first pitch: 7:05 p.m., PT
television: Channel 4SD
matchup: Clay Hensley (7-9, 4.41 ERA) vs Brad Hennessey (4-2, 2.93 ERA)
previews: Padres.com | SI.com | ESPN
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If you’re reading this sentence, it means I ran out of time this morning to put something more profound here. Go Padres!
interesting point by Jay Jaffe on the Prospectus HitList and when I looked at the end of the Mets series I thought that extra bat was missing and it might have been Greene:
from BP
(link: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5422 )
“As predictably as the sun setting on the NL West, Khalil Greene has yet another hand injury…Hitting .254/.324/.444, Greene’s had a mediocre year; his 17.3 VORP is seventh on the team and eighth among NL shortstops, but when the alternative is Geoff Blum (-4.7 VORP, an MLVr that’s 0.192 runs per game lower, and a 92 Rate), every day out of the lineup means runs down the drain….”
It won’t help us this year obviously, but if we are open to experimenting, the more I think about it the more it might make sense to move Kottaras to third base. With the lingering questions about whether his defense is good enough to handle catcher, why not try him at third in the winter and see what he could do? I mean we are playing a guy at third that can barely play second, we have another guy in AAA learning on the job. Why not Kottaras? The downside being that he will lose a lot of his value if we move him out from behind the plate.
Speaking of playing third base for food, that’s what Sean Burroughs will have to do after he was released by Tampa. He posted an awful .214/.268/.252 line in 131 ABs for AAA Durham. Anyone want to bring him back?
Choppy chop chop…where have you gone…
Sickening loss. Greene’s K with a man on third. Then, using Blum instead of Bard to face Benetiz. No way this makes sense. Blum has had the best BA as a PH (.379) but Bard has an OBP of .478 as PH. So that is kind of a toss up, but when Blum is 0-7 with 2K against Benetiz, you have to go with Bard. Bard is O-1 with a K, but that is not much of a data point. Blum has not walked much as a PH, but Bard has been great at that. Given Benetiz was wild, there is a good chance Bard walks (he probably would not have swung at ball 4 like Blum did), then you have bases loaded with DR up and I like that. If we cannot win games like that, then the division does not belong to us. 2.5 back and time running out to start executing better, as a manager and as players. I was disgusted watching them play, with the exception of Hensley and the OF.
Bard wasn’t at the game – his wife had a baby and he was with her.