and because he looks so awful when he swings at some pitch two feet out of the strike zone. But he has power, and he’s fast, and he has range, and he has an arm, and there aren’t that many people who have that many plusses at shortstop. (Cedeno, also acquired in the Caminiti deal, hit .210/.271/.308; by the end of 1996 he was out of baseball at age 26.)

Steve Finley: As the rankings show, Steve is neither a great center fielder nor a great leadoff man. The Astros needed to get him off the roster and get someone on who was better. They did that. (Finley hit .297/.366/.420 in his first season as a Padre. In the 10 years since the Astros got him off their roster, he has hit 248 home runs. He’s also won five gold gloves in center field. The man who took over for Finley in center? Brian Hunter, whom Padre fans may (or may not) remember as the guy traded for Kerry Robinson.)

Tony Gwynn: People know that Jack Murphy Stadium is a hitters’ park, and that’s true. But the reason that it is true is that the park inflates home runs. Tony Gwynn does not make his living hitting home runs, and our sophisticated adjustments take that into account. Tony’s Sabermetric Batting Line is actually better than his actual line. And therefore, this #1 ranking. (Gwynn hit .368/.404/.484 in 1995; what’s most remarkable about that is that it represented a significant drop from his .394/.454/.568 of a season earlier. But he’s no Ichiro!)

Ryan Klesko: Braves used Ryan the only way they could, as a left-handed platoon left fielder. Klesko had a good rookie season in the majors and should continue to improve, but the Braves need to get him out of the outfield…. It has been rumored that the Braves are interested in the Giants’ Rod Beck, I hope the Giants are smart enough to get Ryan in the deal if they are dumb enough to get rid of Beck. (Klesko still can’t play the outfield. Beck, of course, also had his own place in Padre lore.)

Ray McDavid: …I’d say Ray needs another year at Las Vegas to see if he can hone his skills a bit more. (Sadly, McDavid notched all of 17 big-league at-bats after this comment was written. One of the Padres’ brighter prospects of the early ’90s, he’d played his last game at age 23 and finished up with a .222/.271/.244 line in 45 at-bats.)

Melvin Nieves: Memo to Bruce Bochy: Put this guy in left, leave him there all year, win more ball games, keep your job. Resist temptation to play Bip Roberts in left and Luis Lopez at second on an everyday basis. Nieves is ready and you need the HR pop in your lineup. (Bochy did stick with Nieves for much of the year and was rewarded with a .205/.276/.419 line. Bochy kept his job, Nieves did not. He was shipped off to the Tigers and, like Cedeno, out of baseball at age 26. Nieves was the player the Padres settled on in the Fred McGriff deal when the Braves refused to part with Klesko.)

Cory Snyder: Still has power. Still won’t take a walk. Now is over 30. (Coming off a .235/.300/.392 season in LA, Snyder never played a single game for the Padres. Never played another big-league game for anyone else, either.)

Eddie Williams: A tremendous comeback story, Williams has battled back from illness and injury to become a solid major leaguer and a 25+ homer threat for the next several seasons. One of the things that makes baseball great (despite everything it does to us) is that good guys like Williams finally break through, get a chance, and succeed after they’ve long been given up for dead. I can feel my eyes starting to tear up as I write this, so I’m going to shut up now… (Williams had been a top prospect of the Cleveland Indians back in the mid-’80s and was coming off a spectacular .331/.392/.594 line in 175 at-bats; despite a respectable .260/.320/.426 showing with the Pads in 1995, he was very near the end of a career that saw him finish with 288 hits and 39 homers in just under 400 games.)

Enough for one day. We’ll take a look at the pitchers tomorrow…