Padres (31-42) @ Yankees (39-33)
Josh Banks vs Joba Chamberlain
10:05 a.m. PT
Channel 4SD
AM 1090, FM 105.7, XM 176
MLB, B-R
The fact that I’ve reached an age where I feel compelled to eat oatmeal every day for breakfast doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that I actually seem to enjoy it.
Some guy named Chamberlain is pitching for New York. Never heard of him…
Last night’s game was tough to watch.
And oatmeal isn’t so bad, especially if it’s strawberries and cream or some such.
Not sure if I’ll listen to today’s affair. John Sterling + Joba Chamberlain start = Complete nausea
Are they still using a short pitch count with Chamberlain ?
Oatmeal is good with a little Jager…..
I’m bringing something up from last night because I need some explanation. . .some people mentioned how Cruz and Sledge weren’t actually that bad last year. Can someone provide me some stats that actually prove this? They had an OPS under .700. . .I’m not sure how that can qualify as good in any conversation.
#2@parlo: He threw 89 last time. I’m pretty sure Girardi will turn him loose for at least 100. Whether that’s 5 innings or a complete game against the Padres, we’ll have to see.
4: I think that people often look at the Padres overall production from LF last year and get fooled into thinking that Sledge and Cruz couldn’t have been that bad. Really, it’s just an underestimation of how good that Jenga was while he was with the club in the second half of the year. With Sledge and Cruz dragging down the offense, the Padres finished 10th in the NL in LF OPS last year.
By the way, this year we’re 11th in LF OPS with an OPS that’s 50 points lower than last seasons (.755 to .801 in 2007)
#4@BigWorm: Look at their month-by-month splits.
Cruz had a raw OPS of 1.016 through the end of April. He was terrible in May and June, but for about 30% of his time with the Padres he was one of the league’s best hitters.
Sledge was also very good in April, bad in May, above-average in June, and close to average in August.
A player can stink like anything for a short period, and sometimes it doesn’t hurt the team as bad as we might think because its concentrated. So while Cruz and Sledge both had months when they hit like they were holding swizzle sticks, it was still limited to approximately 3 full-time “player months” between the two of them combined.
2. Yankee announcers said last night the pitch count for Joba would be up to 105, an oddly precise number. But this is major league standard; almost not a pitch count.
Go Padres!
#6@Paul R: That’s also true, and it tends to overestimate the Bradley/Hairston combinations because of their short stay. A 1.200 OPS bat who plays 40 games drives the rate stats for his position up, but the absolute most games he could help you win is 40, and that’s not happening anyway.
#4@BigWorm: I think people underestimate how bad Crudge was last year because a lot of their sucking bled over into right field while Giles was out for a month. It seemed like most of their good production came at the start of the year when they were playing left, but then when Giles went down and both had to play almost every day they really started sucking. 2007 Padre right fielders hit .261/.346/.395 despite Giles hitting .271/.361/.416 and having the majority of the plate appearances of right fielders.
Posting a quick comment from my phone while in line for hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. This place is every bit as enchanting as they say it is. I think I could sit out in right field all day, even if there wasnt a game. A good number of Padre fans are here and we’ve seen a good amount walking around the city too. I’m feeling a win today, hopefully the boys make it happen.
GO PADRES!!!
#7@Tom Waits: You realize that your argument works the other way – just about any player can get hot for a month. That doesn’t make them a good player. Over the course of a season these guys were brutal.
#11@Bryan: One of times I went to Yankee Stadium I sat in left-center field in about 10 rows from the back. Not only was I about 600 feet from home plate (seriously, I was way out there, probably 100 feet from the playing field) but it was also a day game (like today) and the sun was just blazing down on us and reflecting off the white facade behind us. It was incredibly hot out there and everyone cheered when the sun went below the top of the stadium.
#12@BigWorm: Neither of them played for a season. Between the 2 of them they didn’t even get a full season’s worth of at-bats.
Yes, any player can get hot for a month. And the games that player helps you win go in the book, just like the games he helps you lose when he’s cold. But when you’re dealing with short time periods, the overall rate stats don’t always tell the whole story. Sledge, who was average or above-average for 142 of his 233 plate appearances, is somewhat underrated by his composite 77 OPS+, because while he was terrible in May and Sep/Oct, it was boiled down into a small, albeit awful, sample.
#12@BigWorm: How about Kobe and the Zen Master? Terrific coaching in Game 3.
Banks looked wonderful striking out A-Rod and Giambi.
It’s a good thing we didn’t draft Joba Chamberlain in 2006 — otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to trade for Michael Barrett (the Padres traded Rob Bowen and the 31st pick in 2006 Kyler Burke)! But Sandy Alderson promised it would be different from now on, let’s see how many players they fail to sign in this draft.
mud just compared headley’s double to something sean burroughs would’ve done. scary. then he called matt by his wifes name…scarier
C’mon, Scotty. His stuff is filthy enough without you helping him.
#17@Schlom: It’s also too bad we didn’t draft Albert Pujols. Or Chase Utley. Or David Wright. Or Brandon Webb. Or Grady Sizemore. Or Lance Berkman. Or any other good player in baseball.
#17@Schlom: I wish we could search the archives, because there were several of us (IIRC) who wanted Joba bad. He was a classic high-upside college guy.
I have to say I’m impressed by that failure by the Padres to score with the bases loaded and nobody out. Sure team can strike out three times in a row, or strike out once and then ground into a double play, but you have to admit it’s exciting to see the strikeout, the out on the attempt to advance on a wild pitch and then another strikeout. Who says the Padres aren’t exciting? They always find inventive ways to not score.
#20@Ben B.: Well said.
They shouldn’t have sent Adrian on that wild pitch. Joba just threw great pitches on the two Ks.
That was depressingly predictable. Three high strikeout, low average righties against a right handed pitcher with great stuff? No chance.
WTF? That’s the 2008 season in a bloody nutshell. Bases loaded, no outs, no runs.
We have to be the worst baserunning team in the majors. We have a unique mix of incredibly slow players and amazingly incompetent instincts.
At least Flannery is no longer at third. I’m all but certain he has no depth perceptions, which accounts for his inability to tell how far away outfielders were with the ball.
Well guys, I found the 2006 draft thread. Looks like I wasn’t around posting then, so I’m out of the woods on that. I’ll start looking through it to find the good and the bad.
http://ducksnorts.com/blog/2006/06/padres-poised-to-pop-pitcher.html
About the only chance Agon has of scoring there is if Joba has a heart attack from shock.
#26@Alan: #26@Alan: The worst Flannery decision I can remember is him sending a gimpy Greg Meyers from second on a shot to CF. The catcher had lit up a cigarette before Bull made it home.
The worst part of that inning was not the bases-loaded, not out choke job. The worst part was the Sean Burroughs comp that Mark Grant dropped on Chase Headley
#21@Tom Waits:
I seem to remember a couple of different mocks or rumors saying that we were actually targeting Chaimberlin if we went with pitching and Antonelli or Parmelee if we went with hitting. I only remember that because after that I did a bunch of internet nerding out on Joba.
#15@Tom Waits: Well, the Lakers won game 3, so I’m assuming you meant one of the other games?
The Celtics were just better, period. And they wanted it more. I’m not sure what you are trying to get at. . .did Phil blow that series? He was probably outcoached in game 4 and 6. It was definitely a strange series – neither team looked like they really wanted it until game 6.
In other words, I’m not sure what you are getting at? Did you think Phil blew the series? Kobe was terrible for two or three of those games (terrible for him).
Or are you just being smarmy again? You’re good at that. Tom Waits: Good at smarmy, bad at admitting he is wrong about anything.
17: In 2006 Joba had pretty significant health concerns or he would have gone higher than the 30′s. He had shoulder issues that were a bit murky. Pretty easy to second guess, but at the time he was a risky prospect because of his health.
#20@Ben B.: That’s the reason the Padres have been terrible throughout pretty much of their history, isn’t it? I’m not going to blame them for not drafting Pujols, only the Cardinals thought he was worth something (drafted in the 13th round in 199). Webb was an 8th round pick in 2000, safe to say not too many saw that coming. Berkman was drafted in 1997 16th before the Padres had a pick so they never had a chance at him. In 200 they took Mark Phillips when Chase Utley went 15th. In 2001 they took 3B Jake Gautreau 14th when Wright went 38th. Sizemore went in the 3rd round, safe to say the Padres could have taken him they wanted. However, they would have needed to buy him out of a scholarship to Stanford so they passed on him. The simple fact is that the Padres have no idea what they are doing and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change. They won’t take real good players because the cost too much and therefore, they never develop any talent. So instead of spending some money on someone like Chamberlain, they go cheap and draft someone like Kyler Burke who can’t play at all — lucky they traded him but he’s still a total bust.
#27@Ben B.: Dang, I miss Hank.
But not only were a lot of people hot for Joba, it seems like we were pretty sharp as a group.
I’ll guess DiMaggio for the trivia question.
#30@Paul R: He should get a kangaroo court fine for that.
#32@BigWorm: You’re right, it was game 4, when the coach whose word you accept at face value when he blames Kobe for “destroying” the 2004 Lakers sat there with this thumb in his posterior and watched his team, the team he’s paid approximately 10M per year to coach, fall apart. Like I said before, it’s not that teamwork doesn’t matter, it’s that people use it far too liberally. In the same genre as “they wanted it more.”
#35@Tom Waits: Yeah, I’m actually really impressed. Peter was right on with pretty much everything, and everyone else was pretty good too. LaPorta, Chamberlain, Masterson, Lars Anderson, complaining about a lot of the college pitchability guys (although LeBlanc has proven that wrong in his specific case thus far), excitement for Latos, there were a lot of good calls.
#23@Kevin: My point is that the Padres will never draft a guy like Joba because he’s going to cost too much money. Instead of gambling on someone like Joba, they take a terrible high school player in Burke. They’ll never end up with someone like Sizemore because they won’t spend the money. And when they do have high picks (203-2004) they blow it by taking crappy players — whether for financial reasons or because they can’t properly evaluate talent.
They have two great draft picks on their team right now — Chase Headley, a 2nd round pick in 2005 and Jake Peavy, a 15th round pick in 1999. We took another high ceiling high school pitcher in the 15th round this season, what are the odds that the Padres sign him?
Holy cow. Headley would need an extra four inches on his bat to even reach that pitch. Joba’s strike zone is a full time zone wide today.
There’s a great game going on while everyone is whining about the draft.
34: You’re clearly right, Burke is a total bust. Let’s forget about the fact that he’s not 20 yet…No one knows what Kyler Burke is yet.
It’s a little silly to criticize the Padres in several of the cases that you mention. If it was clear that Utley was going to be leading the league in HR’s halfway through 2008, he wouldn’t have slid to 15th in the 2000 draft. But it’s worth mentioning that he was considered a low-ceiling college player who couldn’t hit enough to hold down 3B at the time he was drafted. A guy pretty similar to Gautreau (who had medical issues that kept him from being successful). Mark Phillips in 2000 was a guy a lot of us would have been excited about–the high ceiling HS pitcher who had great stuff. Sometimes the high risk-high reward guys don’t pan out.
I’m hoping this doesn’t just come off as being a Padres shill. They’ve obviously made bad (and in 2004 unforgivable) draft decisions in the past, but there is a new administration that seems to be doing better. By dredging through poor drafts of 8 years ago, what is being accomplished?
#38@Ben B.: The worry with LeBlanc was that his plus-changeup and below-average fastball wouldn’t last in the higher minors. Even though his ERA is blown up, he’s still getting strikeouts in Triple A.
#41@Kevin: Not everyone is whining about the draft. Some people are just talking about it.
39: I love that you keep calling Burke a low cost player. He wasn’t. He was a high-ceiling college guy that we signed out of a college commitment. Just like the Indians signed Sizemore (who was not a consensus top-20 pick in his draft year) out of a college commitment. Sometimes the raw tools guys pan out and sometimes they don’t.
44: edit-high ceiling high school guy
Hairston had a nice rip at that first pitch from Joba
#42@Paul R: Agree. Burke was a high-risk, high-reward player. You can’t pick them without accepting the risk that they’re not going to perform. If they were high-reward, low-risk players, that’d be great. But there’s one or two of them a year.
Game day says that Greene lined out. Was the ball hit hard?
#43@Tom Waits: There’s a thin line.
I got the trivia question right.
Let’s see how many times Adrian can get thrown out at home today.