Tag Archive for ‘wade leblanc’ rss

Gardenhire’s Cat

As you may have surmised from the title of this blog, I’m a big fan of quirky baseball terminology. With that in mind, I’ve got an idea for a phrase we should start using. Physics has Schrodinger’s cat. Baseball should have Gardenhire’s cat. This term would be used to describe seemingly irrelevant details provided in [...]

Mailbag: On Lineup Construction

We had some good discussion about possible lineups for the 2011 Padres in last week’s open thread. Several suggestions were made regarding specific order, but a few “big picture” comments caught my attention.

One-Hit Wonders: John Urrea to Jaret Wright

This is Part 13 of a 13-part series examining the 65 men who have collected exactly one hit as a member of the San Diego Padres. The current installment features a man who once outpitched Dennis Martinez in the minor leagues, a high school teammate of Kerry Wood, one piece of the Ken Caminiti trade, [...]

Me, Elsewhere: Tossed in Translation

My latest at Hardball Times revisits an earlier article about a toy introduced by Bill James back in the ’80s that translates a hitter’s line into a pitching line. Why would you do this? Well, because it’s fun. The new article focuses on 2010 performances and features “matched pairs” of hitters and pitchers. Among these [...]

Tuesday Links (28 Sep 10)

I hate writing the intros to these things. The pressure to say something witty is enormous and I always fall short. Then again, in so doing, I remove my own burden. I feel better already…

Nine Thoughts for Nine Losses

I Losing nine straight down the stretch stinks. There is no other way to put it. Despite their current two-game lead in the National League West, the Padres find themselves teetering at the edge of an uncomfortable precipice. As I said earlier in the week, when the streak was a more manageable six games, “…if [...]

Finder of Books, Keeper of Dreams

What are hopes, what are plans? –Johann Christof Friedrich von Schiller Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know. –Louis Armstrong As you can see, I’ve located the copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations that eluded me the other day. It was right in front of me, on a bookshelf full of many familiar baseball titles, [...]

Toast

It’s all about expectations. If you’d told me before the season that the Padres would have 76 wins on September 1, I’d have been thrilled. If you’d told me the same on August 25, when they won their 76th game, not so much. Bad time for a six-game losing streak. Then again, is there ever [...]

Pressure: You’re Soaking in It

Really? Is this how it’s going to be? I guess a pennant race isn’t complete without at least one irritating stretch. Welcome to it. The Padres came out strong against Arizona lefty Joe Saunders on Monday night, with Miguel Tejada launching a first-inning bomb to left-center. They had a 2-0 lead before Saunders even recorded [...]

Like Tom Browning and Kirk Gibson, but Not Really

Crazy times in the National League West on Wednesday. The two teams chasing the Padres came back from 10-1 deficits. The Braves ended up losing to Colorado, 12-10. At least Cincinnati had the decency to fight back and beat the Giants, 12-11, in 12 innings. Not that the Reds didn’t try to give it away. [...]