I’m terrible at faking enthusiasm. This World Series means nothing to me. I’d just as soon not see Tom Werner win another championship, but I don’t even care much about that anymore. Does this make me a bad baseball fan?
I dunno. Maybe…
- Nevin: Poway looks like ‘Mars’ (San Diego Union-Tribune). Several Padres (and Chargers) have been affected by the fires. It’s very foggy in my part of town this morning; hopefully folks on the front line will benefit from this weather shift.
- Yankees likely to offer Jorge Posada $40 million (New York Daily News). Some folks have mentioned Posada as a possible target for the Padres. I’m pretty happy with Josh Bard, and Posada’s price tag is a shade high for my taste. He’s a terrific player, but I have a thing about giving multi-year contracts to 36-year-old catchers. Like, I don’t want to see my team do it.
- Barfield fell on hard times with Indians (San Diego Union-Tribune). Ex-Padre Josh Barfield had a horrendous year in Cleveland. (I’ve got a more detailed look at his collapse in the works for another publication.) People have mentioned the possibility of his returning to San Diego, but I’m inclined to agree with Kevin Towers:
Based on his age and his makeup and a strong skill set, I find it hard to believe they would give up on him or try to move him.
Seriously, the kid turns 25 in December. His value likely never will be lower. What’s in it for the Indians?
- Agent: Padres done with M. Giles (North County Times). Speaking of second base, from the “Denial Ain’t a River in Egypt” department comes this nugget:
I didn’t expect to sit the bench. That’s definitely not what I signed for. I’m definitely ready to move on.
No offense, but what part of .199/.283/.273 after April didn’t he understand?
- A new era in run prevention (Friar Forecast). MB observes that the Padres made a dramatic jump in run prevention on moving downtown and wonders how they did it so quickly.
- 2007 Scouting Report, By the Fans, For the Fans (TangoTiger). Tom has results up for this year’s report. No huge surprises for the Padres, although I’m not sure Brian Giles gets enough credit for the job he does negotiating a tough right field at Petco. Also, how does he end up with lower arm strength than Geoff Blum? Eh, whatever.
- Salary vs. Performance (Ben Fry, via LynchMob in the comments). What a slick tool. Fun for fans of the Indians, Diamondbacks, and Rockies; not so much for the Orioles, Giants, or White Sox.
- Scout.com Names Durango Player of the Year (MiLB.com, via LaMar in the comments). Grady Fuson is pleased with Kellen Kulbacki’s progress. Mitch Canham and Yefri Carvajal also earn praise.
- Young Talent Inventory (Baseball Digest Daily). Joe gives us a sneak peek at the top 25 young players as identified in the upcoming The Bill James Handbook 2008
. Jake Peavy checks in at #17, Adrian Gonzalez at #18. (Hint: they’re not as young as they used to be.)
- High Class A Stat Wrap (Baseball America). I’m way late to the party, but I love this type of analysis. BA also has one of these for Double-A and another for Triple-A.
- USD, LBSU Push Back Fall World Series (Baseball America, via LynchMob in the comments). I had no idea anything like this even existed. Looks like we’ll have a real, honest-to-goodness baseball game in town on Sunday, November 4, at Cunningham Stadium. Sweet!
- VorosMcCracken.com (via MB in the comments). You should know who he is; if not, here’s a little reminder. This is very, very cool.
- Offseason blockbusters: October (Part two: 1970-1992) (Hardball Times). Fine effort from Steve Treder. Several Padres trades show up here, including those for Willie McCovey and Jack Clark, as well as the infamous Tony Fernandez giveaway (speaking of Werner).
Winter Leagues
- Phoenix 8, Saguaros 2 (box). Will Venable got his first start in center field, playing the full nine. He went 0-for-4 in the cleanup spot and recorded three putouts in the field. Southpaw Will Startup gave up a run in the eighth on a walk, single, and two ground outs.
- Licey 4, Gigantes 3 (box). This is Wednesday’s game. Yordany Ramirez, back in the Licey lineup, went 1-for-3 in the #9 spot.
- Culiacan 8, Mexicali 3 (box). Jared Wells worked a scoreless ninth in the loss. He walked one batter, gave up a single to ex-Dodger Karim Garcia, and struck out ex-Red Reggie Taylor.
- Obregon 7, Navojoa 5 (box). Oscar Robles singled in five at-bats.
No Padres played in the Caracas/Magallenes contest, but in the first inning, Edgardo Alfonzo drew a walk against Hideo Nomo. Once upon a time, people would have cared about that matchup.
Happy Friday, folks; it’s been a helluva week. Stay safe…
Braves interested in crisp:
http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/braves/entries/2007/10/25/whos_the_empire.html
hmmm interesting situation with Cameron if the Braves get crisp.
1: And possibly opens the door for us to trade for Lillibridge, either to play short (if we move Greene) or CF.
Dude if Dirk Hayhurst never makes it to the bigs he has some serious writing skills to fall back on.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/features/265043.html
This comment from BP …
Go back to September, when Francona, sitting on a ticket to the postseason, rested Okajima and Manny Ramirez for most of the month, and gave starters Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, and Daisuke Matsuzaka extra rest. He never wavered, even as the Sox’ lead in the AL East dwindled, because he knew the important games wouldn’t be played until October. Now he has all of those players back and performing well, and as a result, he’s two wins from his second World Series sweep in four years.
… aligns well with some thoughts which were expressed here during September.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6880
I know the Padres didn’t have cushion/ticket that the BoSox did … but I think BB missed some opportunities to do likewise. But I think the biggest failure was either not knowing that Hoffy was hurt, or running him out there knowing he was not healthy.
3 … ouch … that guy *IS* a good writer … pass me a tissue … thanks, KRS1 …
5 “ditto”
“According to John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Giants are “seriously interested” in Kosuke Fukudome. The Padres will be in on him as well. Shea picked up this chatter from Japanese media at the World Series.”
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2007/10/giants-interest.html
BA’s NL Draft Report Cards (Subscription required)
http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/draft/features/265089.html
Assessment: Three of the Padres’ last four top draft choices (Schmidt, Carrillo, 2004′s No. 1 overall Matt Bush) succumbed to Tommy John surgery in 2007. Nevertheless, San Diego still infused a lot of talent with five supplemental first-round picks and Latos as a draft-and-follow.
***
Since it’s subscription, I don’t mind giving a quote or two, but I can’t in good concious copy the whole thing.
A lot of us disagreed with quite a few of the Padres choices, but there’s no way to disagree that this organization is a LOT more talent-laden than it was prior to Fuson’s arrival.
Re: 8 yes but I think the org could have done a better job drafting pre-fuson if they just pulled names out of a hat.
#9 I respectfully disagree, since that is exactly how they determined their draft choices.
Re: 10 I figure the luck of the draw has to better the 2nd time around.
8, 9, 10: I agree with the facts stated by Peter, that our system is better. But I also agree with the spirit of Steve’s post. The bar was so low after the 2003-2004 drafts that it would have been almost impossible not to accumulate more talent.
We’re always going to have problems building a top-notch farm system if we:
1. Continue to virtually ignore half the draft eligible players.
2. Don’t sign most of the HS players we do draft.
3. Refuse to pay more than slot in almost every case.
Those are real brakes on how much talent we can acquire. Won’t stop us from building a top 10 system, especially if we trade well, but it will be very hard to move from the 10 range to the top 5, and even harder to have elite, star-quality prospects.
12: I agree with Tom about the possibility, maybe even the likelihood of Fuson and co generating a top-10, but not top-5 system with the current approach. I think that he did a nice job of laying out the downfalls of the current amateur philosophy. That said, things will improve, and the top-10 is not a bad place to be. It should allow us to generate enough new talent to remain competitive and to trade for impact talent at trading deadlines.
13: If you can stay there, it’s an awesome place to be. But it’s like they think draft dollars are worth more, and therefore should be spent less, than other dollars. What did they lose Green, Colon, Ovens, and Toledo for the last four years? I would bet the gap between what we were willing to pay and what the players wanted was well under a million dollars to get 3 of those 4 signed.
Tom, I’m not the critic you are of the Padres minor league system and I bet that combined gap (especially if we exclude Green) is less than $500k
14,15: Yeah…that seems like a pretty trivial amount of money, especially considering that we gave Marcus Giles 500k NOT to play for us this year…
http://www.rotoworld.com/content/playerpages/player_main.aspx?sport=MLB&id=5238
new middle reliever candidate off the marlins
New Padre Maruro Zarate …with the Tower’s track record-these sort of seemingly superficial moves can actually end up being significant (ie-Justin Hampson).
he looks good only 24 and advanced four levels just this year…..never struggled for extended period except for half a year in 04 ……….seems like one of those someone elses trash equals our treasure deals
The San Diego Padres could offer free agent outfielder Andruw Jones a loaded one-year deal.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/rumors/post/Padres-could-offer-Jones-a-one-year-deal;_ylt=Auv.Pv2ahZJcXq4czFY0mkapu7YF?urn=mlb,50488
Don’t know if anyone saw this.
20: It’s come up a bunch. Buster Olney, for the third time the other day predicted Jones in SD.
20: One other thing: So many morons posting comments about that blurb. “Crap offense this and that.” They good use a good schooling at DS.
22: Yes indeed. My favorite comment was, “Rowand would be great too, he fills that void that of a blue-collar, hardnose player that we lack.”
Apparently our problem last year was lack of white guys. OG is costing himself a ton of positive press by being orange instead of white.
Yeah, offense is not the team’s problem. Any check of the road stats makes that clear.
Just a quick note: A-Rod has opted out of the contract…I sure hope that he stays out of the NL West (unless we make a surprise play for him
)
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3084583
Nothing warms my heart more than seeing Tom Werner standing on the podium to accept the WS trophy.