first pitch: 12:35 p.m., PT
television: Channel 4SD
matchup: Woody Williams (1-0, 3.15 ERA) vs Orlando Hernandez (1-3, 6.33 ERA)
previews: Padres.com | SI.com | ESPN
Here’s a trend that needs to stop:
| Team | AB | BA | OBP | SLG | ISO | XBH/H | AB/HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Padres | 367 | .218 | .284 | .313 | .095 | .250 | 52.4 |
| Opponents | 420 | .283 | .342 | .467 | .184 | .361 | 28.0 |
| Stats courtesy of ESPN. | |||||||
Other teams come in here and hit like, say, Jason Varitek. The Padres, meantime, hit like Mike Hampton but without the power.
Bearing in mind the small sample (11 games), here’s another point worth noting:
| Year | R | HR | H | 2B | 3B | BB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 1.025 | 1.286 | 1.093 | 0.755 | 0.682 | 0.843 | |
| 2005 | 0.803 | 0.750 | 0.903 | 0.832 | 1.331 | 0.945 | |
| 2004 | 0.837 | 0.691 | 0.895 | 0.895 | 1.519 | 1.046 | |
| Stats courtesy of ESPN. | |||||||
Runs, homers, and hits are up; walks, doubles, and triples are down. In other words, guys are hacking more, making better contact, and hitting the ball with more authority.
Somebody needs to tell the Padres about those last two.
The park is cursed, either/or that or we are a bad team. Bitter. And I refuse to get excited again if they win this afternoon. Time for some damned reality about this team.
I’m about to rant in 3, 2, 1…
Geoff: well hold the phone on park factor right now.. you’re judging two full years up against a week or so.
But Padre Mike, even though it seems to be a weak division (Dodgers hurting) again, I don’t think you can write this team off in April. Last year they went 11-19 if I’m not mistaken.
I think that one thing about PETCO is that you can’t make a TON of offseason moves and then expect the players to be used to how the park plays. I think that’s why the 2004 team didn’t win as many games at home and was a road mashing team cause they had to get used to each other and the park. That same reason also contributes to why the Padres did better at home in ’05 and regressed (like they should have) on the road.
This is an ’07 team realistically, we’re gonna get a lot of prospects up in the next half year/year (Carrillo, Stauffer, Kottras, Ben Johnson might get playing time, Leone maybe, and more) so I think sticking with the last punches of some vets is okay. You know what would be great? Is for some of these guys to come up during the year and learn some of the ropes from these veterans even if it means losing some service time (that or do it in september).
07 team? Whose writing who off early? Hopefully your are right, ryguy and the Padres will emerge latter in the season as the team gels and gets used to the park. But the last two games were pitiful, just awful and that is why I’m bitter. Sure I’ll be back on the bandwagon if they win today;) Call me the irrational fan.
My currently untested hypothesis is that Petco does indeed alter the Padres hitting performance relative to the competition. It is a big park, hard to consistently hit bombs, so the Padres do alter their swings accordingly, with bad results. The visitors don’t have to alter anything; they are just there for a few days. So they hit trying to do fewer things, so hit better.
Someone like Nevin probably really suffered here; a dead power hitter; suddenly he’s being asked to hit line-drives. That is not an easy shift. It is too bad Burroughs flamed out, because I think he would have been the perfect type of hitter (if he ever started hitting line drives instead of dumping singles).
I don’t have a great hypothesis about why our pitchers are worse than they should be at Petco. It will interesting once Cameron is playing regularly to see if a good outfield defense will make up the difference. It could be that though it is hard to smack an HR, you need good outfielders to cover the gaps, and the difference between Klesko-Roberts-Giles vs. Roberts-Cameron-Giles could be material.
Good news from our friends @ BP
BP STAT OF THE DAY
Top 5 NL Team Defenses, by Defensive Efficiency
Team, DEF_EFF
Chicago Cubs, 0.760
New York Mets, 0.735
Milwaukee Brewers, 0.734
St. Louis Cardinals, 0.732
San Diego Padres, 0.716
WC @ BP is free today … http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5011
Kottaras hit two dingers last night. Carillo was dominant in his last start. Cesar Ramos was also OK last night. Kyle Blanks hit a homer and is hitting over .300 and over .400 OBP in Ft. Wayne. Not too much pitching depth, but crazy depth at catcher. Colt Morton is hitting like crazy, Hundley had been warming up, Kottaras, and Bowen on the big club.
El Duque has seven strikeouts through three innings. Anybody watching? Does he look that good, or do we look that bad?
groundhog day.
Bellhorn goes deep to center. Sweet!
We got a run, better then last night.
But AZ comes rushing back with another dinger. Crap.
Fire everyone. We suck. We’re not the Royals, but we’re not the Brewers, either.
See you next year. Go Bay Bears, Beavers, Storm, and Wizards.
Great to see Bellhorn and Piazza go deep! I can’t wait to see how the team performs over the next month with Cameron back in the lineup. Hopefully everyone else will stay healthy and we can see what we really have because until now we really haven’t had our starting lineup out there.
jesse – don’t forget the Emeralds up here in Eugene!
Bonds just HR’d off Billy Wagner to tie the game in the bottom of the 9th … http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore?gid=260426126
Never seen the bats so cold.
You’ve got the Nationals disease. It must have spread to you through the trade. They’ve been complaining about RFK for 2 years now.
Sadly, I think veteran players don’t feel the need to adjust to the park, they want the park to adjust to them. I wonder if you looked at the player breakdown if that would hold true.
Still I’d be more worried about the pitching. Good pitching can hide mediocre hitting.
Giles is a good example of a player that has adjusted to Petco, but that adjustment can only be made by a few guys with a lot of talent.
I personally believe in the Petco Curse and am now taking action to remove the curse by wearing my underwear backwards until the Padres get a hit with RISP. You may want to try slump busting or walking backwards all day. We all have to do our part to remove the Curse.
Are you referring to the Mark Grace world famous “Slump Busting” formula?
GY – you gotta add this link to your web page … http://www.hittrackeronline.com/ … fun stuff!
Yes Mark Grace is the man, we need that to break outta our hitting slump and remove the Petco curse. I wonder if Mark is available as a slump busting consultant.
Ack, sorry ’bout the downtime. Sometimes it sucks to be the admin.