Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

It’s official: Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg are in, once again Alan Trammell is not. Trammell, in fact, suffered the indignity of finishing behind Steve Garvey. I’ve never been a Garvey fan but I’ll happily admit he was a good player in his day. A HOFer? Of course not. Better than Trammell? Please.

And why does Tom Candiotti get votes, but not Mark Langston?

Now I’m just getting grouchy. Here’s what others have to say:

• Class of 2005 (Baseball Musings). David Pinto also offers a nice comparison between Boggs and Tony Gwynn.
• Hall of Fame Report (Dodger Thoughts). Jon also isn’t happy about the lack of attention given to Trammell.
• Sandberg and the Hall (Cub Reporter). They’re a little, um, excited over there.
• Vitriol Greets Halos’ New Moniker Proving Moreno is an Advertising Genius (Halo Herald). Not interested in the HOF? You can always read about this silliness.

Well, there it is. A hearty Ducksnorts tip of the bill to Boggs and Sandberg.

Watching the Padres 2004 DVD. Jay Payton robbing Barry Bonds on Opening Day. I miss Payton already.

I’ve got nothing today. Here’s some stuff I put together about this time three years ago…

• Future Friars: Padres Top 30 Prospects for 2002, Part 1

  On Mewelde Moore:

  A standout running back at Tulane University, Moore is an exceptional athlete and an extremely raw baseball player. Like Vince Faison, he has tremendous upside if he learns to harness his natural tools. But there’s a lot of work to be done here. Very much a project at this point.

  On Justin Germano:

  Germano doesn’t overpower hitters, instead relying on pinpoint control for his success. However, he is still young enough to add some velocity. Germano should return to Ft. Wayne and will move up the ladder one rung at a time. Comparisons to Jake Peavy are premature but there are similarities. Keep an eye on Germano in 2002.

• 2001 Lake Elsinore Storm Recap. Pitching logs for Jake Peavy, Oliver Perez, and others. Peavy fanned 10+ in 5 of his final 10 starts for the Storm.

Went down to the Q yesterday for the first time since the Pads’ last game there. Packed house for the Chargers vs Chiefs. A lot more energy in that place than I’d remembered. A lot more people, too.

No Drew Brees, no LaDainian Tomlinson, no Antonio Gates. But we did get to see Philip Rivers throw his first NFL touchdown pass. And we may well have seen Doug Flutie throw his last.

Some dogs came out at halftime and attempted to catch frisbees. They weren’t really on their game, though, and people started booing. What is this, Philly?

After the game we walked back over to Hazard Center to pick up the car. It’s a little over two miles, about 40 minutes by foot. Still quicker than taking the trolley, if you count waiting in line.

Drove up the hill to Pampas Argentine Grill for some excellent steaks. My wife is still talking about the garlic fries.

Now is about the time I start to think there should be a point to this narrative. Alas, no such luck. It was good to get out to a football game. It was good to see the Q again. It was good to hang with friends.

Isn’t it always…

Just cleaning up the debris. Does your head still hurt? Don’t mind me, I’ll keep it down.

A few items of note:

• Hoffman gets Hutch Award (U-T). Trevor Hoffman has won MLB’s annual award given to the player who most displays “honor, courage and dedication to baseball both on and off the field” for his comeback from shoulder surgery as well as his work in the community. Congrats to a class act.
• Padres Prospect Interview: George Kottaras (Scout.com). Good look at the Padres’ top catching prospect, who seems to be focused on the right things: “Baseball is all about trusting the guy in front of you and the guy behind you. One person is not going to win the game. I have to do whatever it takes to get on base, get runners over… Walks – open doors for other guys. We have to all step it up.”
• Scouting Padres Prospect Sean Thompson (Scout.com). Lefty pitcher Thompson had a strong showing at Ft. Wayne in 2004. Denis Savage takes a closer look.
• Padres Prospect Interview: Chris Oxspring (Scout.com). And some thoughts from right-hander Oxspring, again courtesy of Savage.
• 2005 Projections: Phillies, Pirates, Padres (BTF). Dan has this year’s ZiPS projections posted for the Pads. He’s got Scott Linebrink, Aki Otsuka, and Jake Peavy all higher than 3.00. Here’s hoping that doesn’t come to pass. Also, this is interesting:

                   BA OBP SLG
    Blum,Ge       231 285 344
    Furmaniak,J.  245 303 377
    Gautreau,Ja   232 309 372
    

  Not a lot of optimism for the hitters. Minimal growth for Sean Burroughs. Slight dropoffs for and Khalil Greene, Ramon Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Mark Loretta, and Phil Nevin. No appreciable movement for Brian Giles.

• Current Minor League Equivalent Averages (Baseball Prospectus). Follow the links at bottom to see MLEs for each league. Padre farmhands who made their league’s top 20 RAR (runs above replacement):

                   Lvl   BA OBP SLG
    Nady,Xa        AAA  279 337 505
    Knott,Jo       AAA  250 332 431
    Barfield,Jo     AA  244 311 424
    Cruz,Lu          A+ 273 317 438
    McAnulty,Pa      A+ 240 328 401
    Valenzuela,Fe    A  278 348 427
    Kottaras,Ge      A  277 363 457
    Macias,Dr        A  261 327 401
    

  Confused by all the numbers, like I was? Here’s a brief explanation of what it all means.

Okay, that’s enough for now. We’ve got all year ahead of us.

So. Was it good for you?

So yesterday I’m back at work, and there are photos of Dave Roberts all over my cubicle. Monitor, keyboard, calendar, filing cabinet, picture of the wife. Mojo Nixon had it wrong. Elvis ain’t everywhere, Dave Roberts is.

For added effect, there’s even a U-T "article" on my desk claiming that the Padres have traded Jake Peavy for Tom Goodwin and signed Omar Moreno. Very nice.

And on that note, we kiss 2004 goodbye. I hope you and yours enjoy a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2005.

See you on the flip side…

I’m back in SD, to the stresses of everyday life. And I’m back also to whining about the Dave Roberts trade.

But before I get started, here’s a note from another dissatisfied customer, E.B.:

Not sure if you remember me. I emailed you once last year sending you a chart comparing a team’s ERA to the catchers ERA of that team’s primary catcher. Gary Bennett had the biggest difference. Not that it really meant all that much but this trade really has me hacked off.

I just posted an extended comment about the Payton deal that was mostly cutoff. Unfortunately, here is the best point of it all.

Payton 2004: .260/.326/.367
Roberts career: .259/.335/.344

So basically, Payton had as bad a year as he could have had in 2004 and it was an average year for Roberts.

Also, Payton had a down year in 1999, his 2nd year in the majors.

1998: .318/.348/.364
1999: .250/.333/.375
2000: .291/.331/.447

But he turned it around in 2000. Isn’t it at least feasible to think that this season was a year where Payton had to get used to being out of Colorado full time and was in a huge pitchers park. Given a year to adjust, you’d think he would have to come back next year. If nothing else, he would be better than in 2004 and therefore would be better than Roberts in an average year.

Also, if this trade is trying to clear more of a way for Nady to get AB’s, can you realistically see Nady playing center in Petco when they guy that was just dealt supposedly didn’t have the range to cover it? Just a completely ridiculous trade from a Padres point of view. As I know I’ll be at every home game in 2005, I’m not looking forward to the Dave Roberts experience.

Before we get to Payton, a quick footnote on Bennett and CERA: Last year Bennett played with the Brewers. Milwaukee’s regular catcher was Chad Moeller, who led the NL with a 3.67 CERA. In a little over half the innings, Bennett checked in at 5.12.

As for E.B.’s points about the recent trade, I agree that there is no upside here. Payton is one of my early favorites for fantasy sleeper this year. Even if he never hits 28 homers in a season again, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him return to, say, 2000 form.

Payton will outperform Roberts in 2005. And thanks to the mechanics of the deal, Roberts doesn’t cost any less. So what’s the point? Why downgrade at a position without at least clearing some payroll to spend elsewhere?

And this brings me to my next point. It’s not just about Roberts, it’s about allocation of resources. If the Padres were intent on moving some assets, then why didn’t they use those to address areas of greater concern? Pitching depth is one that immediately leaps to mind. I could at least understand the logic behind trading Payton and company to add, say, a fourth starter or another veteran reliever.

But if all the Pads got out of it is a fast outfielder who doesn’t provide much offense, then why didn’t they fill the "void" from within? If they wanted to go this route (and I’m by no means advocating that they should), then what’s wrong with Freddy Guzman or even Kerry Robinson? No, I don’t believe that they are the answer any more than Roberts is, but at least they don’t cost anything above and beyond what they’re already being paid.

Here is the general decision-making process that presumably occurred:

1. the Padres need a fast leadoff man
2. there is nobody within the organization who fits that description
3. the Padres must surrender assets to acquire such a leadoff man

I mildly disagree with the first point, but I’m willing to go along with it. The second two are what bother me. Here’s why.

First, we look at ZiPS projections:

               BA  OBP  SLG BB SO SB CS
Guzman,Fr    .248 .328 .305 53 90 56 37
Roberts,Da   .274 .354 .370 43 44 35 10
Robinson,Ke  .279 .325 .343 16 27 17 13

Next up, Bill James Handbook 2005:

               BA  OBP  SLG BB SO SB CS
Guzman,Fr    .261 .328 .330 33 59 46  7
Roberts,Da   .257 .336 .335 32 32 27  6
Robinson,Ke  .271 .317 .347  8 12 12  2

And Guzman’s major league equivalencies (as derived by Baseball Prospectus) for Double-A and Triple-A:

           BA  OBP  SLG BB SO SB CS
Mob  AA  .262 .327 .355 13 26  9  3
Por AAA  .272 .342 .364 27 43 33  9

I think we can all agree that Robinson isn’t a big-league starting outfielder, so it was a good decision not to ask him to fill that role. You could argue that Guzman isn’t ready yet, and you might have a point. He’s only had two-thirds of a season at Triple-A and he’s still inexperienced at playing the outfield.

The numbers suggest that given the chance, Guzman wouldn’t do any worse than Roberts. Still, you never know with young players, so I can even see hedging with a stopgap while Guzman is polishing his skills at Triple-A. But why pay solution prices for a stopgap?

Again, not that I condone even going down this path, but if the Pads were bent on getting a fast outfielder with questionable value, couldn’t they have grabbed a presumably cheap free agent such as Doug Glanville, Tom Goodwin, Quinton McCracken, or So Taguchi that would have allowed them to use other potentially valuable resources to acquire more immediate help elsewhere?

As for Nady, it’s looking like his day will never come in San Diego, and that is a shame. The guy can play.

The one good thing I can see coming out of all this is that Sean Burroughs moves back down in the lineup, where the hope is that he’ll concentrate less on slapping the ball past the shortstop and more on driving it into the spacious Petco power alleys. I say this every year, but I have a good feeling about Burroughs in the upcoming season.

Haven’t seen blue sky since we’ve been on Kaua’i. Mostly overcast, with the typical Hawai’i on-off rain patterns (“Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes”). But yesterday it broke into a full storm, with all the fixin’s.

• Skip the travelog, take me to the report

Without wishing to seem overly melodramatic, being on a body of land just barely 550 square miles under such conditions is a little unnerving. I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like during Hurricane ‘Iwa in 1982 or ‘Iniki 10 years later, with winds up to 175 mph.

But, as they say here, “No rain, no rainbows.”

Listening to a collection of slack key guitar music that we picked up from Borders in Lihu’e. Borders is a big deal because when my wife was growing up, there were no book stores on the island. There was a book section at the drug store, there was a library, and there were trips to O’ahu.

As for slack key, according to Moon Handbooks Kaua’i it is a style of guitar originally brought from Spanish vaqueros (cowboys) in California during the reign of Kamehameha III. Players fingerpick the strings, typically alternating bass lines with melody lines (which themselves are often harmonized), and use different tunings to achieve different sounds. For the guitarists reading this, slack key players also use techniques such as fretted harmonics as well as hammer-ons and pull-offs. Traditionally, slack key tunings have been closely guarded within families, although that is changing with the times.

Often the guitarist is unaccompanied. Other times, there may be a traditional falsetto vocal. The songs are mostly in major keys and there are very distinct phrases–particularly turnarounds–that are a part of every player’s repertoire. Because of the generally upbeat melodies and the traditional cliched phrases, the music may sometimes sound unsophisticated to our postmodern pallette that insists on irony in all art. But make no mistake, like the bluegrass musicians of the eastern United States, these cats can play. And for my money, slack key guitar is some of the most pure, honest, and beautiful music in the world.

. . .

Our photo today is of a “traffic jam” in Wailua. It may not seem like much, but this is the road you must take if you plan to go just about anywhere on the island.

. . .

So we’re looking at current Padre broadcaster Mark Grant. His profile is on page 628 of The Scouting Report: 1990, directly opposite that of Tony Gwynn’s, and goes a little like this:

Since Mark Grant was a youngster with the Giants, the big rap on him has been his lack of maturity… Grant was known more as a cut-up than for a cut fastball–a perception that was highlighted when he was caught on camera administering a hot foot to a teammate one night… Under the watchful eye of Padre pitching coach Pat Dobson, Grant has made significant progress. A two-pitch pitcher basically relying on an average fastball and slider, Mark has been working on adding a change up to his repertoire. More importantly, Dobson seems to have been able to teach Grant how to pitch with his head… Grant, responding well, recorded career bests with an 8-2 mark, a 3.33 ERA and a pair of saves in 1989… At 26, Grant may have finally turned the corner… Though he will always love having a good time, Mark has shown he can get down to business when it comes to doing his job.

As it happened, 1989 was Grant’s best season in the big leagues. His playing career ended following the 1993 season, which he split between the Astros and the Rockies. The former first-round pick of the Giants finished up with a 22-32 record and 4.31 ERA in 638 2/3 innings.

I doubt that much of this will come as a huge surprise to folks who have been watching Grant on television for the past several years. Fortunately for us, any “lack of maturity” that may have been evident in his big-league career has made him a genuine pleasure to enjoy a Padres game with on the tube.

That’s all for now. One more day of R&R, then it’s back to San Diego and being outraged at the outfield situation…