I’m kinda winging it today. We’ll see what happens…
This has been floating around for a few days now, but Paul DePodesta has a blog. I’ve added it to the ol’ blogroll as well as to PadreBlogs.com. One of DePo’s first posts concerns the effects of Petco Park. The entire post is well worth reading, but here’s one passage that stands out to me:
In each of the past 4+ seasons, the Padres have had a higher OPS than our opponents while playing in Petco. The total line since the opening: .246/.321/.379 for the Padres and .243/.303/.376 for the opposition. Over 342 games, that’s a significant spread. So big deal – Petco suppresses run scoring, and we all already knew that. What is interesting to me is the relative aspect of this puzzle. Scoring runs in an absolute world isn’t as important as in the relative world in which we compete – you win by scoring more runs than your opponent, not by scoring a certain number of runs.
Given the difference in batting lines between the Padres and their opponents, one would expect the Padres to have had a winning record at home, which has been the case. The Padres worst home record in Petco came in the inaugural season when the 2004 team posted a 42-39 record at home (interestingly, that team had the best home batting stats of any Padres team in Petco). The total record at Petco for the Padres, including this season, is 186-156, which pro-rates to an annual record of 44-37 at home. Does anyone happen to know what the average record at home has been for all Major League teams since the beginning of 2004? Drum roll….
44 and 37.
I looked at the question in a different way on pp. 33-36 of the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual, but arrived at pretty much the same conclusion: Regardless of anyone’s conceptions, the Padres have played well at Petco Park since moving there. Or as DePodesta puts it:
In the meantime, fans of the Padres should remember that the only four year run of consecutive winning seasons in franchise history has coincided with our four years with Petco as our home.
Snap.
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I’ve been dogging Shawn Estes for his “Diez Anos de Ineptitud,” but he pitched a nice game Wednesday evening. After a rough start, he held his ground and kept the Padres within striking distance until Khalil Greene and Jody Gerut did their thing. Two more starts like that and maybe the Pads can flip Estes to the Yankees for Brett Jodie and Darren Blakely.
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Eric Seidman at Statistically Speaking takes a good, hard look at Greg Maddux’s pitching strategy. Eric has broken down several confrontations between Maddux and Bengie Molina (they’ve faced each other a lot over the past couple years, so there’s more data to work with here) pitch by pitch, and the results are intriguing, as is this general line of inquiry. Among other things, Eric finds the following:
Given that Molina is very selective with pitches outside of the zone it made sense for Maddux to utilize his strike zone accuracy as much as possible. Since he is against throwing 0-2 waste pitches it becomes very likely that the pitches far out of the strike zone were mistakes rather than the results of strategic planning. Molina seemed genuinely fooled when Maddux’s changeup movement matched that of his two-seamer.
You need to read the entire article to get the context, but the fact that folks are even thinking about analyzing stuff in this manner excites me beyond words. Eric also will be following up in the coming days with examinations of Maddux’s approach on 0-2 counts and his matchups against Dave Roberts (to see if patterns differ with a lefty at the plate). I look forward to reading those as well.
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I’ve been running a semi-regular feature over at Baseball Digest Daily called “Random Tuesday”; basically I hit the “random” button over at Baseball-Reference and then write about whatever page I land on. Well, yesterday I ended up at the page of Dick Selma, who, as many of you know, started the very first game in Padres history. If you’d like to learn more about Selma’s career, go for it. Incidentally, for the history buffs out there, I will be including a chapter on the ’69 Padres in the 2009 Annual. It’s going to be fun. 
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That’s all I’ve got for now. Next time I’ll try to have a plan, instead of just meandering all over the place. Sometimes, though, it’s good to go for a walk…
#46@SDSUBaseball: I think it’s important because the most pressing issue for the Padres is their plan for success going forward. Personally I’m sure they have one, others might disagree. I mean we have to talk about something don’t we? My personal goal is to get everyone on my side on this issue then we can take on management!
As far as Carlin and E-Gon go, why would you play them anymore then you have to? Certainly play Carlin if Bard is injured or nicked up (looking at his stats you might think that) and if Bard continues to be a non-factor at the plate you might as well play the better defensive no-hit player. Plus Bard certainly appears to play better with a lot of rest. E-Gon might be better then Crabbe (although Crabbe’s minor league numbers were better) but where should he get starts? Maybe 2B but Iguchi isn’t really hurting the team right now.
#50@SDSUBaseball: Maybe on days that CY is pitching.
#49@BigWorm: You’re missing the third leg of the tripod. Sure they want to draft and develop good players. They just don’t want to pay what it costs to pursue many of them. Their commitment to paying slot limits how good they can be.
When a draft strategy ignores almost half of the players who could be drafted, clearly there are priorities that override the accumulation of talent. It doesn’t doom them to mediocrity forever; they can get better at turning the college kids into productive major leaguers, they can continue winning trades, they can fine-tune their evaluation of one-year rental vets to winnow out more Edmonds/Castilla/Wells. But the draft is the cheapest, most effective way to bring premium talent into an organization, and we’re not doing the best possible job there.
#49@BigWorm: I don’t think they are actively trying to fail but whatever they are doing it certainly hasn’t worked out at all lately. I think that Headley has some promise (even the BP’s PECOTA thinks he’s a non-prospect) along with Antonelli and the rest but they certainly don’t have a lot of promise the minors at the moment (the fact that they don’t have a prospect any better then Estes is a pretty strong indictment of the system).
Where in this line shows that Edgar Gonzalez should get a few starts a week?
http://minors.baseball-reference.com/players.cgi?pid=5587
The Padres, and us, are just grasping at straws right now. We are talking about having someone with a minor league OPS of 822 getting starts in LF (I’m sure the average MLB LF OPS is higher then that). The Padres have only played 40 games so far this season — it’s still too early to give up. If they decide to give up at least trade away their marketable players.
#38@KRS1: Well said.
#51,54@Schlom: Its not so important that you need to talk about it every day. I dont know if you have gotten anyone “on your side” yet that the Padres are the same as the Pirates and Royals. I think the “sample size” is big enough now for you to give up your argument when you have gone 0-for-months.
Edgar has played well, why not play him until his bat cools. You can look at past stats all you want, but sometimes its good to go with the hot arm/bat until it cools off. The have stronger arms than Estes in the system, but that doesnt mean they are ready to pitch at the MLB level. Throw Estes in for a couple of starts if he does ok, no harm done, if he does poorly yank the short leach he has and try something else.
This is was the Padres philosophy for bringing along pitchers as of 2002:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1406872.html
Along the same lines the most important thing is that management (and the fans) don’t learn the wrong lessons from previous seasons. They tried the retread, cheap pickup system last season and I don’t think it worked. The initial LF platoon didn’t really work and the season was nearly saved by Milton Bradley (was a cheap pickup but not for performance reasons). They tried to fill 2B on the cheap but that didn’t work (they ended up starting a career utility player down the stretch). They never filled the back-end of the rotation. All those moves (mostly the rotation) cost them a playoff spot. This years team had massive holes again (LF, 5th starter, CF instead of 2B) with the same type of players filling them — is it a surprise that the result has been the same? Since the rest of the team (except for Jake and AGon) has started off so poorly the bad moves have had a magnified effect (from June 8 to August 1 last season the Padres had the same winning percentage as they have for this season).
Why all the relative love for Livan, he of the enormous WHIP? Paraphrasing Mr. Neyer, what’s so great about an innings-eater if those IP aren’t any good?
#56@SDSUBaseball: What kind of team philosophy is that? 6 AB’s by some scrub who just made his major league debut (at age 30), let’s make him a starter. 5.1 good innings pitched by a pitcher who was last good in the majors in 1997 (plus was 45th in the PCL in ERA), why not make him a starter.
Isn’t that the description of the Royals team building philosophy?
#58@Schlom: The LF platoon started the season just fine. Actually GY has shown the LF was just fine last year. No one though Marcus would be as bad as he was and Wells had pitched just fine for us before. Last year the gamble were fine, some worked out some didnt but they werent terrible choices.
#59@Stephen: Livan has pitched just fine so far this year.
#60@Schlom: I said sometimes you have to do that. When the team is struggling there is nothing wrong with letting players who are playing well continue to play on a shirt leash. Doesnt sound like the Royals to me. The Royals continue to play bad players regarless.
#59@Stephen: Nothing, except that this sentiment doesn’t apply to Hernandez. Twenty-four pitchers have thrown 650 or more innings since the start of 2005. Here are the bottom five in ERA+, along with their 2008 salary:
Livan Hernandez: 96, $5M + incentives to $7M
Jamie Moyer: 97, $3.5M + incentives to $7M
Greg Maddux: 104, $10M
Barry Zito: 105, $14.5M + 5 more years guaranteed
Joe Blanton: 105, $3.7M (he was under club control)
Livan may not be great, but he has value. The guy gives roughly average production and never misses a turn in the rotation. Sounds like a nice option at the back end to me.
#47@Phantom: E-Gon deserves a shot to play more than once a week. I was very impressed with his work in Portland. Though I’d like to see Myrow given a shot, but really there’s no place to put him.
#57@Kevin: I love the Dry Hump rule.
Apparently no one was paying attention to Carrillo’s workload as a Hurricane. Asking your first-round pick to throw 55 pro innings on top of 125 college innings (they sent him BACK to Elsinore to throw more in the Class A playoffs after promoting him to Mobile) is foolhardy.
Schmidt’s a combo of bad luck and inadequate scouting. If other observers could see him as a huge red flag, the Padres need to figure out how to recognize them.
Again, there is nothing wrong with taking gambles, it’s the players you take them on that matters. Milton Bradley was somewhat of a gamble (more for off the field concerns then actual performance concerns so he’s not quite the same as others) as is Jody Gerut. Marcus Giles last season was similar to Gerut (injury concerns plus declining performance but still more recent success then Gerut) and that didn’t work out at all. That’s fine if there was a back-up plan in place (which of course there wasn’t).
I think there are plenty of underappreciated players floating around who would succeed if given the chance, obviously the key is to identify them. Josh Hamilton was given away twice (Rule V draft to the Cubs and then traded to the Reds for cash), there is no reason why the Padres couldn’t have ended up with him (other then the fact that they overlooked him). Jeff Keppinger was traded three times before he finally got a chance to start (and then he gets injured, bad luck for him). Ryan Church was jerked around for lesser players by the Nationals before getting traded to the Mets which finally let him play full-time. The Padres made the horrible mistake of leaving Joakim Soria unprotected (0 runs, 0.326 WHIP this season) — who knows what scrub they protected instead of him.
As you can see there’s plenty of free (or nearly free) talent out there. However, these players are under 30 (the age of Gerut and E-Gon, Estes if 5 tears older). If you are going to gamble, it makes sense to gamble on younger players as their chances of outperforming their past history are higher then older players. Either way it’s a gamble, but shouldn’t you gamble on the players with a higher chance of success? That’s my basic point in all of this.
This TOTAL & complete emphasis on past stats as a complete and total predictor or harbinger of the future gets old sometimes.
#67@Schlom: I think at 29 (E-Gon) and 30(Gerut) you have a chance at success, especially for a season. Over longer stretch.. the 27 Hamilton may have an advantage. Church is 29 just like E-Gon, Marcus just turned 30. Keppinger is 28. I really dont think that 1-2 year age difference makes that much difference on there chance of success. You say to take chances on young players, but the players you listed really arent much younger than E-Gon, Gerut and Marcus.
Estes is a different story. He isnt a long term solution. He wasnt even a long term solution for this year. He is making a few starts, if he pitches well I dont see a problem, but he is definitely on a short leash.
#68@JP: They are the best predictor, but you cant always write off how a player is playing NOW for past stats. If a player is being valuable for a period of time you should take advantage of it.
From Neyer’s blog today:
Congratulations to 35-year-old Shawn Estes. In 1997, Estes’ first full season he went 19-5 with a 3.18 ERA, but hasn’t done nearly as well in any season since. He didn’t pitch at all in 2006, pitched just a little in 2007, and opened this season in the minors. But last night he got back to the majors, pitched into the sixth inning, and earned his 100th career victory. You have to admire a guy for sticking with his vocation when he could have retired a long time ago.
Yesterday, Neyer commented on DePodesta’s blog entry about Petco Park.
CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs were on the verge Wednesday of signing free-agent outfielder Jim Edmonds, who was released last week by the San Diego Padres.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3396301
If the Cubs are going to demote Pie, I guess the Padres could have just traded Edmonds for Pie. But it would have been hard for the Padres to know the Cubs are this dumb.
Kevin Towers has fleeced teams in the past, but that trade would have been something.
#69@SDSUBaseball: Edgar turns 30 on June 14th so on BR’s he’s listed as 30 (they compute your age as of July 1 of that season I think). However, most of those players I named all won jobs either last season or earlier — Church showed he could hit at 26, Keppinger was 27 last season (and hit much better in the minors then EGon or Gerut), Hamilton showed he belonged last season as well. Each of those players was at least 3 years younger or hit much, much better in the minors then E-Gon.
#68@JP: Are you serious or was that a joke? What else can you base future success on? It’s not like I’m looking 10 years in the past, just the past few years. There are some players that have done well in the majors without any previous success — Josh Hamilton certainly but he’s a special case since his problems were all off-field — Ken Caminiti, Brady Anderson, Steve Finley, Luis Gonzalez all exploded after having mediocre past years. But that doesn’t really happen that often. If you go through the minor league numbers of almost every player, you’ll find that they were all great in the minors.
Here’s the list of the fastest average fastball in the majors by a pitcher: http://tinyurl.com/5c6nj7 That list certainly doesn’t go from the best starter to the worst, does it?
#71@Kevin: I’m also not personally attacking Shawn Estes — I know that regardless of how people feel about him he’s going to try to do his best. From all reports he’s a nice guy and very likeable (probably one of the reasons he has a job). It’s the FO I have a problem with, not the player.
#72@Kevin: On that note, here’s another espn.com article on Edmonds:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=schoenfield/080513
It talks about how good a peak Edmonds had compared to other CF in baseball history, only Mantle, Cobb, Dimaggio, Hack Wilson and Mays were better then him offensively and he was at least equal to the rest defensively.
#53@Tom: I may be in the minority here, but I really believe that the failings of the last three years in terms of sticking to slot and drafting for signability are going to be fixed. I think we saw the beginning of that last year with the Latos signing. I think the Bush pick in particular has produced enough of a stink to cause management to open the checkbook a little.
That being said, I wasn’t missing anything, I was merely pointing out Schlom’s ridiculous contention that management didn’t want to draft and develop players. He said nothing about signability.
#68@JP: I think you just summed up the GM philosophy of Chuck Lamar, Dave Littlefield and Brian Sabean in 25 words or less. Well done.
#74@Schlom: I thought someone should say — Good Job, Estes. Neyer isn’t invested in the team, so he saw last night’s nice performance for what it was.
#13 TW, why do you think current evidence says they would not have drafted Peavy? They drafted a guy, Latos, in 06 who had high bonus demands (and paid him over slot) who fell to the 10th round… They drafted Cumberland last year in the Sup. who was a highly rated HS shortstop…
They, admittedly, draft more collegians than high schoolers, but they do not ignore high school talent. And if we think this isn’t effective, then why does Baseball America think they’re the #13 organization in baseball (one year after ranking them in the bottom 5)?
Would we like them to have a virtually unlimited budget and go after the Porcello’s of the world? Sure. But it isn’t our money.
#74@Schlom: Runs created doesn’t adjust for eras, and Edmonds played in the best hitters’ era of all time.
#72@Kevin: I think it’s a bit of a leap to think the Cubs would trade Pie for Edmonds just because they may sign Edmonds and send Pie down.
But I guess with the Cubs anything is possible.
#75@BigWorm: I said drafting and developing (the key word here) their own players. By taking college players over high school players, you are leaving the more important developing time (ages 18-21) to colleges rather then yourself. In some cases that’s a good strategy as letting the colleges develop players (especially pitchers) let’s them deal with the injury risk plus you are more certain of a players ability. That’s why teams take college players in the first place. Again, for a team like the Padres that might make sense as outside of Jake they haven’t done a good job of developing high school pitchers.
If you go back and read reports of the draft, most people thought that in 2006, Antonelli was a safe pick with higher regarded players being on the board when the Padres drafted. They did the same thing last season taking Nick Schmidt (a polished, almost fully developed college pitcher) over the greater potential of an undeveloped high school arm.
#79@Kevin: That stat isn’t the Bill James Runs Created but the Lee Sinins Runs Created Above Average which is normalized for both era and ballpark. The players are actually ranked by RCAA for CF so they are actually being graded against their contemporaries, not against batters throughout baseball history.
#73@Schlom: That takes away from your whole argument because if these players already proved they could hit in the Major Leagues, then the Padres wouldnt be “taking a chance” with them. Even so, I dont think the 1-2 year age difference makes that much of a difference for one year. I dont think E-Gon would ever me anything more than utility or stop gap, not long term. Gerut could be a capable OF, I think he earned a shot with his performance in spring and the minors this year. He was injured in the past and I think spring and AAA so far this year is a better indication of how he is playing NOW than his stats from 5+ years ago in the minors.
#78@Peter Friberg:
1. Because it took 4th round money (100K) to sign Peavy, which is 995,000 over slot for the 15th round when he was actually picked
2. They have not paid anyone over slot the last four years. Cumberland’s a HS guy who….signed for slot.
3. There is no slot for draft-and-follow players. The Padres managed to use that loophole, but now it’s closed.
4. Over the last 3 drafts they have signed:
2 HS kids in 2007
3 HS kids in 2006
1 HS kid in 2005
That’s 6 HS out of 130 picks. And every single one of them took slot money. Anybody who asked for more, no sign.
I love how the BA rankings are important when they’re favorable to the Padres, but we should have ignored them when they had us as the worst or second-worst farm system.
The Padres have brought in talent the last 3 years. Other teams have graduated players to the big leagues, which takes their farm systems down a notch or five. Don’t forget that 2 entries on BA’s Padre Top 10 were acquired in trade; it’s not a ranking just of drafted talent. We’ve done better. That doesn’t mean we’ve done as well as we could.
No, it’s not our money. But if the Padres want to stay competitive with teams like Arizona and Los Angeles, they’re going to have to figure out how to get more talent. One less Jim Edmonds equals several HS players picked in the last 3 years who didn’t sign. If the team is going to put a fixed cap on their baseball-related expenditures, then they should be devoting resources to those areas where they get the greatest return. That’s NOT on aging veterans.
81: If you go back and read pre-draft reports, Schmidt was being talked about as high as #11. So when the Padres got him at 23 it, not only was a “safe” collegiate pick but a value pick since he was highly rated. I still think we’ll love that pick in 3-4 years.
84, TW, Trust me, I hated the Edmunds sign from Day 1 (I also hated the loss of the Draft & Follow in the draft). I just don’t think the Peavy argument is valid. The Padres have gone over slot to sign several Draft and Follow players (Miller, Latos, Blanks, Breit…) a willingness to do that suggests they might do it for a player who slips to later round (like Peavy).
#83@SDSUBaseball: Everyone one of those players I named was on at least their 2nd organization so they’d all been given up on and therefore, by definition, their 2nd team was “taking a chance” on them. Good players slip through the cracks all the time — the key is to identify them. Not exactly sure how that invalidates my point though.
If it were easy anybody could do it. I’m not saying that I could have know that Josh Hamilton was going to be one of the best players in baseball — but someone obviously did. Unfortunately that person wasn’t Kevin Towers. I know that GY wanted the Padres to trade for Ryan Church although it looks as though the Nationals asking price was fairly high (Milledge) although most people slammed that trade and said the Mets gave up too much. We’ll find out down the road.
I’m sort of torn on Gerut. On one hand, outside of 2003 he’s done nothing in the majors. He’s also coming off serious injuries that cost him half of 2005 and all of 2006 and 2007. His number in the minors never really jump out at you but he also played in pitching dominated leagues. He’s also four months from turning 31. None of that screams superstar but he’s also shown good plate discipline in the minors and he might be acceptable if he can handle CF defensively.
#82@Schlom: I guess that measure is legit then.
But I don’t think Edmonds’ prime was better than Griffey or Snider or Dale Murphy’s when adjusted for era.
Bill James also uses a five-year peak as a way of ranking players, but he using Win Shares, of course.
1. Mantle, 216
2. Cobb, 213
3. Speaker, 209
4. Mays, 197
5. DiMaggio, 175
6. Snider, 171
7. Wally Berger, 152
7. Doby, 152
7. Hack Wilson, 152
10. Billy Hamilton, 150
10. Dale Murphy, 150
12. Griffey, 148
13. Edmonds, 146
#85@Peter Friberg: That’s not a great argument since Porcello was either #1 or #2 on boards and was available when the Padres drafted. I’m not knocking Schmidt, I think he might be a good player but he certainly wasn’t the “best” pick on the board when the Padres chose. He might have been the closest pitcher to his potential, which isn’t exactly the same thing as the pitcher with the most potential.
#78@Peter Friberg: As a follow-on, if you’re going to use BA as a reference, how do you rationalize their frequent, consistent criticisms of the Padres drafting approach and the slot system in general? You can’t say “BA thinks we’re pretty good” and then sweep the parts where they say we’re not pretty good under the rug.
#85@Peter Friberg: Another way to look at that is that other team’s scouts saw the injury risk and backed off. TJ is no cake walk.
#78@Peter Friberg:
It may not be our money but it does suck to see them spend $7 million for 100 horrible Jim Edmonds at bats and not control of Rick Porcello’s arm for the next 6 – 8 years.
#88@Kevin: Probably not but he’s in the same ballpark. The article talked about how underrated Edmonds has been throughout his career which I think was driven a lot by his personality (plus his seeming penchant for slowing down to dive for balls). He was basically run out of Anaheim for not taking losses seriously enough.
I have no idea if Edmonds was one of the best fielding CF’ers of all-time but he certainly made a bunch of really good catches. Everyone will remember the catch he made against the Royals David Howard for the Angels in 1997. I’ll remember back to back games on August 29 and 30, 2003 where he robbed Reds of home runs. I was lucky enough to go to the 2nd game where he took a 2 run HR away from Russell Branyan, and drove in 4 runs with a 2B and HR in a 6-3 Cardinals win. Here’s the picture of him robbing Branyan:
http://reds.enquirer.com/2003/08/31/edmonds_zoom.jpg
#86@Peter Friberg: Again, there’s no slot for draft-and-follows. Moores has committed the organization to paying slot.
The Padre scout who pushed for Peavy wrote him up as a future 4th starter. In the last 3 years the Padres have drafted several HSers (notably Toledo, Colon and Green) who were considered to have 1st round potential. If they wouldn’t go over slot to get those guys, why would they go over slot to get someone their scouts identify as a back-of-the-rotation starter?
As far as I can tell, the Padres haven’t paid over-slot since 2002. You’d think that if they were willing to do it, they’d have done it sometime in the last 6 chances.
#92@Schlom: Yep, he’s in the ballpark, and I was surprised he was 13th.
In the Win Shares book, James rated Edmons fielding as A+, maybe one reason why he does so well in Win Shares.
#76@Schlom: And apparently Kevin Towers as well, who according to you, made one of the worst decisions of all time by simply giving a 35 year old journeyman a start on a hunch.
Since I’m totally bored right now I want to get back to the theme of gambling on players. If it works out you can certainly have seasons way out of line with expectations. Take the St. Louis Cardinals for example which is a team sort of like the Padres (although in reality they probably have less overall “established” star power but that’s another discussion).
Right now they are being carried offensively by Ryan Ludwick (187OPS+), Ankiel (132), nd of course Pujols (191). However, Ludwick and Ankiel are obviously way over their heads — interestingly enough both P-Mac and Gerut have better minor league track records (by OPS compared to league average). Gerut was 18% better, P-Mac 17, Ankiel 16 (although he’s different since he’s had much less AB’s as a hitter), Ludwick 13 (the same as E-Gon). Too bad for P-Mac that he didn’t start off on fire when he had the chance as he might be a better overall player then Ludwick (2 years younger but Ludwick has way more power and was a 2nd round pick rather then a 12th).
#68@JP: Notice I said TOTAL and COMPLETE emphasis by stats geeks who have probably never played the game themselves.
#95@JP: Well, throughout his tenure Towers has continually been unable to fill the fifth starter slot. Sure Estes is probably the worst pitcher to start a game for the Padres in the last few seasons but he’s just the latest in a long line of clunkers who’ve gotten starts for the Padres. Last season it was David Wells, Brett Tomko, Jack Cassel Tim Stauffer, and Wil Ledezma. In 2006 it was Chan Ho Park, Mike Thompson, and Dewon Brazelton. In 2005 it was Tim Stauffer, Chan Ho Park, Tim Redding, and Darrell May. I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea. True, with the exception of Park, none of those guys cost anything in payroll but they certainly cost the team on the field, which is the true measure. You would think that after year after year of trying to fill the 5th spot on the cheap and failing miserably you might think of trying something different.
#96@Schlom: The game starts in 10 minutes. Then you won’t be bored.
#97@JP: That’s the attitude that got Paul DePodesta run out of town in Los Angeles by Bill Plaschke and TJ Simers. Kind of funny since the very first thing that GY mentioned in today’s post was DePo’s new blog.