2005 in Review - Relief Pitchers, Part 3
Fri, Dec 30, 2005
by Geoff Young
Before I forget, let me first wish everyone a safe and happy new year. Posting will be light the next couple of weeks as I put the finishing touches on Ducksnorts: Best of 2005 (at 239 pages and counting) and work on some other projects.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were talking about relievers, no?
It is appropriate, I suppose, that Ducksnorts should close the year with a look at the man who has closed more victories for a single big-league team than anyone else in history. No, not Clay Hensley, although we’ll touch on him as well.
[Previous entries in this series: C | 1B | 2B | 3B | SS | LF | CF | RF | SP (1) | SP (2) | SP (3) | RP (1) | SP (3) | RP (2)]
Trevor Hoffman
| ERA | ERA+ | WHIP | H/9 | BB/9 | SO/9 | HR/9 | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 2.30 | 174 | 0.915 | 6.91 | 1.32 | 8.73 | 0.82 | .211 | .242 | .367 |
| 2005 | 2.97 | 130 | 1.110 | 8.12 | 1.87 | 8.43 | 0.47 | .235 | .274 | .344 |
| Stats courtesy of ESPN. Color key: green, positive trend; red, negative trend. |
||||||||||
Expectations
From my season preview over at Baseball Think Factory:
The only real knocks on his game now are that he doesn’t bounce back as quickly from outings or punch out as many guys as he once did. With the strongest supporting cast he’s had since 1998, there’s no reason to believe he’ll be any less effective this year.
Positives
- Topped 40 saves for the second straight season and the seventh time in his career.
- Did a better job of keeping the ball in the park than the previous year.
- Extremely efficient: career best 3.48 pitches per plate appearance.
Negatives
- Opponents hit .235 against him, highest mark since 1995.
- Struck out less than a batter an inning for the second straight season.
- Failed to break the 60-inning mark for the fourth straight season.
Outlook
After considerable posturing on both sides, Hoffman returns to the Padres for his 14th season in San Diego. At age 38, his dominance is all but gone, replaced by efficiency. Hoffman won’t work a lot of innings, but he’ll continue to be effective and steadily march toward Lee Smith’s all-time saves record. His work ethic will set a good example for the young pitchers, and the sound of AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” reverberating throughout Petco Park will serve as one of the few remaining links to the 1998 World Series club. In terms of on-field production, the Padres may have overpaid for the services of an aging icon, but Hoffman’s presence reminds us all of where we have been and where we hope one day soon to return.
Clay Hensley
| ERA | ERA+ | WHIP | H/9 | BB/9 | SO/9 | HR/9 | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | minor leagues | |||||||||
| 2005 | 1.70 | 226 | 1.049 | 6.23 | 3.21 | 5.29 | 0.00 | .195 | .266 | .237 |
| Stats courtesy of ESPN. Color key: green, positive trend; red, negative trend. |
||||||||||
Expectations
I’d heard the name, but I didn’t really know who he was.
Positives
- Stepped in and did a great job as a late-inning reliever when others faltered down the stretch.
- Very tough to hit, especially for power (189 TBF, 6 XBH)
- Ridiculous numbers against right-handers: .103/.141/.153 in 78 at-bats.
- Nice 1.90 GB/FB ratio.
Negatives
- Low strikeout totals.
- League only got one look at him.
Outlook
Is Hensley for real? We’ve been fooled before by the likes of Dario Veras and Jeremy Fikac, but the early returns are promising. Hensley’s repertoire is diverse enough to merit a shot at the rotation, and all but one of his 82 minor-league appearances are as a starter. But it’s hard to mess with the success that he enjoyed out of the bullpen after the All-Star break as a rookie. It’s always possible the league will catch up with Hensley, but the guess here is that he’ll continue to thrive as one of Bruce Bochy’s top options out of the ‘pen behind Hoffman and Scott Linebrink, although a return to the rotation remains a possibility in the longer term. Whatever his role, Hensley will be more useful than Matt Herges, for whom he was traded in 2003.
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.
December 30, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Hensley’s minor league suspension towards the end of spring training was another negative of his 2005 season.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/.....dside.html
Hensley pitched brilliantly during the 1st half at AAA Portland and I felt Towers purposely kept him down there longer than usual to punish him because of his steroid supsension.
January 1, 2006 at 8:48 am
Thanks, Chris, for the reminder about the suspension. FWIW, here’s Hensley’s take:
http://www.portlandtribune.com.....i?id=29654
January 2, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Courtesy of BP … http://www.humbug.com/diamond/wordscore … just for some fun
January 3, 2006 at 8:32 am
Geoff - I have a request … add a link to the Frappr page in the “LINKS” section over on the right. I like to see where we’re all comin’ from! Thanks!
January 3, 2006 at 10:44 am
If you need to kill a few minutes, try this …
http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf
… I got to 310.3 within just a minutes or 2 …
January 3, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Finding the sweet spot on a penguin is tougher than you first think.
January 3, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Thanks for the suggestion, LM, been meaning to do that for a while. I’ll get the link added tomorrow (along with an actual post, oh my!).
January 3, 2006 at 1:55 pm
I got 316.3
January 3, 2006 at 3:30 pm
You guys should stop whacking your penguins!
January 3, 2006 at 3:55 pm
323.5 … thus proving that the first day back to work from a vacation need not be unproductive!
January 3, 2006 at 6:58 pm
dprat … you sure it was 323.5? I seem to max out at 323.4 … done it a couple of times … harumphf!
Other competitive options …
- shortest (non-whiff) = 64.1
- longest face plant = 207.6
- shortest face plant = 190.8
- closest to the pin = 200.0 on the button (done a couple of times now
January 3, 2006 at 9:54 pm
400 is easily attainable, if you don’t suck.
For the same game, only better, go to: http://www.bashthehaggis.com/
More fun, with cool music. 967 is the best I’ve ever done.
January 4, 2006 at 6:18 am
Wow…is Kevin Towers an idiot or am I seeing things? On UT-Tribune, Towers is quoted to saying that Estes, who we just signed, is a fly-ball pitcher and should do well in SD. I wanted to check that out, and here’s what I found:
http://www.fangraphs.com/graph.....;type=full
Estes seems to be more of an extreme GROUND-BALL pitcher. If Towers can’t read simple data such as that when making personell decisions…I mean my god.
January 4, 2006 at 7:54 am
Ha ha. . . that’s pretty funny. Groundball, flyball, what’s the difference, right?
BTW, ESPN has Adrian Gonzalez as the projected starter at 1B, with Klesko still in LF. Doesn’t mean anything, but just noticed it. . . .
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/.....id=2278964