OBG08 Revisited: Hitters
Wed, Oct 8, 2008
by Geoff Young
Back in February we did some community projections for the 2008 Padres. In the interest of accountability, here’s how we measured up to reality.
Catchers
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 425 | .278 | .357 | .410 |
| Actual | 198 | .202 | .279 | .270 |
Yuck. Our most pessimistic projection had Bard at a 725 OPS.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 246 | .263 | .323 | .419 |
| Actual | 107 | .202 | .274 | .298 |
We need a synonym for “yuck,” preferably something that rhymes. If only there were such a word…
Infielders
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 641 | .293 | .362 | .517 |
| Actual | 700 | .279 | .361 | .510 |
We totally nailed this one. Imagine how many batting titles Gonzalez could win if he didn’t play half his games at Petco Park and weren’t Molina-brother slow.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 561 | .257 | .309 | .464 |
| Actual | 423 | .213 | .260 | .339 |
Greene and Bard killed the offense this year, but we already knew that.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 532 | .263 | .341 | .391 |
| Actual | 337 | .232 | .292 | .306 |
Iguchi was actually a little worse than Marcus Giles in 2007, which just boggles the imagination.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 597 | .294 | .355 | .503 |
| Actual | 668 | .260 | .299 | .433 |
We were way too optimistic about Kouzmanoff. He fell short of our lowest expectations (800 OPS) by plenty. In our defense, Kouz looked fantastic down the stretch in 2007. You know who he reminds me of as a hitter, a little? Steve Garvey. He’s not as good as Garvey, of course, but his style is similar — quick through the zone, hates taking a pitch, hits everything hard.
Outfielders
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 402 | .255 | .338 | .418 |
| Actual | 401 | .235 | .343 | .479 |
He’s still a dork.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 531 | .274 | .373 | .412 |
| Actual | 653 | .306 | .398 | .456 |
Our high-end projection had him at an 860 OPS+, which is pretty darned close to what he did.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 392 | .268 | .327 | .467 |
| Actual | 362 | .248 | .312 | .479 |
That works.
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected | 240 | .266 | .347 | .435 |
| Actual | 368 | .269 | .337 | .420 |
Damn, we’re good.
There you have it. We’ll look back at the pitchers on Friday.
Picking up where last year's version left off, the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual provides in-depth analysis of and commentary on the San Diego Padres. Get your copy today.
October 8, 2008 at 7:04 am
On the plus side, at least we didn’t pay Corey Patterson 3 million dollars for a 48 OPS+.
October 8, 2008 at 10:19 am
Here’s the position by position batting lines for the Padres:
http://www.baseball-reference......#defp-defp
As you can see, the OF was really good (OPS+ of 106) but the infield was terrible (82 OPS+). 1B, CF, and RF were all really good, while LF was close to average. However, 3B was bad and C, 2B, and SS were all terrible. Obviously the key to next season (just talking about offense) is whether Khalil can bounce back.
October 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm
That was cool, Geoff! Thanks for brining this up to date. Overall it looks like the DS crew did a very good job of projecting, but (as is to be expected for projections) we missed on the catastrophic performances at C, SS and 2B. Looking back at Iguchi I can see where it might have been reasonable to knock off another 10 to 20 points for each rate to account for Petco, age, and becoming better known to NL pitchers, but even that wouldn’t have taken him down to the level he “produced” this year.
October 8, 2008 at 4:53 pm
#2@Schlom: Is the OPS+ normalized against the average player in the same position, or just too the average player in general.
I guess what I am asking is the pitchers OPS+ of 19 saying that our pitcher hit that much worse than other pitching staffs or that much worse than the average major leaguer.
October 8, 2008 at 6:32 pm
#2@Schlom: A bounce back from khalil and just simply a league average 2B would go a long way.
who knows maybe kouz turns out to be what we projected in 09. and i dont know everything about hundley, but i dont feel like he could really be any worse than bard/barrett.
October 8, 2008 at 7:46 pm
#4@DM: OPS+ is normalized to the league average, not to positional averages.
October 8, 2008 at 8:38 pm
This is gonna be short, but that was an awesome post. Great to see reality vs. our projections.
October 9, 2008 at 11:47 am
Baseball America has a mock draft of the first 10 picks for the 2009 Amateur Draft. They have Strasburg going first to the Nationals and former 2006 Padres draft pick Grant Green of USC going second to the Mariners. With the 3rd pick, they project the Padres to take 1B/OF Dustin Ackley of UNC. Here’s the writeup of him with some stat links:
3. Padres: Dustin Ackley, of, North Carolina. Ackley perfectly fits the Padres’ profile of a polished college performer. The best pure hitter in the draft, he should be athletic enough to move from first base to center field next spring, allowing him to fill San Diego’s biggest need.
http://tarheelblue.cstv.com/sp.....tin00.html
http://www.thebaseballcube.com.....kley.shtml
October 9, 2008 at 11:52 am
#4@DM: There are two types of splits on that page.
sOPS+ is the split relative to the position compared to the major league average.
tOPS+ is the split relative to the overall team OPS+.
So the 19 for the pitchers compares them to the rest of the team (where they’d be terrible) but compared to the rest of the major league pitchers, they were pretty good (138). By regular OPS they were third in the NL behind the Cubs 520 (the Padres catchers only outhit that by 46 — terrible!) and the Cardinals 432.
October 9, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I just heard the Padres are up for sale on the station AM 600
October 9, 2008 at 1:01 pm
#6@Pat: I’m not seeing “OPS+” at the link Schlom provided …
What I do see is “sOPS+” and “tOPS+” … and if you click on the column header, you get these definitions …
tOPS+ - OPS+ of this split relative to the player or team’s overall OPS
sOPS+ - OPS+ of this split relative to the major league OPS for this split
So the pitchers had an sOPS+ = 138 … which I interp to mean they hit 38% better than the average pitchers across MLB …
The tOPS+ = 19 just means that they hit 81% worse than then non-pitchers on the Padres … which really only means that the tOPS+ values for non-pitchers are inflated because they include some relativity to the pitchers …
October 9, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Looks like Moores is going to sell 49% of the Padres as part of his divorce settlement. Any thoughts? 2 possible San Diego families are interested in purchasing. Does Moores own 100% Might be a dumb question.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/new.....etail.html
October 9, 2008 at 6:40 pm
#10@PF4L, #12@Lawboy:
From Padres.com:
October 9, 2008 at 7:34 pm
If the Padres remain part of Moores’ property going into the divorce settlement then its quite plausible that the stock owned by John Moores will be seen as community property and split down the middle between Becky and John. Only way that won’t happen is if John keeps that but gives Becky something to make up the difference in cost. Either way that doesn’t speak well for the potential financial future of the Padres
October 9, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I am choosing this moment to announce my intention to purchase the San Diego Padre franchise. It’s certainly possible that I may need additional investors to accumulate the necessary funds.
Anybody got a few hunnerd million dollars?
October 10, 2008 at 12:22 pm
15: I used to have a gazillion dollars but the past two weeks had whittled it down to only 20 bucks. What the heck, I’ll throw in my 200 dimes with you.
October 10, 2008 at 2:40 pm
#8@Schlom: Just curious, but how is CF San Diego’s biggest need?
October 10, 2008 at 4:14 pm
#17@SDSUBaseball: That sentiment actually comes from BA’s analysis. I think the short answer is that somebody at BA didn’t look real closely at the Padres system.
October 11, 2008 at 4:51 pm
#18@Geoff Young: Ya, I realized it wasn’t directly from Scholm, I was just curious how, after this year, anyone could see CF as our biggest need.