I use baseball to mark the passage of time. The memory of specific events helps keep me grounded in a world that often makes less sense than I’d like it to make (forgive the fact that I grew up rooting for the Dodgers):
1981 — Fernandomania; Rick Monday’s homer off Steve Rogers in Montreal
1988 — Kirk [...]
Couple things. First off, I’m pleased to announce that The Hardball Times Season Preview 2009 is now available (details from David Gassko, our editor). I contributed the chapter on the Padres. Buy the book. It rocks. And it’ll give you something to read while you’re waiting for my book.
Second, the Seamheads Historical League [...]
I recently picked up the Bill James Gold Mine 2008. There’s tons of great stuff in here, as you’d expect, but two items in particular have captured my imagination (so far): the “record of opposing batters” James presents for certain pitchers, and the “comps” he offers of team batting records to individual career batting records [...]
Actual games, eh? Nice.
The Padres lost on Friday and won on Saturday. Rookie Chase Headley, bidding for a spot in the San Diego outfield, homered and drove in four runs in the victory.
Be sure to read a lot into that. Hey, I like having box scores to look at again, but seriously, it’s March 2.
Randy [...]
Doing some research for an article, flipping through Baseball America’s 1989 Almanac. The book doesn’t list top prospects by team, but it does list them by league. Here are some familiar (and not-so-familiar) names for you:
Triple-A
Gary Sheffield, 3B, Denver (Brewers): American Association #2 (behind Mike Harkey, ahead of Randy Johnson).
Steve Finley, OF, Rochester (Orioles): International [...]
I was flipping through The 1996 Big Bad Baseball Annual (aff link) and ran across Don Malcolm’s preview of the Padres that year. First off, Malcolm’s discussion of Skip Spence was inspired, if a bit incongruous. A small sampling, from page 201:
Occasionally there is a scraggy looking, doubled-over raggedy man, with a heavily weathered face [...]
I’m addicted to Baseball-Reference’s PI tool. For grins I ran a search on everyone who has accumulated 1500 or more career plate appearances with the Padres (39 in total) and ordered them from top (Fred McGriff) to bottom (Enzo Hernandez) according to OPS+. Then I looked for “matched pairs” — guys who have the same [...]
Once again, I’ve been playing with Bill James’ Brock2 player projection system. Thought I’d take a look at some young, up-and-coming hitters and see what the future might hold for them. As always, bear in mind that even James acknowledged that this system is more of a toy than a tool. But it’s a heckuva [...]
After fighting through some nasty traffic to get out of San Diego, my wife and I arrived at the Lake Elsinore Diamond in the 2nd inning of the season finale. This game was everything that my first California Fall League experience wasn’t: well played, well attended, and, well — more like an actual baseball game.
By [...]
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