Padres (2-1) vs Astros (1-2)
Randy Wolf vs Shawn Chacon
12:35 p.m. PT
Channel 4SD
AM 1090, FM 105.7, XM 186
MLB, B-R
If Adrian Gonzalez catches Hunter Pence’s line drive, the game is over before Lance Berkman ever steps to the plate. If Jose Cruz Jr. doesn’t draw a two-out walk, Pence never bats. If Jose Cruz Sr. doesn’t have a kid, Cruz Jr. never bats.
On the bright side, at least now people can jump back on the “Trevor Hoffman is done” bandwagon. I was almost starting to miss them.
. . .
Randy Wolf makes his Padres debut in an afternoon affair. Assuming the rain holds off, I’ll be at this one as well as the Storm opener tonight.
157 Comments
I hope that no one is hitting the panic button yet after one blown save.
Yeah, I’m really not that pissed about last nite. Sure, those are the kinds of games that could come back to haunt us in September. But the team played really well and it was great to see them bounce back from a 3-run deficit in two innings. I’m loving our offense.
What I love is that two days ago when Trevor looked unhittable practically, everyone cheered and was talking about how “Trevor’s back.” Now he blows a save and its the same yahoo’s saying he’s done and can’t do it anymore.
Fastball is faster (I know Mud has been saying this during the telecasts and Bard seems to have confirmed this in the U-T) and the changeup is just as filthy as it always has been.
RELAX!
I just mentioned this over at GLB, but I have an observatation from last nite that I’d like to share:
According to Leitner (I didn’t see but heard innings 2 – 7), Maddux’s change wasn’t dropping as per usual. Combined with 6 HRs, isn’t it completely possible that there were some environmental factors yesterday that would have negated some of the bite on Trevor’s change? I don’t know if there’s any way to measure this mid-game, but I would think that if you notice these conditions, you’ll want to bring it a guy like Ledezma or Gonzalez who just throws heat (assuming Bell can’t go because of back-to-back appearances).
Not panicking on Trevor yet. Lots of bad luck went into last night’s ninth. Cruz was quoted in the U-T as saying ball four was borderline and he was lucky he didn’t swing. Adrian almost caught the 3rd out, etc.
But…every time #51 comes into a game from here on out, it’s going to feel like even more of a high-wire act than it has for the last few seasons. That, and reports on Bell’s decreased performance, make me nervous about the ‘pen. I’ll be watching the A’s closely over the next two months – if they perform poorly, maybe Billy Beane will put Huston Street on the market…
Guys I know its not going to be popular, but how long does it have to go on before its acceptable to be worried when Hoffman comes in?
He had an ERA over 4 in the 2nd half last year and he’s at an age where the cliff could come at any time…..plus its not like BB and the organization can baby his arm any more then they already do.
Let me just say I’m very happy with what I’ve seen so far this season. Pitching (besides last night) is good/should be good and hitting is fantastic. That’s my “3 games in” assesment. Last night sucked though. Man, as soon as that ball went over the fence I turned off the tube and went to bed. I’m heading to Vegas tonight in a worse mood…….good luck for the day game to help my spirits. Later!!!
Re:6 I’ve been worried everytime Hoffy has came in for the last 2 seasons but he has proved my wrong 99% of the time. If he drops another 2 saves this month then ill start to worry until then I’ll chalk last night up to bad luck.
If Trevor challenges Cruz and Cruz takes him deep, I can shrug it off. But, walking Cruz to spark a rally, hurts.
Have an extra ticket to today’s game. Anyone interested in a little liquid sunshine? Ticket in section next to bullpen in left field boxes, row 3. Would love some company. Drop me an email and I will contact you.
cbbsvino@yahoo.com
4: Anything is possible, but if you can get Bud to make pitching changes based on environmental conditions, I’ll eat my Padres cap.
6: For the first half of the season. If it lasts through the All Star break, it will be acceptable to be worried about Hoffman in the second half.
On a more serious note, it’s important to keep in mind how small a sample size is involved when talking about closers in general and about Hoffman in particular (because as you point out he is “babied” in terms of IP).
For example, I was looking at his game log for last year, and it appears to me the ERA for the second half boils down to pretty much just two appearances which lasted 1 1/3 IP and where he gave up 4 earned runs, and game 163, of course, where he gave up 3 in just 1/3 IP.
When you only pitch in 57 1/3 over the entire season, a couple of poor outings like that will distort things like ERA. There is concern expressed by some that his K rate is dropping, which means more balls in play, but all in all he was still highly effective last year despite the highly visible late season failure.
I do think you need to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for quite a while before you start worrying there is a pattern of ineffectiveness developing.
Berkman is a great hitter and just the night before looked hopeless against Trevor. I believe Leitner said he was hitless against him before the HR. That’s baseball. You win some, you lose some.
Look, I love Trevor, but last night hurt badly. He has now blown 3 out of his last 4 saves, granted spread over two seasons. Maybe it is just bad luck, but I don’t think that is it. I was watching his FB velocity; he got 88 once, more typically around 84. His old means of doing things were pinpoint accuracy with 88-ish FB and the change lurking. Good location, plus 88, plus the change lurking around made the FB work. It seems to me when it drops below 85, the hitters can look change but still react to the FB. So now he has to throw the change for a strike. Before, hitters would be swinging to protect against the FB, only to the change drop away. Now, hitters are much better at letting the change go.
I would love nothing more for him to shake this off and silence the critics, but if that FB cannot reliably get to 88, it is gong to hurt.
FYI – The Oregonian had a good write up today on Randy Ready and the 2008 Portland Beavers. Including that Matt Antonelli will be the Beavers lead off guy. Though the paper is really pushing Chase Headly as the guy to watch and get out to PGE to see him before he gets called up to San Diego.
13: Come on. Talk about cherry picking and using arbitrary cutoff points. Blown 3 of his last 4, eh? Why not 3 of his last 15, or 9 of his last 51, or 14 of his last 102? Look, it’s not difficult to make a closer look bad, but the fact is he’s been highly effective for a long time and a brief run of poor performance does not a decline make.
Did you see Berkman K on Tuesday night on two straight changeups? Berkman is one of the best hitters in baseball; over the past 5 seasons he has the 8th best OPS+ in all of baseball and he flailed miserably at those changeups! Give the guy a break for the first month of the season at least.
Trevor’s main problem is that his stuff is so underwhelming at this point that if he doesn’t have good control (like last night) batters just tee off on him. Sometimes he gets lucky and the balls find gloves (and he was almost lucky last night) and sometimes he throws his BP fastballs and they get knocked out of the park.
Speaking of attendance (like we were yesterday), did you see that the Orioles only got 10,000 fans last night against the Rays? Talk about taking a franchise and running it into the ground.
10: Good luck. I tried last night to get someone to come to today’s game with Geoff, Didi, and myself. Nobody was interested in sitting field level with dregs like us, apparently.
Re: 16 10,000 aint bad for a minor leauge baseball game on a Weds night!
ooohhh Low blow!
Re: 17 and !0 I would love to go but working stiffs like me just can’t take the time off. weather looks to be clearing up a bit downtown though.
#16: FWIW, last night’s crowd was the smallest in Petco Park history. Average attendance after three dates:
2007: 37,286
2008: 28,168
For now, I remain more concerned about this than about Trevor’s blip.
I’m not fully sure why everyone is worried about the crowd its 3 games in against a team that has little to no draw in SD all during the week. If the Dodger games this weekend dont get 35,000 + at each then you maybe have a point.
I also dont think low crowds this year will affect next years payroll any because I dont see the Padres signing any big name players or resigning Giles, Maddux or Hoffy at the end of the year which will save them more than $20 mil in payroll.
If the padres continue to win, more people will come out during the summer months, if they become a .500 type team the attendance will stay the same, and if they drop below .500 well they are in trouble.
Re: 13 – Trevor has not been consistantly over 85 for a couple of years now. He has found a way to adapt. If the scout quoted in the paper today is right, then I feel a lot better about Trevor. If he can consistantly hit 87+ on the FB (something he has not done for sometime), then we are golden. It gives him a much larger margin of error.
If, however, he is still living in the 81-84 range, then his margin for error is VERY low and location/control is really all he has.
#21: The problem, as I see it, is that the Padres apparently need a high-profile opponent to induce folks to come see a game. Sorry, but that will always bug the heck out of me.
20:
I’m going to blame the weather and the Astros for it.
On mlb.com they have the following Padre articles:
• Hoffman unable to shut door on Astros
• Hoffman picks up where he left off
I thought that’s a little harsh on Trevor but then I realized the 2nd article talked about his save in the first game, not his blowing the save in the 2nd.
I was at the ball park last night. It was a pretty small crowd. Given the fact that it was cold, it’s the Astros, it was a school night and just barely a start to the season, I was expecting a small turnout. (Although I was surprised at how small.) Sure made it easy to get food at the concession stands, though.
After three games, the ever-ironic and unexpected ways of baseball have us worried about the bullpen and happy about the offense.
13/Jay: fwiw, PITCHf/x had his average FB speed at 87 last night. The homer to Berkman was measured at 85.8, his second slowest fb of the night.
Doesn’t Trevor blow a couple every April anyway?
26: michael that was LOL, Dude. Thanks.
28: If I’m reading BR correctly, he blew 2 in April 07, none in 06, 2 in 05, 1 in 04, didn’t pitch in 03, none in 02, 1 in 01, and 1 in 00.
I’ll stop now becasue this is probably really boring.
28:
Last year he blew back to back games in April — both against the Dodgers I think? The worst part about last night was that it was against the 7-8-9 batters of the order, I could understand if he came in against the leadoff hitter and blew it since they probably score half the time when the leadoff hitter is the first batter of the inning, but you don’t expect a blown save when the first three hitters are Wigginton, Towles and Jose Cruz. That’s certainly not good. Oh well, one game can’t make that much of a difference, can it?
30: I think that’s actually a little encouraging. He doesn’t really blow one a month for his career, so April is generally a tough month for Trevor.
I’m with Geoff; he’s actually been looking a fair amount better than he did last year velocity-wise, and the pitch that hurt him was never thrown in an alternate universe where Adrian gets the ball that his his glove…
Re: 31 – He got 7 and 8 out…righ? 9 got on a very close pitch…Don’t think that part should worry you.
Geoff, I understand you’re concerned about the attendance, for good reason….BUT I don’t think comparing a Mon/Tues/Wed vs Houston to a Fri/Sat/Sun against the Rockies to open the season is going to tell you anything.
If they don’t average 38k this weekend then I’ll be concerned, they always draw better on weekends and after school is out
Mark
Well I hope this is a preview of the Sunday lineup for this year…..P Mac hitting 5th though?
Hairston looking like a 30 HR guy at a min
Hairston keeps hitting. Lead-off double
Kooooooooooz
Dong!
Kooouuuuuz!
Gonzo looks like he put one to the wall again. A lot of LOUD outs for him this year.
Anyone watching the game? On gameday it looks like Kouz crushed that thing to one of the deepest parts of the park again.
Hang em and bang em – attaboy Kouz!
How cool is it to have the game on while at work?
Wolf is dealing……this is going to work out a lot better then the Wells/Hensley garbage from last year.
Iguchi looks like he is still asleep
43: Not much better. The best is when you live in California and there’s a day game on the East Coast.
42: Stu, did I read the other day that you’re in Georgia?
44: Looks like Wolf got squeezed a bit to Cruz, but no damage.
45 – yup, Atlanta. Got married last fall and we decided to make a go of it here rather than in San Diego.
And yes, I have MLB.tv playing while at the office.
Kindly please my a commenter knowing the score kindly relay in comments to those poor saps who must work to feed their families.
No W2 internet at Burger King.
Tank you very much.
41. Watching the game, Kouz hammered it, over the 401 sign in left center….
But, it probably dies at the warning track if it was a night game.
47: If you’re looking for a fellow transplant to catch the Padre-Braves games with in May, shoot me an email.
Terrible at-bat by Adrian.
After 8 straight balls, Adrian attacks a pitch out of the strike zone and weakly grounds out.
I think you’d like to see AGon swing at a better pitch there after back to back walks and a 1-0 count. Doesn’t look like it was a strike and definitely wasn’t a pitch he could drive (low and outside).
Damn, Hombre. Looks like you expanded the zone, a bad habit you were supposed to have worked on this winter.
49: Same spot as the pre-season game vs the Angels?
48: 2-0 Pads are winning on a KK 2 run shot. Its the top of the 3rd
55. More towards center than the pre-season shot… but close.
Lo is giving Wolf a hard time here.
Lo tags what looks like a hanging curve and doubles in Pence. 2-1 Pads.
I like when Vasgersian just makes up stats. He just said that Berkman has more power from the left side and a higher average from the right side. It’s not that hard to jump on BR.com and check it out, is it?
60: I could be wrong, but I don’t think they look any stats up. Don’t they normally have hired hands that just had them stats for them to talk about?
60: Thats the usual split, but ya Berkman isnt very good from the right side.
I know it’s early… but how good does Kouz look so far?
Is it too optimistic to expect .290 with 25 and 80?
63: If the team can hit like it has been, I think its possible he drives in more than 80. But I don’t think it is optimistic at all. Everyone outside of SD would disagree though.
Is there anything more frustrating then seeing the next batter after a walk swing at the first pitch and do nothing with it? Granted that pitch was right down the middle but it just looks terrible.
61: Shouldn’t they look up stats at some point? Or do you think they just make up stuff for everyone?
65: He said stat guys look up stuff for them
Richard, I think you tagged exactly what should be EXPECTED from him this season. Anything less than that would be disappointing.
65: If they do in fact have staticians on the payroll, then I expect that those people confirm facts before presenting them to the broadcasters. And yes, that includes looking things up. I seriously doubt any broadcasters have time to look up anything in the booth.
Re: 68 – They do have stat runners in the booth. In college, I was offered a job with Fox to be a stat runner before/during games…providing stats, facts, and other misc. stuff that gets fed to game watchers…pay was in the mid-20’s…but that was back in the mid-90’s.
66: Well, since he was so wrong about Berkman (and about a 5 second look at Berkman’s stats would tell you what kind of hitter he is) you wonder if he’s just making stuff up. And since he’s making stuff up for Berkman, it follows that he might be making up stuff for everyone. Plus, don’t they have laptops in front of them? When they show them in the booth there’s computer in front of them. Maybe they are just there for show though.
50 – will do. Can’t wait to see what the pitching matchups will be for that series.
well, that was a waste – four pitch walk to the pitcher?!?
Actually, I know what’s more frustrating then popping out on the first pitch after a walk — how about walking the pitcher on 4 straight?
Even with the dumb walk, Wolf is looking very good tonight! 81 pitches through five innings – 56 strikes and only 25 balls.
I like what I’ve seen from Wolf thus far. Works very fast, throws strikes (56 out of 81 pitches through 5), seems to pitch to contact and let the defense work, but gets a few Ks as well. Could be a little more efficient with pitch count, but that’s my only gripe.
My best friend is sitting first row, right behind home plate so you see him on every pitch. I sent him a text, telling him to sit up higher, since all you could see was his receding hairline. Am I bitter? Hell yes.
“Watching” on gamecast but it seems Wolf is dealing right now against a pretty good offensive lineup.
Holy Moly! Berkman steals second? I thought Wolf would at least do a better job of holding runners than our 1-3 starters.
Good to see Wolf is fitting into the Padres plan of ignoring baserunners. Oddly, he’s never really given up steals before so maybe it really is just Bard and Barrett and not the pitchers. In 213 games and 1283 innings before today, he’s only given up 34 steals, had 22 caught and picked off 7. That doesn’t seem like very much (CY gave up 41 without anyone being caught last season).
Dropped foul ball by Wolf on a little pop-up halfway down the first base line. You could tell right away that it was going to be trouble as AGon never really went for it. Hopefully it won’t matter.
God Adrian must be slowest 25 year old with 2 good legs I’ve ever seen
did anyone watch that? If so, please provide some commentary on that
According to Bill James pitchers have little to do with caught stealing rates-it’s all about the catchers
six solid innings from Wolf
Wow if this is the end of the line for wolf he had himself a pretty good day for his padres opener.
79: I think everyone was suprised by Berkman running. Did Bard even attempt a throw?
82 – baserunner got in the way and spooked Wolf just enough so that he dropped it. No harm done, Tejada hit a weak grounder to Gooch two pitches later.
Wolf pitch count: 103 through 6 IP, 71 strikes, 32 balls
82:
It was a pop-up about halfway up the line on first. AGon didn’t break on the ball and never really went for, it look like he never saw it. Wolf was waiting for AGon to call him off and so he was late getting to it. He missed it (it ticked off his glove) but it was a foul ball (barely).
Gerut…take a pitch or two!!!
83: James may be right in general, but I think any attentive Padres fan would tell you that CY and Maddux, who makes no bones about not holding runners, have a lot to do with the caught stealing rate when they’re on the mound.
83,90: We should easily be able to figure it out after the season by looking at Wolf since he’s never given up steals before so. Of course, if he does have a typical Padre starting pitcher steals against, it could be the fact that Black and Balsley instruct the pitchers to ignore the runners and concentrate on the batters, not just that Bard and Barrett can’t throw (since Bard could throw with Cleveland).
Who didn’t see that coming after the walk to Jose Cruz?
Walks… darn it. I have had it with the walks in late innings.
Bullpen… stop nibbling and throw strikes!
Bleh there goes the lead…. sorry Mr Wolf
83: This is probably blasphemy here but Bill James is wrong.
Woohoo way to rally back!
Good thing they didn’t replace Cruz in CF with Bourn, I think Bourn would have caught that. That’s why I was in favor of signing Corey Patterson — sure he can’t hit but he can cover some serious ground in CF which is pretty damn important.
NICE!
Hairston is definitely making his case to continue to start even when Edmonds comes back.
If they keep a one or two run lead going into the 9th do they use Bell to close it out because Trevor has worked back to back nights or do they use Trevor again to get him back out there as quick as possible after the blown save last night?
Rough game for Adrian so far. 1st GIDP of the year. Someone noted he doesnt do that much tough.
98: Only if P-Mac makes an even stronger case to continue to start after Edmonds comes back (and maybe not even then).
99: Back to back nights and then a day game? I doubt Hoffman closes it.
RE: 99 nm/m I have my answer.
99: I’d guess it depends on how Trevor is feeling. If he’s ready to go, I’d have to believe Bud goes to him.
How about a bottom of the 8th rally, get Hairston a chance at the cycle… and make it a non-save situation.
With no one warming up behind Bell, does Bell go two innings today?
Hoffman won’t pitch. Bell 50/50, my guess.
Sweet defense on the 3rd out – pitchers’ fielding practice pays off!
Hell’s Bells.
TREVOR TIME!
Ok…. start holding your breath now…
It’s Trevor Time
(gulp)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kjh9lQXLWk
Hoffman’s pitching? Wow. This will be interesting.
This looks like it has more to do with getting Trevor right back out there after last night.
1 down…
Ground out to Greene.
Death.
Ground out to A-Gon.
Taxes.
Same three batters as last night, just a different order. Same result for the first two.
Weak ground out to first, you can thank the best changeup in baseball for that.
(exhale)
Ground out to Kouzmanoff.
Hoffman.
Elite Closer: someone who can slam the door in the 9th. Gets back on the mound after blowing a game and has a short memory. See…Trevor Hoffman.
whew! great win today!
Padres on pace for 121 wins.
That was fine. Didn’t have nearly the juice on his fastball (looked like he maxed out at 84) but his control was much better. None of the pitches were near the heart of the plate.
I think his last pitch was a slider or a cutter unless he threw an 80 mph fastball.
Outstanding. I’ll take 3 out of 4 games every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Great game.
Oh man, good game. Nice work guys. Great way to open the year.
Hoffman: 2-for-3 in save chances, lowers ERA to 13.50 from 30.86.
Career: 526 saves in 590 chances (.892 percentage).
First place baby!
What’s our magic number?
Of course, a quality start by Randy Wolf is always great.
124: I dont know if I am reading this right but MLB gameday says his fastball was 89
130: I think 84-85 was his high today. I could be wrong.
I just checked his fastball velocities from yesterday and today. His fastball was pretty much the same (between 88 and 90) to everyone but Berkman where it was between 84-85 (and the pitch that was hit for the HR was right down the middle). Today all 4 his fastballs were 89 (one at 88 to Wigginton), while he threw 3 sliders (none yesterday) and just the one change to Cruz where he grounded out to first.
So it seems like the real fluke was the AB by Berkman where he had nothing on his fastball and couldn’t control it.
All that mph data was from the MLB.com Gamecast and is measured from when the ball is released from his hand so it will be higher then Channel 4’s radar readings.
Bard and scouts say Trevor is throwing harder. Considering the surgery, I’ll go with MLB.com Gameday and not the channel that employs Steve Quis to sub as an announcer.
Nice! Hoffman is clearly done and we should start the search for a new closer ASAP!
Living in England, I like home Thursdays as it’s a chance to follow the game before a reasonable bedtime; but after this morning’s grim news (a Padres defeat laid at Trevor’s door is always that much tougher to take), I was happy to get taken out to the cinema (the wonderful Lars and the Real Girl), and even happier when I got back to find that they’d won, and no. 526 had already been clocked up. (The first half of the season, with all those low-scoring home games, could be pretty hard work for Trevor, and for the rest of us, come to that.)
But there was an additional pleasure when I turned to the mlb stats page to see how many home runs they’d scored so far; and there at the top of the team batting list after 4 games is the so inferior offense of the San Diego Padres, with an average of .336. Small sample, weak opponents, but at Petco, and still a very funny sight:
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/sortable_team_stats.jsp
Ch 4 had Hoffman at 84 on the couple of fastballs that I noticed, about the same as the majority of last year……at the end I remember seeing 81-82 sometimes and thinking to myself s*it
Mark
134: I hear you on that. Quis is a joke.
63 & 64: Assuming a healthy season, Kouz will drive in around 100 runs. He’ll clear 80 with plenty of room to spare.
81: Sixty Minutes got it backward. James was among the first to attribute stolen bases to pitchers, rather than entirely to catchers.
Minor league games start TODAY!
First up is the A-level Ft Wayne Wizards …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2008_04_03_lanafx_ftwafx_1
… up 7-0 thru 5 … the a balanced offense and behind the pitching of Jeremy Hefner.
140: I was at the ballpark today, and I KNEW the minor league season had started as soon as I saw P-Mac in the lineup!
Great to see Trevor bounce back. I reviewed last year’s numbers and I did not see some big fade in the second half. In fact, he had great numbers right before his two blown saves at the end.
The 84 vs. 89: I buy that the different methodologies yield different numbers, both being correct. So, when I see 84 on TV and I am comparing it other FB’s numbers I see on TV or at the stadium. So, on TV, radar guns, Hoffman is tossing mid to low 80s. That was where he was before his surgery and after his surgery he got back to the upper 80s. In these first few outings, he is in the lower 80s. I hope that changes, because, as others have written, that leaves him a small margin for error.
Nice series. I think it illustrates the bizarro world we live in. We have a very solid offense, and coupled with decent but not outstanding pitching. Petco makes it look reversed, but just look at our road stats, for both pitching and hitting, and we towards the top in hitting and mid-pack pitching. I remember watching the first game on ESPN and the commentators first statement: “they are going to have to hit better to support this great pitching they have.” Shut up.
Also, I have not run the numbers yet, but we got unlucky in this series. I am guessing our team OPS is around .860 after this series, and that ought to lead to roughly 6 runs scored a game, or 24 for the series. Instead they scored 15. So, these games should not have been as close as they were.
94.
Regarding catchers, pitchers and stealing bases.
James could be wrong and right. A lot of times when stats say that “Pitchers don’t have any effect on base stealing rates” they really aren’t saying that… They are really saying that for the data as a hole, catchers explain most of the variance.
In other worse, it may be that pitchers are important, but most pitchers are similar enough to each other that usually, it’s the catcher who determines the outcome. Because the variance in catcher ability is higher than in pitcher ability.
But of course, we have some of the worst — esp CY, who is simply too big and righty — so they may land outside that variance.
In other worse, usually it’s the catcher. But maybe the worst (and best) pitchers can make a difference.
In our case, it’s the confluence of the two. If we had a gun behind the plate, no one would run. But since we have both, people run at will.
143: Cant say I agree. Pitchers make a huge amount of difference. Our pitchers seem to pay no attention to runners at all. They dont look them back or slide step. When I saw Wolf and Estes pitch in Anaheim it was the same thing, and they are lefties. Bard didnt seem to have as much of a problem throwing runners out in Boston. Sure the catcher’s arm will be the most easily noticed difference, but I think there is more variance between pitchers than you think. Someone else pointed out that Bill James actually said the opposite, that pitchers do count for a large part of stolen bases. When Lance Berkman and Michael Bourne are getting GREAT jumps, the catcher isnt even getting a chance.
Honestly, I could care less. Our starters seem to focus on making a good pitch rather than the runner, and most of the time the stolen base does not result in a run.
Holy cow … did you know that the Pirates gave Chris Gomez a job?
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore?gid=280403115
FYI
#98 Edmonds coming back is NO factor as to whether Hairston starts as Hairston simply moves to left field.
re 146: Yeah a lot of people seem to be talking about LF like it is open for discussion…..guys who hit a HR every 10 AB’s don’t get taken out of the lineup.
That deal for Hairston might end up being just as big of a heist as the deal for Cy/Agon.
Mark
Huge reason to be excited if you’re a Pads fan –Scott Hairston has the total look of a guy who is about to explode ! Yes indeed, it looks like we really have something very special in this guy.
Trevor Hoffman will slip a little but obviously is still a good major league pitcher who has the stuff to probably have another three or four more above average, productive years. I am very curious to see if he will stick around to pitch in other relief roles. Heck, lets all be honest, even if Trev became just a little less effective he is still better than most. How could anyone ever complain in any way when you got this arm in the pen.
Wonder if Hoffy will share a closers role in 2009 or 2010 or perhaps fill a key set up role for the Pads or someone else ?
141 … that’s a low blow and we’ll have NO MORE of that!
At AA San Antonio, Ekstrom got off to a rough start … but that’s a nice lookin’ lineup they’ve got …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2008_04_03_nwaaax_sanaax_1
Nick Hundley provides some early support for Josh Geer tonight @ Portland …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2008_04_03_freaaa_poraaa_1
Here’s the Opening Day lineup for our Storm Boyz …
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_box&gid=2008_04_03_rcqafa_lesafa_1
… including Jim Edmonds in CF! (And Cedric Hunter in LF and Mitch Canham @ C). I’m guessing we’ll get an in-depth report on this game “soon” …
146: Before the season started everyone was talking about platooning Hairston (with Headley) having him play only vs LHP (which isnt very many ABs). Thats why I said that. Obviously now he will start in LF, and his performance so far this season has made sure of it.
I was just out driving … decided to check 1090 on the radio … the Storm game was on … and Jake was in the booth … they were talking about the time Jake was pitching for the Storm vs the Padres and Jake, then 19 years old, face Tony Gwynn … now *that*s a great story!
151 … Hey, Masticore … Bass is pitching in Portland tonight!
Also, HR by Ambres …
Keith Law’s at it again. Today in a chat he gave us another tidbit that seems contrary to what we have heard. When asked when Headley, Longoria, or Bruce might be brought up, he says:
“I can kind of defend Headley’s demotion – he was awful in LF in the spring, and they’re not willing to dislodge Kouznamuff [sic] from third….Headley should be up when his defense allows it. They could use his bat.”
Nothing I have read or heard would seem to indicate that his defense was “awful.” Even granting the Padres license to paint a rosy picture, this seems a bit harsh. I wonder where he got his information from? First-hand, like his scouting of Antonelli that relied almost entirely on his performance on the Cape many years ago? Or by scouts that he networks with.
Even though I prefer Headley to remain at third, I still would like to see him succeed no matter where he plays, but characterizing his defense in such a way runs against everything we have heard.
Kouznamuff is a pretty sic typo
… but I gotta admit that it does sound cool …
Agree 100% that there’s no basis for calling Headley’s LF defense during the spring “awful” … I was at his one “bad game” (he misplay’d a couple of tough fly balls), but even in that game, he made a couple of tough plays and several routine and near-routine balls (it was amazing how many balls were hit to LF that day). He’ll be fine in LF, at worst.