| time: | 5:05 p.m. PT |
| tv: | 4SD |
| sp: | David Wells vs Wandy Rodriguez |
According to Wikipedia, there are Houstons in Scotland, Canada, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. This isn’t remotely interesting, but I have to put something here…
If we can’t beat a guy named Wandy, we don’t deserve to be in first place.
That said, lets hope that the Padres’ juvenile tendencies are in full-force so that we can tormet Mr. Rodriguez for his geeky first name.
Dude, Wandy is a tough pitcher and he’s deserving of a much better record as his peripheral numbers indicate.
Of course, if every batter would cough Wandy’s name first before swinging at the first offerings, that maybe annoying enough to get a few runs and a win.
Otherwise, it’ll be Barrett’s fault again. We are going to be pretty sick of yelling ‘Darn That Barrett’ for every lost the rest of the season.
2: Good call on Wandy’s peripherals.
It appears that Padre hitters got the memo on working the pitcher more.
3: Unfortunately, it does not appear that Boomer got the memo regarding homeruns
Yeah, and Wandy is stingier at home at giving up runs.
Boomer got nothing…again.
Time to warm up the new guy…or anybody.
I’d put Justin Hampson in Boomer’s spot if not for CY getting hurt.
Boomer needs to only pitch at home. He is just awful away from petco
Tonight’s the kind of game where I’d consider telling Boomer “It’s your game, big man. 8 innings no matter what the score. We need to rest the pen.”
8: At this point you are probably right
Geez, Well’s is serving up BP to these guys
9 balls and 7 strikes is a horrible sign for Hensley.
I’m outta here guys … my journey to Cooperstown begins now … I’m catching a midnight red-eye in Portland to JFK … “do it all” in Manhattan tomorrow … then up to Cooperstown for Saturday and Sunday … looking forward to seeing several of you there (rain or shine) … and hoping that we can make enough noise so that you that are watching on TV can hear and/or see our impact for our-man Tony!
11: Its only 1 inning, lets see how his entire outing goes. Its good to see him out there.
Coming into today’s game, Khalil’s OBP has dropped to .269. His 0-2 has lowered it even further, I’m sure. What happened to him?
What do you mean what happened? He is being Khalil, streaky hitter, doesnt walk, swings for the fences.
15: His OBP last year was .320. His previous career low was .296. That’s just a monumental collapse.
If he gets streaking again he will get it up to his career norms around .300. He’s never been an OBP guy
At least Bud didn’t burn Hensley for one inning.
This may have been a strategic loss for the Padres – get Boomer to give up a bunch of runs early so the ‘stros don’t try too hard, then bring Hensley in so he looks good for anyone scouting him and then trade him in the next four days for something useful.
One can dream, right?
Hensley is more useful than Boomer haha I wish Wells could be traded for something useful if we are dreaming.
14: Wow. I’ve come to believe that recent stathead conventional wisdom overvalues things like OBP and compensatory draft picks but damn, .269 is pathetic. And I love Khalil, he’s one of my favorite players.
He’s still a productive player because of his power and defense but if either one of those diminishes he’ll be out of a job real fast.
Clay, doesnt look too bad. He is throwing a few too many balls, but he is keeping his pitches down and thats the most important thing for him
Suppose Clay’s pissed that his gameday photo shows him with a Portland hat?
Thatcher looked good. Got 3 righties out.
Clay’s ERA for July 0.00 – trade bait!
This is starting to look really bad. I didn’t catch a lot of the game, but it did seem like the Astros snagged a lot of line drives. Still, this is one of the worst teams in baseball, just taking it to us behind Wandy Rodriguez. Geez.
We appear to be hitting the wall in the marathon:
Since 8 June: 18-24; won 5 series, lost 7, split 1
And making a lot of bad pitchers look really good.
The good news from tonight:
Thatcher looked great-nobody made solid contact against him and his cutter worked as advertised.
Hensley put up some zeros…
I think that might be it. It’s a little difficult to blame this one on Michael Barrett, but I’m sure that the Cubs fan will be back tomorrow to work on it
12 … amazing … I’m on a shuttle bus to the Portland airport and the bus is wired for wireless internet … who’d-a-thunk-it!
I talked to a friend who watched the game … said Thacher looked like he has good control … and so looks to be better than Royce Ring. He said Hensley looked good … ball was moving … a bit of a changed wind-up that looked uncomfortable … but all-around good enough to replace Wells in the rotation!
Cedric (the former Great) with HR #4 tonight …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2007_07_26_ftwafx_kccafx_1
Sogard with HR #2 for Eugene …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2007_07_26_triasx_eugasx_1
It’s hard to believe just how much the offense has underperformed this year. Listed below are the main Padre offensive contributors, with their pre-season PECOTA projection and then their line to this point on the season (AVG/OBP/SLG). Only Bradley and Barrett’s Padre line is listed.
NOG
.264/.342/.408
.236/.308/.326
OG
.282/.394./.460
.292/.386/.380
Mike Cameron
.258/.348/.479
.253/.321/.434
Adrian Gonzalez
.289/.355/.481
.266/.334/.468
Khalil Greene
.261/.332/.454
.234/.269/.449
Kouz
.290/.348/.499
.229/.287/.406
Josh Bard
.270/.346/.410
.266/.335/.376
Michael Barrett
.295/.357/.482 (projection made for him with Cubs)
.263/.263/.338
Milton Bradley
.274/.353/.435 (projection made for him with A’s)
.370/.463/.630
Termel Sledge
.269/.353/.463
.216/.312/.378
Jose Cruz
.245/.355/.442
.237/.317/.379
Russell Branyan
.240/.346/.499
.197/.322/.426
Geoff Blum
.242/.302/.375
.242/.317/.339
So, as you can see, every single Padre except Bradley in 46 AB has underperformed his projected line. Many massively so. Who’s to blame for this? PECOTA for being a bad projection system? The hitting coach for screwing everyone up? Petco Park for eating our hitters alive, chewing them up, and then spitting them back out? The front office for having poor player evaluation skills and picking up players with exploitable flaws that PECOTA can’t see? Bad luck?
After assigning blame, we need to do something to fix this. Hire someone who knows how to evaluate hitters better. Don’t trust projection systems in assembling a lineup. Fire the hitting coach. Stick it out because it’s mostly bad luck that will turn around. Move the fences in and play home run derby.
Alot of those projections seem way off line from what we should had expected from the team. I feel a few players are underperforming, but I expected exactly this from our offense. Why do we need to blame anyone?
32: You have to have a cause for the problem (someone to blame) before you can fix it. My point was, you shouldn’t have expected exactly this from our offense, because every single player on it is underperforming relative to career norms and a reasonable projection. Another projection system, ZIPS, was less optimistic, but most Padre players are still massively underperforming those projections too. Here’s the link to that projection.
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/2007_zips_projections_san_diego_padres/
33: A lot of the under-performance appears to be due to batting average. Batting average, if memory serves, fluctuates due to chance considerably more than either isolated discipline or isolated power. So, that might be part of the answer.
34: See I would understand that if one or two of our guys were underperforming. But practically every single one of them? That just can’t be written off as chance bad luck with a bigger sample size like this.
Once again, I’m glad I have a lot else on my mind at the moment and hardly any time to dwell on the world of suck the Padres are in.
Nice summary, Ben B. I never knew how PECOTA handled Petco, and still don’t. I might look at their road averages and use that as a baseline, with an adjustment for the fact that players typically hit better at home (ballpark effects not withstanding). Most of that has to be Petco, but even adjusting for that, we are still light. We are either very unlucky or it is time to jettison Merv. I have been griping about our free-swinging ways for awhile now, and that seems to have come from Merv. If we do get rid of him, not sure who would replace him. I am not even sure he is the problem; but the results are horrid.
31: Nice work, Ben, but the SOSD forums beat you to it, and that thread used PECOTA, and later added ZIPS and something called Marcel.
37: Oh, man, that’s hardcore. Do you have a link to that? I later looked at ZIPS and checked out Marcel for the bigger names on the team, but wasn’t dedicated enough to write them all out.
Not good with links but the thread had something to do with overperforming and underperforming players. Hope this works:
http://forum.signonsandiego.com/upload/showthread.php?t=74569&page=2&pp=15
Thanks. They even had a delta between the actual and projected. Impressive.