I’ve got to run some errands and take care of book stuff, so no baseball content today. I just wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone who has been donating, buying goodies at the Ducksnorts Online Store (I’m working on some new designs that, barring another computer crash, should be available early next week), and keeping the level of discussion here at an alarmingly high level — I can’t tell you how many times I read through the comments and want to add something, only to find that one of you has already said it better than I could have.
On another note, someone asked the other day about pre-ordering the Ducksnorts book for the holidays. Since I haven’t yet worked out all the publishing details (gotta finish writing first), drop me a line if you want a “Ducksnorts Book Coming Soon” gift card stocking stuffer type thing — be sure to include your name, mailing address, and how many you need — and I’ll hook you up right away.
That’s all for now. Feel free to talk about whatever else is on your mind; I’ll jump in when I can…
#50: The players can demand nothing. They can seek more, but they’ll only get it if irresponsible owners give it to them.
#35: Anthony, I’ve only glanced at the hit charts, and at most I can see three home runs that might not have left the yard in 2005.
Here’s another interesting tidbit. Although the Padres have been outhomered by the opposition since moving to Petco, it’s nowhere near as pronounced as it was during their final 3 seasons at the Q:
Percentage of total homers at Petco that came off the bats of Padres hitters:
2004: 43.2
2005: 45.8
2006: 44.9
Percentage of total homers at Qualcomm that came off the bats of Padres hitters:
2001: 38.8
2002: 43.7
2003: 36.7
Obviously, the 2004-2006 teams are better, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
Re: 51 which the owners have proven year after year that they are, thats why baseball needs a salary cap.
#53: That is one approach, although it has the potential to bail out teams like the Orioles. Another approach is for individual organizations to find ways to work within existing frameworks and succeed without excessive spending. As Malcolm noted in #49, the A’s and Twins have done well with that model; the Padres appear to be headed to down a similar path as well.
On another note, may I just say that I love the fact that nobody is satisfied with an 88-win season. Five years ago, we would have killed for one. I’m glad those days are behind us.
Re: 54 its true that the A’s and twins have had sucsess but when was the last time the Twins and A’s won the world series? 1991 (Twins) and 1989 (A’s) both before there was major FA spending.
think of all the talent that the A’s let go of because they were not willing to pay them thier markey value.
I dont think $ buys ws rings, think Yankees 7 straight not!!!! lets go for 8, but $ generally seem to correlate to overall wins. I’m finally going to the USED book store down the street to buy “moneyball” based on what Oak did last year. Dont worry Geoff I’ll buy your book new.
Intresting note, the last time a team with an opening day payroll lower than the padres to win the world series was the Twins in 1991.
Twins = $ 22,431,000
Padres = $ 22,585,001
A’s = $ 33,632,500 (who had the highest payroll the leauge)
The only team in the past 15 years to win a world series with an opening day payroll in the lower half of the leauge was the 2003 Marlins.
Steve, that’s interesting to me. Last year the Cardinals had the 11th highest. Can you list the payroll rank of the ws winners for the past 10 years?
2006 – Cardinals – 11
2005 – White Sox – 13
2004 – Res Sox – 2
2003 – Marlins – 24
2002 – Angels – 15
2001 – D-Backs – 8
2000 – Yankees – 1
1999 – Yankees – 1
1998 – Yankees – 2
1997 – Marlins – 7
1996 – New York – 1
1995 – Braves – 3
1994 – N/A
1993 – Blue Jays – 1
1992 – Blue Jays – 3
2002 kind of seems like a break point of teams not in the top 10 winning the WS, which may also show irresponsible spending on the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Rangers ect…
#61: Thanks for the list, Steve. Good to see there’s more hope now for teams that don’t spend like crazy than there was from 1992 to 2000.
Except that the winning teams were so for down the list. I can see how the wildcard series would make a difference, but only from 94. 2002 is the exact year that players’ salaries stopped increasing by double diget %’s.
Re 64: which shows that irrasonsible spending is bad but responsible spending (Angels, Cardnals, and White Sox) is good, a team has to spend money to win they just have to be careful with it.
65: And there hasn’t been a lot of responsible spending this off season. Does anyone expect the Cubs to win the WS? Or the Dodgers? Rangers? I don’t know where they rank in payroll but they’ve been throwing a lot of money around and aren’t done yet. In our division I’m a lot more worried about Arizona and even Colorado than LA and SF.
Unrelated to anything, but fascinating nonetheless, the Padres have won 15 games more at home since moving to Petco Park than predicted by the Pythagorean theorem (1.83 exponent). They’ve managed to post a winning record at Petco all three seasons despite being outscored there in each of those seasons.
That’s just weird.
Wow, so I guess there is a home field advantage. Wouldn’t that indicate they have a better record in close games? And wouldn’t that be consistent with having a strong bullpen, particularly Trevor in the 9th?
It’s not obvious to me what “irresponsibile spending” means???
Here’s another quote from an article at Yahoo …
Five years ago, baseball reported an annual revenue of $3.5 billion. This year, commissioner Bud Selig says, the sport made $5.2 billion. Because salaries have not increased commensurate with the spike in revenues over the past five years, the market is correcting itself and returning some of the largesse to the players.
… which is part of what I was trying to say yesterday … revenues have gone *UP* *much more* that I was aware of … the new CBA has given some teams the confidence to bring their payroll into alignment with this new level of revenue … I gotta believe the Padres revenue is similarly higher now than 5 years ago … which I don’t mean to imply that they need to spend it on players who aren’t worth it … just that they (and we) need to embrace “the new economy” … the value of your #3 starter is ~$10M/year … and rising …
To me Irrasponsible spending is…
A-Rod
Giambi
Chan ho
Hideki Arabu
Pavano
AJ Burnett
Soriano
Randy Johnsons extension
im sure there is more
Don’t the Padres only have something like 32 guys on their 40-man roster? And, if that is so, why did they leave a guy like Joakin Soria, who is only 22 and throws up to 95, unprotected? They could have easily added him to their 40-man roster, I believe. Unless I am mistaken about them having open space on the roster…
I imagine spending will be similarly high next year, but next year there are more good players available (at least from the lists I’ve seen of potential free agents). Here’s the list from mlbtraderumors (with age in parentheses):
1. John Smoltz (41)
2. Michael Young (31)
3. Carlos Zambrano (27)
4. Joe Nathan (33)
5. Mariano Rivera (38)
6. Chris Carpenter (33) (signed extension)
7. Jorge Posada (36)
8. Curt Schilling (41)
9. Bobby Abreu (34)
10. Ichiro Suzuki (34)
11. Andruw Jones (31)
12. Carlos Guillen (32)
13. Jeff Kent (40)
14. Mike Lowell (34)
15. Vernon Wells (29)
16. Jason Jennings (29)
17. Jake Westbrook (30)
18. Ivan Rodriguez (36)
19. Trevor Hoffman (40)
20. Freddy Garcia (32)
21. Kenny Rogers (43)
22. Torii Hunter (32)
23. Jason Isringhausen (35)
24. Omar Vizquel (41)
25. Marcus Giles (30)
26. Eric Byrnes (32)
27. Paul Lo Duca (36)
28. Bob Wickman (39)
29. Corey Patterson (28)
30. Adam Dunn (28)
31. Randy Johnson (44)
32. Scott Linebrink (31)
33. Doug Davis (32)
34. Michael Barrett (31)
35. Milton Bradley (30)
36. Jon Lieber (38)
37. David Eckstein (33)
38. Aaron Rowand (30)
39. Juan Uribe (29)
40. Bartolo Colon (35)
So it looks like they’ll just be more people that it would be worth investing in, as opposed to this year where Gil Meche gets $55 million and Juan Pierre gets $45 million. (sorry for the length).
#68: I’ll bet the bullpen has something to do with it. I’m looking for 1-run records home and away — not sure if those stats are made available to the public. Anyone know?
#69: LM, you raise an excellent point. It may well be that we need to adjust our perceptions somewhat.
#71: Johan Santana notwithstanding, the vast majority of guys aren’t able to make the jump from Low-A to MLB. That said, the Royals are terrible so what do they have to lose?
72: I should also point out that some of those guys will sign extensions, which could make the FA class a lot less impressive.
Instead of seeing the payroll rank of teams that won the World Series, I’d be more interested to see the rank of teams that led their respective league in wins. We all know that anything can happen in the postseason, and looking at who the best team was for an entire season instead of just the month of October might be more telling.
RE: #75 Great point from 2002 to present the White sox where the only non-wild card team to win the series (man thats an odd fact).
The only problem is what good is winning the regular season tittle if you dont win the world series, I can name off both teams that have played in the world series since I was prob about 10 but I could not tell you which team led the leauge in wins.
76: I agree totally. I was trying to remember who led each league in wins recently and it was actually really tough. However, my point is that a high payroll probably has more correlation to high win totals in the regular season than it does success in the postseason. I’d like to do the research myself, but I can’t find anywhere that has payroll figures from years past.
RE 72: I’d love to see Vernon Wells take Cameron’s place after next season (no offense to Mike at all, he’s great, but aging). And let’s put Jennings in Petco for half his starts versus Coors. Holy Cow! I bet he would be amazing, plus the dude can hit even if he does have hips like an old woman.
What if Vernon Wells took Dave Roberts’ place this season? Stick him in right, move Giles to where he belongs in left, and all of a sudden we have one of the best defensive outfields ever, a great lineup, and a 90-win team on our hands.
/dream over
re 79: I heard Gammons or someone (Phillips maybe? if so, probably not accurate) mention this morning that the Blue Jays might have to move Wells to get some pitching, since they struck out on the pitching FA’s they wanted (guess they don’t want Zito).
If that’s true, would you trade Peavy or Young for Vernon Wells?
re 76: the Cardinals weren’t the wildcard either, so that’s 2 years in a row w/o the WC winning the WS
Re: 80 thats right the wild card team had a better record, my bad.
I hope PMac gets to join the Padres.