Two of my colleagues/friends at Hardball Times have penned articles that should be of interest to Padres fans.
First up, Myron Logan examines Jed Hoyer’s moves this winter. Myron’s thoughts pretty much mirror my own, and his discussion of Adrian Gonzalez is spot on:
With only one year left on his team-friendly deal (he’ll make $6.3 million in 2011), Gonzalez’s value is diminished. He’s a great player, sure, but starting in 2012 he’s going to be paid at a near free-market rate, and that is going to minimize his surplus value. From a business perspective, the Padres have maximized Gonzalez’s prime years while paying him much less than his worth, then traded him away for younger workers at just the right time.
Myron also breaks down each of the moves by projected WAR, and the results are enlightening. It isn’t so much that the Padres have lost a great deal of talent as redistributed it more evenly. In other words, all their eggs are no longer in the Gonzalez basket. Yeah, it still stings but diversification of assets is a good thing.
Chris Jaffe, meanwhile, predicts 2011 Hall of Fame results. He does this every year, and it’s always a fun read. This year’s hopefuls include former Padres Roberto Alomar, Fred McGriff, and Kevin Brown, as well as San Diego native Alan Trammell. One of those guys stands a great chance of being elected.
Could this be the year Blyleven is finally elected and inducted into the HOF? It should be very interesting to see the results on Wednesday. Baseball Think Factory tracks HOF ballots and has BB at 77.1% of 83 full ballots, 79% on 114 full/partial ballots. Unfortunately, this is not very helpful in being predictive of the end result, imo. After last year, we know he’ll be close. But how close? In, out? Can’t wait!
The Padres off-season moves were good. But will it sell tickets, and improve the team? Time will tell. Mr. Hoyer is doing it right by building the center of the team (i.e., center field, short, second, and catcher) then working out from there. We still need some bench contact hitters, and it would be good to have a good utility guy to back up the infield. Mr. Black had the best manager year anybody could have. It was a shame that they did not get into the post-season for the job the Padres did. Mr. Black has been so close (twice now) and it would be great to see him vindicated. Since he came from the Angels coaching staff, you can see the coaching style and its influence on the young players. This approach will always yield positive results.
I like what Jed has done this year but it still bugs me that the payroll is circa $40M. It just seems so unfair that a club like the Rockies can sign Tulo and CarGo to contracts that will keep them for their prime years while the Pads never really countenanced the thought of re-signing Adrian, even though from the outside, the clubs are of similar size and means.
While the Rockies may very well live to regret these signings, at least they live and die by the players they make into superstars, not trying to pick up castoffs and watching their best walk away.
Was it a good idea to sell the club to a consortium who cannot afford to buy it outright and now will not buy it outright ahead of time to “continue to enjoy the (inflationary) benefits of the deal over the next year and a half”? When revenue sharing income basically equals payroll, no matter how well a club is doing, you must question the motivation of the owners.
Just a little whinge there! Still looking forward to next year, where I think they will contend again.
I don’t know how you can compare Denver and San Diego. Denver is the 18th largest media market in the country, while San Diego is a much smaller 26th. The Rockies’ TV network covers over 50,000 square miles, while San Diego can’t even get a local Mexican station to transmit the channel 4 signal (the station with the “rights” declined to carry the games). Denver metro is smaller, but is the only large city over a huge area where the nearest pro sports are hundreds of miles farther, and those people are willing to travel to see a game. San Diego’s attendance last year was 2.1 million, while Denver had nearly 2.9 million. Between the media market and attendance, Denver has the revenue, San Diego does not.