I’m knee deep in the “Padres Best By Position through History” chapter of the book, so we’ll keep it brief today. Thanks to everyone who has been sending me excellent links.
- Tony Gwynn Prospect Retro (Minor League Ball). John Sickels takes a look back at Gwynn’s minor-league days.
- My Take on Cedric Hunter (Minor League Ball). I’ll ruin the surprise and say that Sickels likes him. Fascinating stuff in the discussion — especially the comps to Trey Beamon. In his ’96 book, Sickels rated Beamon a B+ prospect, saying that he “could be Tony Gwynn, or he could be Hosken Powell.” And that was after a season at Triple-A. So when we talk about Hunter (and this is something I mentioned on Monday night’s podcast), although it’s great to be enthusiastic about his future, we need to remind ourselves every so often that numbers in Rookie Ball don’t mean a whole lot. That said, I’m enthusiastic about his future.
- Marcus Giles detained after fight at Qualcomm (San Diego Union-Tribune). Not the kind of headlines you want to be making as the new guy. Or as any guy, really.
- San Diego Padres Mom. New Padres blog alert. [Tip o' the Ducksnorts cap to Gaslamp Ball]
- Padres 2007 FriarFest. From the site: “The Padres annual FriarFest will be held at PETCO Park on Saturday, January 27 and Sunday, January 28, from 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. FriarFest is your chance to meet your 2007 Padres players and get autographs, purchase exclusive game-used items and go behind the scenes at PETCO Park.” Tickets are $5.
The other item I wanted to mention is that I’ll be doing another radio show tonight. It’s on WMAR in New York, and the interviewer is none other than our very own Ryguy. Because I’m lazy, I’ll just copy and paste the promo piece:
Listen to WMAR Marist Radio on Wednesday, January 17, 2007, from 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT to 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT. We will be joined by Geoff Young and Jeff Sackmann to talk baseball. Both Young and Sackmann write at The Hardball Times. Jeff Sackmann will join us at about 8:20 p.m. ET/5:20 p.m. PT to talk about his blog, BrewCrewBall.com, and talk to us about the Brewers and what his thoughts are on the hot stove league thus far. Geoff Young from Ducksnorts and KnuckleCurve.com will join us at about 8:40 p.m. ET/5:40 p.m. PT to talk about his book project, his team the San Diego Padres and his breakdown of the NL West. We will also get some fantasy insight from them as we ask for the top 5 players on each team and some early predictions on how their divisions will shake out.
At 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT we will be joined by Kenpom.com‘s Ken Pomeroy, ESPN Insider and College Basketball expert, to break down the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
You can listen at the following links [Ed. note: -- these should open in iTunes]:
If you can’t catch us live, subscribe to our podcast. You can also catch our past two podcasts through the subscription.
- Podcast main page
- Podcast XML (put in iTunes and it works):
itpc://www.garageband.com/artist/wmarshow/podcast/newsletter.xmlAlso we will be taking IMs during the interviews if anyone has to add anything, IM our AIM screen name is “MaristRadioAM”.
So, you know. Like, be there.
So Giles was in a scuff and got arrested, I’m glad. The team could use a little spunk as far as I’m concerned.
Running some numbers on Nate Colbert’s 1972 season. He drove in 22.7% of the Padres’ runs that year. If Ryan Howard had driven in that percentage for the Phillies in 2006, he’d have ended up with 197 RBI.
Also, for those interested, Rich Lederer has a good piece on Bert Blyleven that I didn’t see till after I’d posted this.
So now we have two nicknames, NOG and NAG. NOG for Marcus (Non Orange Giles) and NAG for Brian (Non Arrested Giles).
I love the fact Giles was in a fight. I hope he was drunk, rowdy, and tired of some really obnoxious Pats fan. Go NOG!
The listen live buttons work if you go to “Advanced” in iTunes and hit “open stream” and put the URL in.. that is also where you can subscribe to our podcast. Only 4 hours away from live on Maristradio.net!
Just got a breaking news alert from the UT. They say the Chargers have announced that MS will return next season as coach.
OK, well I guess I’m glad a decision has been made. Curious to see what happens to the assistants…they’re all invited back but Lofton seems to be gone to Oakland and Cameron might get an HC job too. Personally, if Lofton is in Oakland I wouldn’t be too upset to see Cameron go somewhere too…hate to have the Raiders knowing our playbook inside and out.
Clayton, it would be hard to get rid of a coach that took the team over when it had the most atrocious 3 years in history franchise, then has the best win percentage in the history of the franchise over the course of the next 3 years, goes 14-2 this year and has LT, Gates and Castilla all come out in his corner. It would be like getting rid of a Padre coach who had won two consecutive division titles. Oh, wait. . . .
(Things appeared a little quiet here on DS today, so I thought I’d try and resurrect that dead horse.)
Shannon Stewart is out of job. Anybody remembers why? Should the Padres extend an invitation for him anyway to ST?
I remember him to be a streaky hitter.
I’m glad they kept Marty. Personally I’m rooting for a 16-0 season and another 1st game playoff loss. Think of the outrage then. Of course, with a little luck the Chargers could’ve gone 16-0 this year — lost both their games on the last play of the game, only had the improbable win against Seattle. Sigh…..
I just got an email from the Chargers that offered Marty a 1 year extension for $4.5 million with a million dollar buy out that Marty declined. Marty may want to be a free agent coach next year.
Sorry, I need to proof. That post was meant to say that the Chargers sent an email “saying that they’d offered” the extension.
The Chargers lost three games by a combined 9 points this year. That’s a pretty good team and they should probably improve next year.
Didi: I wouldn’t be opposed to Stewart getting an NRI. His numbers the past couple seasons look like pre-SD Dave Roberts without the speed, but the guy used to be good in a Jose Cruz Jr. kind of way.
8: The difference is, Bochy was allowed to choose to leave. Marty would have been fired.
8: If memory serves, Bochy chose to leave.
I went 2007 Wall Calendar shopping at the mall today. Was shocked to see that they had a whole stack of Padres 2007 calendars for sale! In a Boston mall! And ONLY Padres! No other teams were represented.
I was two seconds from buying it when I noticed on the back that literally half the players of the month aren’t even on our team anymore. I think it was Piazza, Williams, Barfeild, Roberts, Klesko, and Castilla! Castilla!!!?!?!? When did they print these things? 2005?!?!
I used the lineup analysis tool over at http://www.baseballmusings.com and the PECOTA weighted mean projections to project the number of runs scored next year. Using a lineup of Sledge, NOG, OG, Gonzalez, Cameron, Kouzmanoff, Greene, Bard, pitcher (given the line of the average NL pitcher from last year), the lineup is projected to score approximately 780 runs. Plugging in the numbers from contributors last year, and ballparking total third base contribution as .300 OBP and .370 SLG, gives an approximate expected total of 735 runs. So by this rough measure, the lineup appears to be better this year.
17: i got one of these for 2006 and it was just as bad. with the huge makeover before the 2006 season only about 5 of the 12 were still on the team. i was spending months looking at lawrence, aki, burroughs, eaton, loretta and what was labeled as x nady but really was a photo of jesse garcia, random backup in 05 season. talk about a major error, the calender makers must have no idea what they are doing.
I got the 07 calendar too. “Now with 50% Padres!” I think they say in the ads. They should just put players under contract in it twice. I don’t mind seeing 2 angles of Peavy throwing heat.
…or hell, put in Tony Gwynn, put in some Charger girls, do SOMETHING. Vinny Castilla??? An “excellent clubhouse guy” that has no purpose being on my wall for an entire month.
18: About 3-4 wins better. You have to like that.