Search results for ‘chase headley

Mailbag: Spring Training Questions

Ryan from The Padres, Chargers, Illini Blog writes: Geoff, As it stands now, it seems like the roster is more or less set to start the season, or at least more set at this stage of the offseason than in years past. Given that (apparent) certainty, what are a few things you’ll be looking for [...]

Positive Negative Man

In my experience, things usually are neither as bad nor as good as they seem to be. When the Padres lost 99 games in 2008, many people abandoned hope. I wasn’t one of them and predicted 75 wins in 2009, which is precisely what we got. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’d predicted 87 [...]

Friday Links (29 Jan 10)

Don’t waste your links or links will waste you… The nickname game: all nicknames all the time (Hardball Times). I don’t recall ever hearing Mike Cameron referred to as “The Black Cat” in his two years with the Padres. I still have a soft spot for two other ex-Padres, Milton “Jenga” Bradley and Kevin “Mashin’ [...]

Where in the Cycle Are We?

Ray from Sacrifice Bunt recently asked in the comments: Does anyone think that [GM Jed] Hoyer is trying to build a team that will make the 2010 playoffs? It seems clear to me that Hoyer is treating this season as a way to get an idea for what he has and what he needs. Not [...]

Kouzmanoff for Hairston

New Padres GM Jed Hoyer made his first trade on Friday Saturday, shipping third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff and minor-league second baseman Eric Sogard to Oakland for outfielders Scott Hairston and Aaron Cunningham. I’ve thought about this trade a lot, and the word that keeps coming to mind is “fair,” which is one I didn’t tend [...]

Reviewing the 2009 IVIEs

In the interest of accountability and because there’s not much else to do in January, I thought we’d look back at our community projections made in March 2009. First, the hitters:   Projected Actual   Player PA BA OBP SLG PA BA OBP SLG Comments Matt Antonelli 224 .237 .322 .343 0 - - - [...]

Chase Headley and the Art of the Comp

Reader TexPadre recently posed the following question: When will Chase Headley show a decent amount of power? Or will he ever? Headley, you may recall, was the subject of much hype in spring training 2008. He had just come off a monster season (.330/.437/.580) at Double-A San Antonio and people got a little silly, mistaking [...]

Hey, I Can See the Off-Season from Here

I’ve been busy. Part of the reason is that I’ll be contributing to two forthcoming books: The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 (due out in November) and John Burnson’s Graphical Player 2010 (due out in December). I can’t go into a lot of detail just yet because — well, I’m not done writing — but [...]

Olive Pudding

It’s great to see the Padres sign all their top draft picks this year. First-round pick Donavan Tate (whom I was fortunate enough to meet last week, but we’ll get to that in a moment) took batting practice with the big club Tuesday night and impressed the veterans with his “respect and humility.” Tom Krasovic [...]

Youngsters and Salary Dumps

We’ve been tracking a few key young players since the All-Star break using Modified Box Scores (explanation). Let’s see how these kids are doing as measured by more conventional metrics. Bear in mind that we’re talking about 31 games, a tiny sample. First, the Padres as a team: Padres Offense, First and Second Half   [...]