Comments on: This Date in Ducksnorts (19 Nov)

By: Pat

Pat — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:37:26 +0000

12: Within the DS community, neither overrated, nor underrated. Within the general Padres fan community, highly overrated.

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By: Steve C

Steve C — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:27:45 +0000

Re: 39 I was waiting for you to rear your Khalil Greene hating head! - j/k

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By: Coronado Mike

Coronado Mike — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:14:30 +0000

Re: 12…Did someone call my name?

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By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:47:08 +0000

36: It was an honest mistake on your part. Don't worry about it.

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By: SDSUBaseball

SDSUBaseball — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:29:37 +0000

36: Bonds has just about as much to do with the Padres as the Chargers do.

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By: Sean Callahan

Sean Callahan — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:04:32 +0000

So Bonds finally gets indicted.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.c.....index.html

Seems rather fishy - shortly after a record is broken or a milestone achieved,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00739.html

the disciplinarians get going. Wouldn’t want MLB to miss out on any publicity.

Oh, excuse me. I thought this was a Padres / baseball blog…

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By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:15:12 +0000

When comparing this year’s team and last year’s team, please pay attention to the difference in strength of schedule. This year’s team is facing a top 10 schedule and last year’s team had the third easiest schedule.

We’re allowing the same Yards per Play as last year against this year’s more difficult schedule and we have forced the same number of fumbles and picked off one more pass than we did all of last year.

The offense is clearly worse, but again you have to look at the schedule and also that we’re missing our most important receiver and offensive lineman.

Also, why are we blaming Smith for this? Schottenheimer’s inability to get along with Smith was as much a factor as Smith’s inability to get along with Schottenheimer. Do you really think Turner was Smith’s first choice? He brought in Phillips to replace Schottenheimer. This really all falls on Spanos imo. He either should have fired Schottenheimer before we lost our in-house candidates (both for HC and coordinator positions) or he shouldn’t have fired him at all.

Regardless of who coached this team, they weren’t going to go 14-2 again. At best they were going to go 12-4. When I looked at the schedule, the numbers projected an 11-5 team (assuming no injuries). Through ten games they have lost two games they were projected to win (KC & @MIN) at the start of the season and won one they were projected to lose (@DEN). They sit at 5-5 rather than the 6-4 they were projected for at this point. Looking at the numbers, I think it’s apparent that Minnesota was underrated and Denver was overrated, so the only loss that really bugs me is to Kansas City.

Looking at the remaining schedule, they really should beat Baltimore, Kansas City, Detroit, Denver and Oakland. That would be 10-6 or one game below where they “should” end up.

Last year’s Chargers were winless against top 10 teams (by DVOA). This year’s Chargers have one win against such a team.

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By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:55:55 +0000

21: Yes, they are trying to argue that. Richard even linked to footballoutsiders.com, which provides advanced metrics on such things. Did you go to those links?

20: If those rankings are for yardage given up, I’m not sure how relevant they are.

How about points give up? That’s what decides game, right? Just like runs scored is more important than batting average or on-base percentage or OPS.

In 2006, the Chargers gave up 18.9 points a game. In 2007, 20.9 points a game. Pretty close.

In 2006, the Chargers scored 30.8 points a game. In 2007, 22.9 points a game. Sounds like the offense is what has changed.

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By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:46:04 +0000

I’m not a fan of Marty, but it’s pretty obvious he can win playoff games, because he has — with other teams. Don’t be so quick to make sweeping indictments.

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By: Schlom

Schlom — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:39:23 +0000

I think it’s pretty obvious that Marty couldn’t win a playoff game. In 2005 and 2007 he had far superior teams than his opponents and still managed to lose both in heart-breaking fashion — I guess you could say it was bad luck but how many more chances is he going to get? If you look at his career record you can easily see that he’s a great regular season coach and a terrible postseason coach. Now granted, that might be just a sample size issue but how many chances can you afford to give him?

I agree with Steve C., the real loss from the coaching staff wasn’t Marty but Wade Phillips. But he probably wasn’t the long-term answer either so it’s probably not a big deal in the long run that he’s gone.

The Marty situation had parallels with the Bochy-Padre situation also — Bochy was great in the regular season but didn’t seem to be able to get it done in the playoffs. In three of the four postseason appearances, the Padres look woefully unprepared (1996, 2005-2006). They also looked terrible in the WS in 1998. Granted, in some of those seasons they were the worse team (1998 WS, 2005) but that doesn’t explain how they seemed to just roll over and get blown out. Again, it goes back to people’s expectations. Is winning in the regular season enough? Or do people want more?

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