Comments on: IGD: Padres @ Astros (26 Jul 07)

By: Ben B.

Ben B. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:48:58 +0000

Thanks. They even had a delta between the actual and projected. Impressive.

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By: The Fathers

The Fathers — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:51:38 +0000

Not good with links but the thread had something to do with overperforming and underperforming players. Hope this works:

http://forum.signonsandiego.co.....&pp=15

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By: Ben B.

Ben B. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:28:49 +0000

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.

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By: The Fathers

The Fathers — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:19:43 +0000

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.

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By: jay

jay — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:33:57 +0000

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.

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By: St. Oops

St. Oops — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:47:47 +0000

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.

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By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 08:59:31 +0000

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.

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By: Ben B.

Ben B. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:59:02 +0000

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.baseballthinkfactor.....go_padres/

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By: SDSUBASEBALL

SDSUBASEBALL — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:59:02 +0000

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?

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By: Ben B.

Ben B. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:34:03 +0000

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.

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