Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

Padres.com and the San Diego Union-Tribune both are reporting that Ryan Klesko likely will start the year on the disabled list due to a bad left shoulder that Klesko expects to have surgery on after the season. If Klesko lands on the DL, hometown product Adrian Gonzalez, acquired this winter from Texas, will start at first base in his place.

An infield featuring Khalil Greene, Josh Barfield, and Gonzalez could give Padres fans a little glimpse of what the future might hold for the team. Works for me.

Remember that little chat we had a while back about this year’s Padres bullpen? Four weeks later to the day, it’s obsolete.

Jason Anderson has been outrighted to Portland, Steve Andrade has been claimed off waivers by Kansas City, Doug Brocail has had an angioplasty, Seth Etherton has been reassigned to the minors, and Brian Sikorski has been released. Pardon my French, but what the Gilbert Gottfried is going on here? And more importantly, who’s left in the bullpen?

Believe it or not, ex-Padre Brian Sweeney is in the mix. Andy Ashby, Scott Cassidy, and Eric Junge are other candidates. And the Padres also have acquired former Blue Jays closer Aquilino Lopez, but this isn’t even being covered in the local papers so who can say what, if any, impact he’ll have.

I was feeling pretty confident that Kevin Towers and company would be able to pull a few rabbits out of their hat this winter, but with so many questions left unanswered this late in spring training, I’ll admit I’m a bit concerned. Friar Faithful’s Top 100 Padres is up to #96, Marvell Wynne; I wonder if we could summon some of Wynne’s teammates to help. Craig Lefferts, anyone? Maybe Lance McCullers or Gene Walter? We could always pull Mark Grant out of the broadcast booth and see if he can rekindle the magic of ’89.

I dunno. Here’s hoping a couple guys step up real soon.

My San Diego Padres installment of Baseball Think Factory’s “Looking Forward to…” series has been published. Check it out.

Josh Barfield officially has won the starting second base job for the Padres thanks to a monster spring. Reminiscent of what Khalil Greene did in 2004, Barfield came out and took charge immediately, never letting up until there was no choice but to name him the starter.

Just 23 years old, Barfield compiled a .300/.351/.445 line in over 2400 minor-league at-bats. He has hit 25+ doubles and 15+ homers in each of the past three seasons.

Although Barfield could control the strike zone a little better, there is cause for optimism in that department:

This isn’t radical improvement, but it is steady. And most impressively, Barfield has been getting better while he’s moving up levels. I don’t want to read too much into anything or place undue expectations on the kid, but this is a good sign. It suggests that, as he did this spring, Barfield is ready, willing, and able to respond to challenges.

Padres officials have raved about Barfield’s defense, which is another area where he has improved greatly over the years. By his own admission, “I was terrible at second when I got drafted.” And it wasn’t so long ago that there were rumblings of moving him to a corner outfield spot. Such talk is now a distant memory.

Barfield has impressed the brass with his demeanor and his ability to perform under pressure. He attributes his even keel to his father’s influence (Jesse Barfield hit 241 big-league homers between 1981 and 1992):

My dad was always the same when he came home after a game, whether he’d had a great game or a bad game. I learned a lot from that.

Middle infielder with gaps power and maturity beyond his years? In the words of Galahad, “He says they’ve already got one.”

In the words of yours truly, now we’ve got two.

In Monday night’s telecast of the game against Anaheim, Padres broadcaster Matt Vasgersian challenged bloggers to discuss whether or not Steve Garvey’s number should be retired as a member of the Padres. (For those of you who might not know, it already is.) Being a blogger, I’m all too happy to oblige, but I don’t know that there’s much to discuss, so we’ll work a slightly different angle. Here are the stats of three former Padres during their time in San Diego:

Two questions:

1. Who are these guys?
2. Which, if any, should have their number retired?

Hint: They all played together for at least three seasons.

It’s fascinating to me that with a week left until Opening Day, we still do not know who’s in the rotation behind Jake Peavy. Two of Dewon Brazelton, Shawn Estes, Chan Ho Park, Woody Williams, and Chris Young will start the season in the bullpen, but which two remains uncertain. Young has struggled but the company line is that it’s the usual Cactus League blahs and there is nothing to see here, keep moving.

His experience in the World Baseball Classic suggests that Park can be effective in relief. He has come out of the bullpen 46 times in his big-league career, primarily in 1996, and posted the following line: 71 IP, 4.82 ERA, 10.52 SO/9. But he’s pitched in relief just twice in the past eight years, and in one of those outings (against the Padres in September 2001), he failed to record a single out. All of which is a long way of saying, we don’t really know.

Williams also has experience out of the bullpen, working 90 games in relief from 1993 to 1996 while with the Blue Jays, and once with the Cardinals in 2003. His record: 139 IP, 4.01 ERA, 7.45 SO/9. But again, all but 2/3 of those innings were compiled when guys like Sid Fernandez and Cecil Fielder still roamed the big leagues.

I won’t bother running Brazelton’s numbers because they’re uniformly terrible. We’re pretty much going on faith in spring reports with him. As for Estes, he’s only made one appearance out of the ‘pen in his career.

Other areas potentially impacted by the rotation shuffle include the bench and bullpen. Apparently the Padres still haven’t committed to going with 11 or 12 pitchers. The middle relief situation remains wide open. And on the bench, Adrian Gonzalez or Ben Johnson looks to benefit if the club carries an extra position player. (Remarkably, Mark Bellhorn is the current projected backup to Ryan Klesko at first base.) On the bright side, I suppose, reserve outfielder Terrmel Sledge launched a 400 foot homer off San Francisco southpaw Jack Taschner on Sunday.

So, about the rotation behind Peavy? I guess we’ll find out when we get there.

Brandon Rosage has been good enough to have me on as a guest at Outsider Radio once again. My segment starts around 27 minutes in but you should give the whole thing a listen:

• Ducksnorts on Outsider Radio

An article by Tom Krasovic in Wednesday’s San Diego Union-Tribune takes a look at Grady Fuson’s efforts to improve the approach of hitters throughout the Padres organization by educating them on “the importance of getting a good pitch to hit.” These are methods that served the Oakland A’s well when Fuson was there and that helped produce the likes of Eric Chávez, Jason Giambi, and Miguel Tejada.

As the article notes, Fuson’s ideas aren’t exactly revolutionary. At the same time, how many clubs are sitting their coaches and young hitters down in a classroom and showing them the batting averages of big leaguers by count over the past two seasons?

This is an example of how traditional baseball thought can coexist with stathead concepts, and how the two actually reinforce each other. Of course, you always want to get a good pitch to hit. But maybe when someone like Fuson, who has been in the game for a long time and enjoyed considerable success (and helped others to do the same), demonstrates exactly how much your chances improve by getting into a favorable count, you take it a little more to heart than if someone simply tells you to work the count.

Fuson addresses the “why” part of the equation. Now, armed with this knowledge, you know as a hitter that the goal isn’t to work the count, but rather to get a good pitch to hit so you can improve your likelihood of succeeding. Working the count is merely the tool by which this goal is achieved. Drawing walks, which also helps the team by putting potential runs on base, is a fortunate by-product.

All well and good, if a tad academic. But if there’s any doubt that Fuson is the right man for the job, check out his track record. And listen to his attitude toward getting staffers to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid:

I told them, “Let me show you. I don’t expect you to just nod your head and say OK.” I don’t feel resistance. And if I do, I look at it like my presentation needs to be better.

In other words, Fuson isn’t some guy wielding a bunch of books and formulas with ivory tower authority. He knows the numbers and how to use them, but he also has the cred of one who has achieved measurable success. Beyond the cred, he has the confidence of such a person, such a messenger. If the message doesn’t get through right away, he will try again. This isn’t someone looking to impress people with his knowledge, this is a man with real solutions to real problems.

Fuson’s ideas may not be revolutionary, but in the Padres universe they represent movement in the right direction. Getting people to embrace an unfamiliar concept is less a matter of hitting them over the head with it and berating them for “not getting it” when they don’t jump on board immediately, and more a matter of patiently explaining the idea and how it benefits them personally.

This is not a short-term strategy, and not everyone has the temperament to be “patiently aggressive” (is it coincidence that Fuson’s favorite expression applies to his own teaching methods as much as to the approach he wants his hitters to adopt?). But it is a plan with a history of demonstrable success, and with the right man driving the plan, it just might start a revolution.

I am still coming down off my WBC high and working feverishly on the Padres preview for Baseball Think Factory so I don’t have anything original for you here today. However, Rich Lederer and Bryan Smith (aka the Baseball Analysts) were kind enough to have me participate in a round table discussion of the upcoming season NL West style. We had a lot of fun putting this together, and I’m grateful to be included in such company (Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts was the other guest panelist). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed participating in it.