Ducksnorts

The Adam Eaton to Texas rumors continue to float around but as yet, nothing has actually happened. Meantime, we’ve gotten some real good responses on the Brian Lawrence - Vinny Castilla trade so I thought I’d run a few letters, comments, and the like. Enjoy…

From the venerable and ubiquitous Anonymous:

I heard from a reliable (and completely trusted) source that the Padres were minutes away from releasing B-Law last year (right before Pedro Astacio went on the DL — when that happened, they kept B-Law on board).

B-Law was NOT a part of San Diego’s pitching plans. And Burroughs was playing his way out of the Padres’ third base plans.

Vinny hit .253/.319/.403 in Washington last year with 43 BB & 82 SO and 36 2B and 12 HR…

RFK and Petco both depress home runs at a high rate. But RFK seems (I haven’t looked at raw data) to be built in such a way to depress righties and lefties equally. Petco, on the the other hand, depresses power to right field much more than left.

You said, “Castilla is an older, cheaper version of Phil Nevin.”

I disagree. While Castilla isn’t the defensive whiz he once was, he’s not the butcher Nevin was at third base; furthermore Nevin’s power was to right-field power-ally, Castilla is a dead-pull hitter.

Castilla’s career numbers are .278/.324/.483.

I bet he’ll hit something along the lines of .265-.270/.315-.330/.440 with 25-30 doubles and 15-20 home runs…

There’s another reason why I like the deal… In a weak free agent market, signing [Joe] Randa might have required a multi-year deal. We don’t want to tie up infield positions with [Josh] Barfield on the way. We could attempt to re-sign [Mark] Loretta (moving him to third base after this season — though that’s not as likely)…

Furthermore, I’ve heard we saved $1.5M on the deal. [Ed.: From what I can gather, the cash the Pads sent to Washington makes the money issue pretty much a wash.]

This season we have roughly $20M coming off the books ([Brian] Giles, [Trevor] Hoffman, [Ramon] Hernandez — assuming we don’t re-sign any of them). And next year we rid ourselves of [Ryan] Klesko and [Chan Ho] Park’s contracts (another $22-24M)…

This year will be interesting, but ‘07 should be exciting.

Thanks for writing. If that’s true about Lawrence, then it sounds like the Padres would’ve been happy to get anything for him. With kids like Clay Hensley and Tim Stauffer ready for a spot in the rotation, and Cesar Carrillo not far behind, it makes sense that Lawrence wouldn’t have been part of the long-term plan. And if moving Lawrence helps open up an opportunity for the youngsters (as opposed to, say, the return of David Wells), I can see the logic in that.

As for Castilla, I have concerns. Beyond Vinny’s age and health, fewer home runs were hit by right-handed batters in Petco Park than at any other park in baseball. Granted, RFK wasn’t too far off, but I don’t see Petco helping his situation much, if at all, in terms of power production.

On the other hand (and as long as we’re looking for silver linings), your point that the presence of Castilla will remove any temptation the Padres may have had to hand Randa a long-term deal is a good one.

It sure looks to me as though the Padres are making themselves as lean as possible now to position themselves well for 2007. That may not bring comfort to everyone, but with the division as weak as it is, the Padres could still be competitive next year despite not fielding a great team; and as you say, ‘07 should be exciting.

From the Comments

Pat, in the comments to our initial trade report, pointed out a possible reason for Petco’s apparent suppression of homers to righties in 2005:

I think part of that lack of right-handed power at Petco was attributable to who the Padres right-handed batters were last season… I have [a] hunch that if you put out some right handers with power in the Padres lineup for a whole season (names like [Khalil] Greene, [Xavier] Nady and [Ben] Johnson come to mind), you might see a less extreme figure for Petco.

Chris from Captiol Punishment also checks in:

RFK is indeed deeper than the posted dimensions. It turns out that it’s about 390′ to the power alleys.

Vinny wasn’t really an extreme pull hitter. A lot of his power was from alley to alley, and he hit a lot of towering flyball outs that were run down in the gaps. Your park won’t be much of a help there.

I’m not sure whether he was unable to pull the ball because of injury or because his bat was getting slow. If you look at his last month or two, he hit decently. It’s just that his May-July was horrible.

You’ll quickly get frustrated watching him hack at the first pitch, but he seems like a nice guy, and he gets just enough big hits at key times to make you like the guy — even if you know he’s nothing special.

According to Padres.com, Petco is 387′ to right-center and 367′ to left-center. [As an aside, it is just unbelievable to me that the powers-that-be couldn't figure out the correct dimensions at RFK.] If most of Castilla’s power is to left-center, and he’s moving to a park where that area is 20-25′ closer to home plate, then maybe, just maybe, he can do something. I remain skeptical, but I’m willing to convert.

The Fathers responds to this with a few thoughts of his own:

Chris… the hit charts for RFK showed that Vinny hit 6 of his 8 homers at or to the left of LCF (”380″), plus 14 of 21 doubles. In terms of his deep fly outs, it looks like a lot were hit to CF, as you indicate.

Just by eyeballing it, if some of his RFK doubles were wall balls, they could have been homers at the shorter LF-LCF gap at Petco. I realize that Petco goes to 402′ in deep LCF, but that is closer to CF than the straight-line gap, so Vinny might have lost an HR there.

For now, I’ll stick by my position that Petco will help Vinny more than RFK, or maybe I should say “hurt less”.

And I think the phrase “hurt less” probably sums it up as well as I could, so we’ll just stop there.

Other Reaction

• Mark Normandin breaks down the trade at Beyond the Boxscore. I’m kinda old school when it comes to my sabermetrics (old school sabermetrics, LOL), but the most alarming aspect of his analysis to me is the chart showing just how far Sean Burroughs has fallen in a very short period of time. He is still just 25 years old and capable of putting together a Bill Mueller type career if things “click” for him. It kills me that it won’t happen in San Diego. I sure hope Burroughs is able to get back on the right track somewhere and make a name for himself beyond “that Little League pitcher.”
• Padres, Nationals kick off the Hot Stove action (Statistically Speaking). Benjamin Kabak’s analysis includes this gem: “So the ever-active [Jim] Bowden lands another player who may or may not turn out to be the next John Patterson…” Quick show of hands: Who here thinks Lawrence has even a chance to become the next Patterson? Right, I thought so.

Okay, enough of that. We’ll see if anything comes of the Eaton talk this weekend. And on Monday, assuming we don’t have another trade to talk about, we’ll get back to our review of the positions with, interestingly enough, a look at third base. Until then, have a great weekend!

Picking up where last year's version left off, the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual provides in-depth analysis of and commentary on the San Diego Padres. Get your copy today.

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Tags: adam eaton, padres, pedro astacio, vinny castilla

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