Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

So you probably saw the lights at Qualcomm burst into flames last night. Pretty bizarre. Slick way to get out of facing Curt Schilling, though. We missed all the excitement, as we were eating sushi about a mile west of the stadium.

I’m working on my Top x Padres prospects, where x will end up being somewhere in the 20-25 range. Depends on whether I can bring myself to include guys like Jeremy Owens. We’ll see.

Meantime, some more loose ends to tie. This one goes way back, to an article I wrote in 1998 comparing Andruw Jones and Barry Bonds. I noted the similarities between the two as hitters in their first full big-league season. Now that Andruw has more than 2500 career at-bats to his credit, let’s see how he’s progressed and whether the comparison to Bonds is still a fair one.

Entering 2001, Andruw had 2335 at-bats in the bigs. Entering 1990, Bonds had 2082. Here, in seasonal notation, is what their numbers looked like to this point:

A few things to bear in mind.

1. This is before Bonds became an absolute offensive moster, at age 25, when he enjoyed the first of nine consecutive seasons with .400+ OBP and .500+ SLG.
2. Bonds began his career in a less offensive-oriented era than Jones.
3. Bonds kicked his career into high gear at age 25. Jones turns 25 next April.

What’s my point in all this? I was reading an interesting article the other day over at BaseballPrimer.com which dealt with the Andruw vs Vlad argument. One of the reasons author Don Malcom gave for downgrading Andruw was that despite so much big-league experience, he really hadn’t "exploded" the way Vlad had at such an early age.
While this is certainly a valid argument, the fact is that as a 24-year-old, Andruw is still a very good candidate to experience a quantum leap or two in production over the next few seasons. Bonds "popped" at age 25 after treading water at a reasonably high level for a few years. Others have done likewise.

Expecting Andruw to be another Bonds was perhaps overly optimistic on my part. Currently the most similar batter to Andruw in big-league history at the same age is Ruben Sierra. Actually, the three most similar players are Sierra, Jose Canseco, and Cesar Cedeno. What’s scary is that all three of these guys looked like sure-fire HOFers when they first arrived. Injuries, among other factors, ultimately forced all three to fall well short of initial expectations, though Sierra and Canseco are enjoying something of a resurgence at the moment. Still, if you go back and look at how good these guys were when they first broke in, this is pretty lofty company. (For the curious, check out the 10 most similar batters through age 23 at Baseball-Reference.com; some interesting names in that list.)

I’m not prepared to offer any conclusions about the future path of Andruw’s career other than this: It’s way too early to dismiss his potential to be a true superstar in this game. Let’s see where he is about 5 years from now. Personally, I give him a better than 50% chance of being one of the elite players in the big leagues by then.

Took yesterday off. Went to the Wild Animal Park with some friends, then played Gauntlet till the wee hours of the morning with the wife and brother-in-law. More than you wanted to know but there it is.

A few random odds-and-ends. First, Brian Lawrence is starting for the Padres at Anaheim this evening in place of Sterling Hitchcock, who has a nasty infection on his toe. Lawrence has been throwing very well again tonight. Darrin Erstad just blooped a two-out single to center in front of Mark Kotsay to score the first run of the night in the sixth. Lawrence will be returned to Portland after the game to make room for Brian Tollberg.

Comical letters to the sports editor this morning in the Union-Tribune. One guy suggests that trading John Moores, Larry Lucchino, and Kevin Towers is the answer to what ails the Padres. Another recommends that the Padres refrain from making future deals with the New York Yankees. Personally, I’d rather have D’Angelo Jimenez than every player Kevin Towers ever traded to the Yanks (Homer Bush, Hideki Irabu, Jay Witasick, and a bunch of guys who never made it). A third compares the Padres to a Triple-A club. More accurately, it defends someone else’s description of the Pads as such. The central argument is that the Padres have very high player turnover, just like a minor-league team. Evidently, this gentleman hasn’t been paying attention to big-league baseball the past 15-20 years, because his point applies to nearly every single organization in Major League Baseball. Yes, high player turnover is a part of the Triple-A game, but nowadays, it’s very much a part of the big-league game, too.

Anyway, my theory is that the U-T hires people to write these asinine, inane letters to irritate knowledgeable baseball fans such as myself. And for the most part it does. But I’m going to let it go now. Deep breath. Count to 10…

• Caught most of the Triple-A All-Star Game. So, is everyone convinced that Adam Dunn is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Man those were a couple of shots he hit last night. And he almost drilled a third. Two of the three homers he’s hit the past few nights have been rockets down the right field line off of lefties. He’s huge, and I’m sure his swing requires a lot of maintenance, but man, can he turn on a pitch.
• Speaking of huge, did you see Tacoma DH Juan Thomas? Looks like George Foreman. I’m talking about the guy who sells mufflers and barbecues, not the guy who fought Ali. Thomas hit a mammoth shot to dead center. But forget about Tom Candiotti’s talk that he’ll be a star. Thomas is 29 years old.
• Prospect flashback moment: Johnny Ruffin strikes out Ron Wright. Actually, Ruffin looked darned good, fanning five of the six batters he faced. Don’t be surprised to see him pop up somewhere. The guy has a live arm, is only 29, and sports a career 4.12 ERA over 192.1 big-league innings.
• Back to Emil Brown for a moment. In all fairness, Brown is being brought in with vastly different expectations from those foisted onto Ruben Rivera when he arrived in San Diego. Rivera was supposed to replace Steve Finley. Brown is supposed to replace Mike Colangelo.
• For the record, I still like Colangelo off the bench.

• How about Mark Mulder. One Danny Bautista single away from perfection. Didn’t go to a three-ball count all night. Mighty impressive. The A’s won the game, 3-0. Hypothetical question: If one of the Diamondbacks breaks up the no-hitter with a bunt, and that leads to four runs and an Arizona victory, does Bob Brenly rip whoever bunted a new one? Maybe it’s the Padre fan in me but I’m hoping to see that scenario at some point this season. That and Randy Johnson having to stay in the game to bat after he nails the opposing pitcher.
• Freddy Garcia looked awfully good, too. His ERA is down to 3.18, sixth in the American League. What’s scary is that he’s only 24 years old. Heck, Mulder’s only 23. There are a lot of really good young pitchers coming into the AL right now: Ramon Ortiz, Sidney Ponson, Mark Buehrle, Kip Wells, Bartolo Colon, C.C. Sabathia, Jeff Weaver, Dan Reichert, Joe Mays, Eric Milton, Tim Hudson, Mulder, Barry Zito, Garcia, to name a few.
  Raise your hand if you though Torii Hunter would be leading a big-league team atop its division at the All-Star break in home runs. Okay, I guess Corey Koskie knocked one out the other day, so now they’re tied at 12. Doug Mientkiewicz is right behind them with 11. Hunter, Koskie, Mientkiewicz. How in the heck is Minnesota 53 and 32?
• Finally got the digital camera working. That’s the good news. The bad news is I don’t have any baseball pix to show you. But if you want to see what I have up, here’s a picture of my dogs Smitty and Toby. Smitty’s the one in front with the toy. I also have a picture of some Star Trek action figures we play with at work. If nothing else, now you know I have a life outside of baseball…