What to say about Wednesday night’s win (box score)… Huge? Yeah, a little. Fun? You bet.
Jake Peavy struck out just one batter over seven solid innings en route to his 19th win. First time since August 2003 he’s registered fewer than two strikeouts in a game.
Matt and Mud speculated that maybe Peavy had purposely changed his approach to save some bullets for Sunday in Milwaukee if needed. In the post-game interview, Peavy confirmed as much.
Bob Scanlan in the wrap-up show wondered why Peavy worked the seventh with a seven-run lead. He’d thrown 81 pitches through six, and getting him out of there might have made sense if Bud Black was thinking of using him again on short rest.
Then again, with four coming up in Milwaukee, Black probably needs as many fresh arms out of the bullpen as he can get. It is kind of nice to make it through a game burning only Justin Hampson and Wil Ledezma.
On offense, every starter had at least one hit. Kevin Kouzmanoff continues to be ridiculous. With two more knocks, his batting average now stands at .280 and his OPS at 802. Since the All-Star break he’s batting .333/.386/.548.
Meanwhile, Josh Bard is quietly putting together another solid season. Among NL catchers with at least 400 plate appearances, only Russell Martin has an OBP higher than Bard’s .367.
Bard is outperforming bigger name brands such as Ivan Rodriguez and ex-Padre Ramon Hernandez (who is due a minimum of $16.5 million over the next three years). Yeah, it’d be nice if Bard could nab the occasional base stealer, but if you’ve watched anyone other than Brett Tomko try to hold runners at first, you know that’s not going to happen.
Khalil Greene? He’s healthy and putting up the numbers we figured he would one of these years (I thought it would be ’06). Yeah, the OBP stinks; still, I’ll take 71 extra-base hits from a shortstop any day.
There’s more to tell, but I have to stop somewhere. Always more to tell. That’s why we keep watching, eh?
From BP:
“His 2005 boost in production is easily explained by a fluke line-drive rate; Bay usually hits low quantities of liners, instead bashing grounders and flyballs all over the diamond. Looking at the difference column, we can see that Bay has been lucky for much of his career, thanks to his combination of power and speed. His power allowed him to get more extra-base hits than he should given his lofty flyball rates, but he also collected plenty of hits of the infield variety, ranging from 7 to 15 percent of his total hits during his major league career. He’s had no such luck in 2007—despite 14 infield hits this season, Bay’s power production has plummeted. Bay’s slump may be a sign of actual decline and a loss of bat speed.
His walk rate peaked at 15.2 percent last year, but has dropped to 10 percent this season; a spike in walk rate is oftentimes a sign of a slowing bat, as players take pitches they can no longer catch up to. Once the league realizes this, you see the player’s numbers suffer, but until then, they are able to drive up their value with free passes. By itself, I wouldn’t chalk this up to a slowdown in pure bat speed; after all, his BB/PA was not that far from the previous season’s total. A look at his Hit Charts from MLB.com back up this assertion”
146: I’m going to slightly deny your seconding. A healthy Bay is a very good defender in a spacious home LF. But like with his bat, if his knees are already creaky, it’s something to worry about.
Bay is more likely to continue to lose speed and bat speed than not. Without the ability to collect infield hits and to pull the ball with power he’s not going to keep his numbers up.
151: That explains why his 2005 was his best year. It doesn’t explain why he was so good in 2003, 2004, and 2006. He’d established an EQA over 300 before this season.
141: I agree, CF and SP are out holes next year. The corners are fine.
154: Fluke was too harsh a term. He was still a good hitter aside from ’05, but ’05 was the peak. Unless he’s going to regain his bat speed over the off season, he’s not going to be a good hitter next year either.
Can someone explain why Bay would continue to get worse instead of bounce back inspite of the fact that he’s only 29?
Players power doesn’t peak at 28, is his knee injury so severe that it changes all normal hitter development patterns.
That fluky BB rate could also be explained by the fact that the Pirates suck offensively and there was no reason to pitch to him.
Boy, you can always count on 150 comments when someone [CM] starts up a conversation about getting rid of Khalil.
I remember hearing SA say that Khalil’s agent never wanted a long term deal and the Padres didn’t want to offer one. Whether that changes after this year or not, I don’t know, but I would expect one or the other to seek a little longer security. [Khalil's new wife, for one.]
I’m not sure why the front office would want to take our leader in RBI’s [tied] and 2nd in HR’s and the number of his XBH and get rid of him, especially on a team starved for run production, particularly when he’s a fan favorite. Isn’t there a phrase “90+ RBI’s is worth 100 in the bush?”
152: I should have checked his defensive stats from previous years as well. You are right, he’s pretty good on the field. Those knees must be hurting him bad this year. I hope he bounced back next season.
I wonder what it would take to get Santana from the Twins? The more I think about it, the more I’d like to have Santana in the rotation. It’ll be similar to the Kevin Brown move to get to the WS.
141: Rob Neyer has said this: Getting power from a typically non-power source doesn’t mean you can or should sacrifice it some place else, namely LF, 1B or 3B.
I’m not sure a speedy, plus defensively LF who is a noted candidate for .380-400 OBP and 40 steals but .425 SLG would come at that bargain of a price.
158: I think we can guarantee that our front office pays no attention to RBI.
It’s all a matter of the return. For Morris/Wilson/Bay? That’s crazy talk. In a package for Santana? That’s the opposite of crazy. Somewhere along that spectrum is a point at which it makes sense.
158: SA also said recently that Khalil is not exactly the Pads’ most pressing problem going into the offseason. Still, it wouldn’t shock me to see him traded.
159: Only better, because instead of backing him with Andy Ashby, Joey Hamilton, and Sterling Hitchcock, we’d back him with Peavy, Young, and Maddux.
160: Agree. Getting power from a non-traditional position means you have an advantage. You should build on it, not give it away by accepting less power somewhere else.
Embarrassing admission moment (EAM pronounced e-am):
I don’t understand OBP or slugging percentage. Can anybody school me in these stats? Or send me to a beginner baseball stat site so I can read up? Come to think of it, bet Wikipedia is good.
160: That doesn’t also mean that the club should sacrifice said power source looking for a more traditional one. What I’m suggesting is that since many clubs are looking for the more traditional power source, the Padres can go with other options. But, you are right, I don’t know how much cheaper that’ll be, especially since the club roster is filled with slow-footed players.
Switching to tonight’s game:
I hope Jack Cassel is ready to dazzle those Brewers’ hitters and perhaps take advantage of their overeagerness to hit his pitches. It’ll be a tall order for the Padres’ lineup to get many hits against their rookie phenom. I hope they can string some hits early and score enough runs.
Go Padres!
Great discussion today. Here’s a passage from Bill James’ 1982 Baseball Abstract (p. 28) that seems relevant:
If you examine only the years between, say, Tony Fernandez and Khalil Greene at shortstop, you’ll find some pretty useful bats in left field: Phil Plantier, Greg Vaughn, Reggie Sanders, Ron Gant, Rondell White to name a few. Shortstops during that stretch? The good news is that three of them rank among the top 10 at the position in club history; the bad news is their names are Chris Gomez, Damian Jackson, and Ramon Vazquez.
And the stupid Cubs just can’t win (losing 5-1 after 5IP), making tonight’s game and the rest of the series that much more pressing for both the Brewers and the Padres.
It’s really amazing to me to see how much KG discussions polarize the Ducksnorts faithful.
I’m a self-admitted Khalil-lover. He’s my favorite player, period.
However, I think he gets so much unnecessary flak from some of you that I just do not understand. Maybe we’ve been spoiled by KG these past few years, but it’s not like shortstop has always been an easily filled position for this team. And yet, people act like it would be easy as hell to replace Khalil. I simply do not see that logic. Sure, you might be able to find another good defensive short-stop. Or you might be able to find a short-stop that hits for power. But no way in hell are you gonna find that combination together.
I’d be decimated if the team traded Khalil, as would a majority of the fan base. He is probably the third most popular guy on the team (Trevor, Jake, Khalil) and easily the most popular position player.
Maybe my rose-colored glasses are just too damn positive, but I really fail to understand that notion that Khalil is easily replacable. If someone could please present a rational argument with suggestions (aside from just saying that it’s possible), I might understand.
The Padres could probably get Renteria for a decent prospect, and he’s a better all-around player than Greene. But I like Greene, and would rather the Padres found a different way to improve the team.
168: I think the fact that we’ve been unable to even produce a back up would suggest that it might be difficult to find a replacement.
164: PM, no need to feel embarrassed. Here’s a source that I’ve used often:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/statpages/glossary/
168: It’s because of the rising crops of many good SS in recent years that we are forgetting how bad the position was for the Padres in a long time and how hard it was to get one. Of course, next year, the Padres are going to have to fill the two OF spots, 2B and another starting pitching.
169: Renteria has a career .757 OPS. He averages 11 HR a year, and his career fielding and ZR are .969 and .841. Given that he’s 32, we can assume that he will not likely improve those figures.
Khalil has a career .755 OPS. He averages 21 HR a year, and his career fielding and ZR are .975 and .851. He’s younger than Renteria (27) and he’s had his most productive year ever this year.
How does this make Renteria a better all-around player?
168: I dont know, since Adrian got here he seems to be gaining fan-base fast. Your Khalil colored glasses may see otherwise though.
173: Walk around the stadium and look at jerseys. Listen to PA announcements. Unless I’m truly delusional, I’m pretty sure that Khalil is still more popular.
168: I don’t think people have said it would be all that easy. But why does it have to be a power-hitting SS? A SS with a very high OBP would be similarly valuable, just in a different way.
The only scenarios most of us (maybe besides Coronado Mike) would entertain the idea is to get back a great player, and not just that, a great player who is probably not available through other methods. GY’s quote shows why I’m leery of trading him for Bay; Bay’s been a great hitter, but great hitters are easier to find in LF[]. Santana? Bedard? Harang? Halladay? Not saying any of those are available, but we’re not going to get an injection of talent like that without paying.
The most important thing with Khalil is his health. If he can stay healthy, his production is solid and he is hard to replace. But if this a fluke that he stayed healthy all year then his extra outs and lost production hurt us.
174: Last year they didnt sell Gonzo’s stuff, this year they are and with us being so close to Mexico, and CV where he grew up I think his popularity is rising fast.
171, wow thanks. Wikipedia is also very good at explaining SLG, OPS, OPS+, and others and includes some history about who started the stats and how they have changed over the years.
For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_base_percentage
Maybe I can get in on these player discussions after studying how to use the stats. Or not.
Eh, I’m not sure Bay is worth the acquisition, especially in exchange for the loss of Khalil’s fielding prowess. Khalil is an above-average hitter on the road and a poor one at PETCO, but he’s always an excellent fielder regardless of park. As for Bay, here’s what I wrote about him in a player profile this summer. If you don’t have a subscription, the relevant Padre-related info is below for your convenience.
“His 2005 boost in production is easily explained by a fluke line-drive rate; Bay usually hits low quantities of liners, instead bashing grounders and flyballs all over the diamond. Looking at the difference column, we can see that Bay has been lucky for much of his career, thanks to his combination of power and speed. His power allowed him to get more extra-base hits than he should given his lofty flyball rates, but he also collected plenty of hits of the infield variety, ranging from 7 to 15 percent of his total hits during his major league career. He’s had no such luck in 2007—despite 14 infield hits this season, Bay’s power production has plummeted. Bay’s slump may be a sign of actual decline and a loss of bat speed.
His walk rate peaked at 15.2 percent last year, but has dropped to 10 percent this season; a spike in walk rate is oftentimes a sign of a slowing bat, as players take pitches they can no longer catch up to. Once the league realizes this, you see the player’s numbers suffer, but until then, they are able to drive up their value with free passes. By itself, I wouldn’t chalk this up to a slowdown in pure bat speed; after all, his BB/PA was not that far from the previous season’s total.
Take a look at the spread of flyballs, doubles, and home runs in 2005—Bay is all over the outfield, but his pull power is the highlight of his hitting prowess. In 2006 we still see homers to left, but they travel a bit less while his doubles there decrease. For the 2007 season, his production to left has all but disappeared. However, note that this is just the data from his home park; his directional charts, which encompass all of his batted balls, tell the same story.
The largest portion of Bay’s balls in play are grounders to the left side of the diamond, and although he is collecting a solid number of infield hits, Bay is around so that he can slam balls over the outfielders’ heads. The issue of course is that Bay’s pull power isn’t as present as it has been in the past, with Bay often grounding out to the left instead. The fact that he’s going the other way as often as he is without pulling the ball successfully makes me wonder if he can’t get the bat around fast enough on inside pitches, and has to make outside pitches that go the other way a more significant part of his game.
Unless it’s down the middle, Bay can’t do much with it when it’s inside. He’s still hitting the ball in the center and outside parts of the plate though, which you can see reflected in the directional chart and hit charts above.”
Nothing has changed much since I wrote that; Bay is still struggling with the same things, and has laid off inside pitches. Part of this comes from his knee injury, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that Bay was lucky in the past and has potentially peaked and faded early. I wouldn’t deal Khalil for that.
PM, I’d suggest going to Baseball Reference and then going to any player’s page. Right at the top of each player’s page, above his stats, is a link to the Glossary for the stats used. If you click on that and go to the Glossary page, you can scroll down to a summary of all the stats displayed on the player’s pages. There you will see both OBP and SLG as well as the formula for calculating them.
Basically OBP is how many times a player reaches base divided by how many plate apperances, not at bats, expressed as a decimal. SLG is how many total bases divided by at bats expressed as a decimal. OBP gives you insight into a player’s ability to avoid making outs, and SLG gives you more insight into power.
#168: I am also a big KG fan. I do recognize that there comes a point that he is expendable — when the upside of what he brings in a trade is outweighed the downside of his going. The problem is determining what is that upside?
KG has a unique combination of skills and weaknesses. He plays a difficult position where it is difficult to find a replacement. He hits with power, he is a run producer and he is popular. On the other hand, his OBP is lousy, he strikes out a lot and for some people, his personality is not emotional enough for some.
Somewhere, however, the front office has their trade secret statitstics by which they evaluate their own players and others. I am convinced that they use their own statistical matrix to determine if an available player is better overall than the one they currently have. I listened to SA make that comment referenced in 162. My sense was the comment was with the attitude, “Why are we talking about Khalil when there are a whole lot more positions we have to upgrade before his?”
My vote would be to fix left field, center field, 2nd base and the starting pitching by upgrading those positions before we try and figure out how to upgrade short.
178 … be careful, PM … only wade in if you want to have “fun”
OBP has been getting more and more attention “recently” as “the most important metric” (my interp) … and that came to a head with the book “Moneyball” … which protrayed the Oakland A’s as being obsessed with OBP … and given their run of success (prior to this year), there sure was ample anecdotal evidence to support the claim …
I will say this … I think it’s near-unanimous that OBP is a better metric than AVG … ie. a player with AVG/OBP = .280/.380 is better than a player with .320/.340 … because of the 4% fewer outs he’ll make = 4% more opportunities to score a run …
BP’s resident Padre fan, Marc Normandin! Marc Normandin, ladies and gentlemen!
I expect Bay to bounce back. He was a terrific minor league hitter, too. Maybe it was 6 years of good luck, but my money’s on some nagging injury that’s slowed him. That doesn’t make him any more attractive as a trade target, not with Kouz/Hairston/eventually Jenga available to play out there, and plenty of LF candidates on the form.
182: The “best” rate stat at the moment is wOBA.
179 … THANKS for checkin’ in, Marc … I’m a big fan of your (and other BP) writing!
(and I’m a big KG fan … I think he’ll get even better … eh, at least that’s what I hope …)
183: Marc’s really more of a Sox fan. That said, I don’t think any of his cats are named after their players.
185: But he sucks at fantasy baseball.
181: Those are the bigger needs than short, but what if it takes Khalil to really upgrade the pitching? I mean, really upgrade it, not just sign Tomko and hope he’s 10% better than Justin Germano? Those are the kind of deals that I’d move Greene in. Not moves that get us a little better, if people perform as expected, but moves that could make us a lot better, even though the cost is high.
183: Farm.
184 … ‘cept that not very many folks even know what it is … it’s not even in the HBT glossary (link’d at 171, thanks Didi!) …
183: Thanks for the introduction
Bay wasn’t that great of a minor league hitter. He was old for the level often, and it helped bump up his stats a bit. If you remember, everyone thought he was underrated as a prospect once he did manage to reach the major leagues and hit well for a few years. Baseball America went as far to say that since he was old for the level in Triple-A, he probably wouldn’t get much better. As I mentioned before, some infield hits and luck helped bounce his numbers up, and if he can’t pull the ball with the same kind of authority thanks to a slowing bat, he has little value offensively, and his knee will hurt him on defense.
I mean, the guys he comped to throughout his minor league career–and this is if everything panned out–were Rustry Greer and Jeff Conine. Those are two solid ballplayers, but they aren’t what everyone assumed Bay was. Given that he’s getting older, do you really want the older versions of those two players? They certainly are not stars. The bottom rung of his PECOTA this year saw him as a pretty average corner guy, and I’d have to think that next year we’ll get a more accurate read out of his weighted mean projection.
I don’t read DS as being of the opinion KG is or would be easily replaced, just that he is vastly overrated by the run of the mill Padres fan. Yes, his fielding is good, but he’s not the second coming of Ozzie, and for many people his flashy plays blind them to his shortcomings defensively. Yes, his power is good, very good for a SS, but his OBP and plate discipline are terrible and have not shown any signs of improving; yet many people think he’s a great offensive player.
179: Thats putting an awful lot of weight on luck. Bay was more than lucky, he was a good hitter. This year could be a slump, it could be a decline. i dont think it would be smart of the Padres to find out which one it is first hand next year.
181: I really dont think we are bleeding in LF. We need 2 SP, CF and potentially 2B depending on Antonelli. We have decent options in left with Hairston and potentially Headley and possibly Bradley. I tend to disagree with TW that they will move Kouz to LF.
Richard, I don’t suck at fantasy baseball, Travis Hafner sucked the life out of my offense. Also, I probably pay more attention to the Pads since they don’t have some made-up bull-fest like Red Sox Nation. If there’s one thing that’s driven me closer to the Pads the past few years…
185: Hey there LynchMob, thanks for that, much appreciated.
193: Didn’t you draft Hafner and then continue to start him long after it was clear he wasn’t producing?
what’s the record for non-IGD comments?
195: Good question. (filler like this will allow us to challenge it, maybe)
194: You know how Yahoo! sometimes decides to change your lineup back to what it was before you edited it on its own? Yeah, that happened to me for a month when I didn’t pay attention since I had set my lineup the way I wanted for autopilot purposes. So it’s my fault, but I still blame Yahoo!
197: I do know about that. That’s why I check to make sure the right guys are starting.
192: Not all of it was luck; he had his career year of course, but part of the reason his numbers were that high was because of lots of infield hits and his massive pull power. If he has knee issues he won’t be getting as many infield hits, and if his bat has slowed he won’t have as much pull power, if any.
I do agree with you that the Padres make the right decision by not making him their experiment though. I’d love to be wrong about Bay as a fan, but based on what I know about his areas of struggle, he’s in trouble if this isn’t all injury-based.
Jacque Jones sucks. Thanks for nothing.