Trade Deadline

by Geoff Young on Aug 03, 2003

Wife: What’s that noise?
Me: What noise?
Wife: That one.
Me: Sounds like it’s coming from over there. Some guy is doing something.
Wife: I hear it every day.
Me: I guess he does it every day.
Wife: Okay, Mr.-Don’t-Care-to-Know-It-All.

Thus a monicker is born.

. . .

So Kevin Towers and the Padres did nothing. Kevin Jarvis, Mark Loretta, and Rondell White remain in San Diego. Brian Giles and Jason Kendall remain in Pittsburgh. The two teams apparently are still talking.

The Giants admitted their mistake of trading Russ Ortiz this past winter by dealing the man he was traded for (Damian Moss) along with Kurt Ainsworth and Ryan Hannaman for Sidney Ponson. Coming into the season, I can’t imagine anyone preferring Ponson to Ortiz. Although Ponson has always had talent, he’s been injured and erratic throughout his career. Whether his current performance is an aberration or represents a true shift in ability remains to be seen. But considering that Ponson’s contract is only through the end of the year, Moss and two promising young arms (Hannaman, a southpaw rated as the Giants’ #8 prospect by BA before the season) seems awfully steep to me. Needless to say, as a Padre fan I’m ecstatic about this deal. It’s going to be bad enough having to deal with Jason Schmidt, Jerome Williams, and Jesse Foppert in the years to come. At least now we won’t have to think about Ainsworth.

Ollie Perez

Again with the 13 strikeouts? I didn’t see the game, but that is impressive. He did it with Miguel Ojeda behind the plate. (Anybody notice how good Ojeda has been lately? He’s now hitting .379/.526/.621 since the All-Star break and .281/.373/.438 on the season. Interesting.)

Anyway, we were talking about Perez (in whom the Pirates are said to be interested). He’s now made 10 starts since returning from the minors. Here they are, broken down by innings pitched per start:

      GS   IP  H  R ER HR BB SO   ERA  BB/9  SO/9
7+     3 22.0 17  5  5  2  8 28  2.05  3.27 11.45
6-6.2  2 13.1  8  2  2  2  4 14  1.35  3.10  9.45
5-5.2  3 15.2  8  6  6  1 19 15  3.45 10.91  8.62
>5     2  8.1 15 13 10  3  4  9 10.80  4.32  9.72
-------------------------------------------------
total 10 59.1 48 26 23  8 35 66  3.49  5.31 10.01

Those top two rows should come as no surprise. The fewer walks he issues, the fewer pitches he throws, the deeper into games he goes, the better success he has. The bottom two rows are interesting to me. Games that fall into the third row are ones where he has given hitters fits but also given them gifts. It would be hard to get real comfortable in the batters box against Perez on one of those days. In the bottom row, he’s just caught way too much of the plate and seen his outing end early. The good news is those two starts came back-to-back, in the middle of July.

Bottom line is, Perez is still young, still talented, and still inconsistent. It would be great if he could string together a few more good outings in a row. Personally what I’d like to see is for him to work into the 7th or 8th inning while throwing fewer than 110 pitches and walking three or fewer batters. Even if it’s just every other start.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Perez came up too soon and now he’s learning his craft in a much less forgiving environment. Patience, grasshopper.

Other Stuff

No real theme today; kinda all over the map…

  • A Scouting Primer: Hitters Over at Primer, Deric McKamey takes a look at the "science" of scouting.
  • A Scouting Primer: Pitchers This would be part 2 of Mckamey’s series.
  • Nady shouldn’t worry about move (Monterey Herald). Mostly fluff, but it’s good to know that folks haven’t forgotten about X.
  • Jack Kerouac bobblehead giveaway in Lowell (Boston.com). Okay, I have a friend (hi, Jeff!) who is a huge Kerouac fan. Is there anyone out there who might be in the Lowell area on August 21? If you are and you’re planning to go to the game, drop me a line. I’d like to make a deal. :-)
  • Weblogs Compendium This is something for all you bloggers out there; just discovered it, haven’t had much time to explore but it looks pretty interesting. One of my long-term goals is to get more interactivity here at Ducksnorts, but I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly evaluate the various tools available. One of these years…
  • Petroskey Shames Hall (Elysian Fields Quarterly) Insider’s look at the politics behind the Hall of Fame.

Housekeeping

Added some new Hot Links (which are getting a bit out of control and which I probably at some point should reorganize):

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