Friar Forecast

My computer is headed in the same direction as the Padres. A few nights ago while playing an intense game on one-on-none nerf basketball in my dorm room, I spilled soda all over the thing. It seems like it wants to come back on, but it is doing some pretty strange stuff. I think its shot, personally. So there probably won’t be any posts here until next wednesday or thursday when I get back home and get my other computer. Just wanted to let you know — thanks for stoppin’ by either way.

The Braves are off to a heck off a start, run differential wise. The projection systems had them at about 88 wins this year, so their 15-15 start is a little below expectations — though, if you trust pythag more at this point (which I do), they’re playing above expectations.

Record: 15 -15
Runs scored: 154
Runs allowed: 115
Pythagenpat: 19-11 (.634)

Just a quick run-down through their positions players, starters we’ll face, and pen:

Brian McCann - Catcher: McCann’s a well above average offensive player, especially when you consider his position. Really, at just 24 years old, he’s probably on the short list of catchers you’d start a team with. He had a great year in ‘05 (.333/.388/.572) and then fell off a bit last year (.270/.320/.452). Like in most cases, he’s probably somewhere in the middle, overall.

Mark Teixeira - First base: Another franchise type player, he’s off to a slow start by his standards — .267/.348/.442. He’s probably in the 130 OPS+ range, certainly an elite hitter. Not really sure about his fielding, but the fans have him at 68 (position neutral), which is tied for fourth at 1b.

Kelly Johnson - Second base: Not exactly a ‘franchise player,’ but certainly up on the list of second baseman I’d like to start a team with. He’s 26 and has a career line of .264/.358/.438.

Yunel Escobar - Short: 25 years old — .323/.390/.453 so far in 479 career PA’s. Fans have him at 67 defensively, which is top 10-15 for short. They don’t like his arm accuracy (52), so maybe that’s something to keep an eye on.

Chipper Jones - Third base: Damn, this is a nice infield. Jones is still the offensive star, amazingly. He’s been about the same offensive player since 1998: no real decline phase yet. Of course, overall he’s declined because his playing time and presumably fielding have declined since then, but his hitting (rate-wise) really has not. Fun little exercise: so far he’s hit .425 in 113 ab’s. Let’s figure he gets exactly 502 ab’s, which is about what he’ll need to qualify. That leaves him 389 ab’s. What will he need to hit in those 389 ab’s to hit .400? .393. Marcel had him as a .307 hitter. Let’s figure he’s about .315, because of his ridiculously hot start. What are the chances a “true” .315 hitter hits .393 for 389 ab’s. Using a binomial calculator, I get a .000652 chance. Yeah, still a pretty fat chance, despite the great start.

Matt Diaz - Left field: Offensively he’s adequate at best (for left field) – .318/.352/.464 career. Fans hate his fielding and gave him at 35 — that’s Manny Ramirez territory.

Mark Kotsay - Center field: The former Padre, Kotsay, if off to a great start in replacing Andruw Jones. I wouldn’t really bet on it to continue, though: Here are his OPS+’s since ‘04, in order (starting with 04): 116, 97, 88, 57, 114. That’s the profile of a slightly below average hitter. A’s fans liked his fielding still at 72 (remember these are all position neutral). fwiw, I’m using the fans scouting report just so I’m not bouncing all around with different numbers for this little “preview.” I still trust the advanced stats like UZR, plus/minus, etc. as much (or more) than the fans, especially when there’s a lot of data.

Jeff Francoeur - Right field: Underrated by statheads, overrated by everyone else. It’s been like that since he started, no? He’s been an average hitter or so, despite the nice rbi totals. The thing you can’t forget about him, though, is his age. It’s pretty impressive to put up two and a half average offensive years at ages 21-24. Fans like his fielding, especially his arm (and I believe that matches the arm ratings, by the numbers).

Bench: I don’t really know much about their bench guys — Blanco, Pena, Gotay, Miller, etc.

Starters (that we should face):

Jair Jurrgens - Off to a pretty decent start with a 3.79 era is 69 career innings (average: 4.26). The projections, which include minor league numbers (except marcel), see him more as a low 4 era type.

Tim Hudson - I remember a one or two hitter he threw against Boston back with the A’s. He isn’t quite on that level anymore, obviously, but he can still pitch. Still relies heavily on the groundball (59% or so as a Brave). Random note: according to BIS, his fastball/sinker velocity has stayed right at ~90.5 for the last four years.

Jo-Jo Reyes: 5.79 era in 59 major league innings so far. 33 walks, 32 k’s. Projections see him as a high 4, low 5 era guy.

Pen: I won’t get much into the pen. It has a bunch of average types, at best. Nothing special, I don’t think.

By the numbers, you probably figure the Braves win two. I’ll cross it up and say the Pads take two; the first and the third. ahh, what the heck, it is pointless but here are my guesses game-by-game

1: Padres 6-3
2. Braves 4-0
3. Padres 10 -7

****

Sources: Fans scouting, Baseball Reference, Fan Graphs

I had a thought while reading a Hall of Fame debate thread: Which Padre is most likely to make the hall? The only criterion is that the player has to have played on this year’s team. So here are my top ten, in order:

1. Greg Maddux
2. Trevor Hoffman
3. Jim Edmonds
4. Jake Peavy
5. Brian Giles
6. Adrian Gonzalez
7. Kevin Kouzmanoff
8. Khalil Greene
9. Chris Young
10. Heath Bell

I think Maddux is up around 100%, obviously. Hoffman is up there, too. I’d guess Edmonds is around 65-75%, but I think he should be higher (i.e., the voters will underrate him). I’ll say Peavy has around a 50% chance. He is off to a decent start, huh? I would put him higher, but he has to put up another 4-5 great years, at least, to garner any real consideration, imo. He could go on to be a lock and have an unreal career, but there’s also a decent chance he breaks down or fades away like so many other pitchers (or players, really). I don’t think there’s much of a chance for Giles, who has a great track record. A non-elite fielder who got most of his value from OBP — nah, not gettin’ in (I’m not sure if he deserves real consideration, but he’ll be underrated anyway). I put Kouz over Greene only because he is two years younger. There’s more of a chance that he “breaks out” and there’s more time to do it. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet Greene has the better career (as measured by real value, estimated by UZR, positional adjustments, linear weights, etc., rather than the voters’ definition). But a fat chance for both of them. Needless to say, I’d put Bell and Young well below 5%.

This was, of course, a pretty silly exercise, but that did not stop me from doing it. Feel free to put up your top ten (or top five or whatever)!

One of the things to remember, as I casually peruse the PITCHf/x data, is that there could be problems with the it (the data quality, that is). One major areas of concern, I believe, is the calibration of the PITCHf/x cameras from park to park. I would imagine other problems exist, perhaps like the set up of the cameras on a night-by-night basis and such. So when Jake Peavy averages 92 mph on a fastball one night and 94 on another, I might be quick to assume that Jake was tired one night, or well rested the other, or he pitched differently, blah, blah, blah. Really, we may just be witnessing some kind of problems with the data. I mention this because I just read a fantastic post on it from Ike Hall (h/t: Mike Fast). That’s not to say I really understand much (or any) of it, but it is fascinating stuff either way. Josh Kalk has also done significant work in this area.

As a bonus, that article by Hall features ‘07 data from Jake Peavy and Petco.

Anyway, if you have not caught on yet, this is a very technical aspect of the PITCHf/x stuff. I think it is important to point out, however, because we are all quick to jump to conclusions based on data that may not exactly be correct (well, at least I am on occasion!).

Today is Kentucky Derby day. As a moderate fan of horse racing, I am looking forward to the race (although I know nothing — and I mean nothing — about the horses in it or horse racing in general). Since I don’t know about the sport, I’ll use it to talk about the Padres’ start.

Okay, we’ve done all of our sabermetric research into horse racing prior to the derby. We’ve adjusted for tracks. We’ve adjusted for strength of fields, jockeys, starting positions, and so on. We’ve build our projection system and it is deadly accurate. We identify this horse that we predict will finish third, but we bet a few bucks on him to win because the general public simply does not understand track effects. The odds are just too good to pass up.

So the race begins and our horse stumbles out of the gate. Early on he’s a good 5 lengths behind the field .. and fading. A few seconds later and he’s 10 lengths behind the field and maybe 20 lengths behind the leader. Now we are thinking, what the hell does this mean? Based on all of our research, this is a solid horse. There’s no way this is the 20th best horse in this field. There’s no way, from here on out, this horse is going to run worse than all these other horses. But, nearly a quarter of the race is over, and we’re way back.

The horse ends up running the race we expected, except for the start, and finishes 9th. After the race, we wonder if the jockey should have even tried to win or if he should have let up so the horse would have been more prepared for the upcoming races. If only they allowed computers in the grandstand ….

Not much in Padre-land with the continuing struggles … so we’ll go back to the well — blogs and MSM — with this edition of Friday links (with some other stuff after that).

Here’s a Bob Costas interview with Aaron Barnhart discussing, as you might imagine, Bissenger’s remarks on “Costas Now” and the whole thing in general. Costas:

While there is unquestionably a new media revolution going on, and much of it is good, the part that — speaking for myself, the only part, the ONLY part — of which I am critical, is that there is an ethos on a significant portion of the web, an ethos not of criticism or skepticism or a contrarian viewpoint. There is an ethos of abuse, where not only is cogent thought not required, it’s almost resented. Where a reasonable argument has no place and where ad hominem attacks reign. That is not all or even most of the web, but no fair-minded person would say that isn’t a significant portion of it. That’s my criticism.

There’s a bunch more there from Bob. His criticism seems to be that some blogs are bad and some are not. He doesn’t like the bad ones. Hmm … fair enough. But what’s the point of getting frustrated by that? Clearly, Costas is aware of the good ones (or the ones he personally would define as ‘good’ or valuable):

Now, coming with it are there many important fresh new voices? Absolutely. Are there places where people like you, who were one of the first ones, and Joe Posnanski, not to name all Kansas City guys, but where you can go to get more expansive or quirkier versions of their thought? Yes. Are there nichier places … baseball-centric sites filled with detailed statistical analysis or, say, everything you want to know about the Seattle Mariners? That’s great. Nothing wrong with that.

Why read that bad ones or the ones that you don’t like? The value that I see in blogs, in general, is the diversity. You’re going to get a whole lot more areas of expertise from anyone who can start a blog than you’re going to get from the specific subsets of journalism school grads or talk show hosts. Now, like I mentioned yesterday, I’ll bet that your average professional writer is better than your average blogger. The content in your average newspaper is better than the content you’ll find in the average blog out there. But the main point — for me, anyway — is that blogging gives an opportunity for anyone to get their stuff out there. And many times it is better, or at least more interesting, than your average newspaper guy’s material. Weed out what you don’t want to read and concentrate on the good stuff.  

Joe Posnanski has, as usual, a great take on the issue:

“I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty,“ Buzz said just before he started screaming and swearing at Will, and this is so weird because I was actually thinking for a long time about calling this blog ”Dedicated To Cruelty“ or DTC (you know, for the kids). Come on. Is journalism dedicated to lies because a couple of pretty famous writers made up stories? Are books dedicated to murderous anti-semitism because Hitler wrote ”Mein Kampf?“ Is music dedicated to demeaning women because Flo-Rida sang “Low?” How are you going to judge blogs and the Internet because some anonymous jerk on a message board or in a comment section decides to tell poo-poo jokes about Tony LaRussa?

And here’s Jason Whitlock.

Ahh, alright, enough of that for now.

Here’s a great piece on Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke – they may just be my favorite pitching duo in baseball.

I haven’t read any of this yet, but here’s part three of Pizza’s series on foul balls.

Colin Wyers has been doing some awesome work with the fielding portion of the PITCHf/x data. Check out his other posts on it, too.

Jeff Moore from Dugout Central has a piece on how to spice up the mlb draft. A lot of the suggestions sound interesting. It also gives me a chance to talk about the “draft series” I mentioned a while back. You probably don’t even remember it, but I said I was going to make a series of posts on the draft at some point. Well, I haven’t yet and I probably will not. I will most likely have some posts on it as the process certainly does interest me. But the truth is that I simply don’t follow college or high school ball closely enough to really provide much value there. Just wanted to mention that in the rare case someone was looking for those posts.

Paul Nyman has an article on Phil Hughes’ mechanics. Personally, I am very skeptical of all the analysis on mechanics out there (not necessarily Nyman, who seems to have a better grasp on it than most, especially me; but I still remain skeptical, in general). For some reason, despite the fact that almost everyone that talks about mechanics seems to know what they’re talking about (although, they many times disagree!), I need to see some kind of evidence. Now I’m not exactly sure what that evidence would be, but for me there has to be something. I know, not counting MGL and some others, I’m probably in the minority on this. But so be it — it’s not like anyone cares about my opinion in the first place.

The Pads are one of the teams in pursuit of Juan Castro, says mlb trade rumors (and the L.A. Daily News). Hmm … pass, anyone? Castro would have to be a helluva fielder to make up for his truly awful bat.

Here’s a video of a round table on “Costas Now” about blogging, mainstream media, and all that good stuff.

I’m sure most of you have seen it, if you have the least amount of interest in that type of thing, but I just found it a few minutes ago. Probably not the best time to respond, but I’m not going to get that into it anyway. Perhaps, sometime down the line I will …

First of all, here are my generic thoughts on why I like blogs (and why I like “blogging”):

• It allows people to find whatever they are looking for. Do you want sabermetrics? There are a good 10, 20 — probably more — ‘hardcore’ saber blogs out there. You want a blog on the Astros or the Royals? There are probably at least 10 regularly updated blogs on each major league baseball team. In many cases, there are more. You want a blog that shows pictures of athletes playing drinking games? I believe there are many of them out there, although I am personally not that interested in them. But that’s not the point. Some people are. And they are out there.

• On that same point, as a “blogger,” I don’t have to tailor my writing toward any type of audience. I just write (er, blog — I won’t even call it writing anymore) in my ’style,’ and the audience, as small as it is, almost builds itself around that. Clearly, if you guys were interested in really good writing, you would not come here often. If you were interested in game by game breakdowns or human interest stories, you probably would not read this blog. If you’re interested in some ‘analysis’ on the Padres and baseball in general, you may just be interested. But, of course, that is up to you.

• A third point, not necessarily related to the two above, is the community aspect. I do appreciate the readers/commenters (a ton). And I think it makes things more interesting (and perhaps more ‘valuable’). If I screw up, let me know. If you disagree, we can get into a discussion. Obviously, it is not that big of a factor here, where there are maybe 1 or 2 comments on a post, but on bigger blogs I think it is great. Many times, and I don’t mean this as a shot at the bloggers (it’s not; they created the site, the commenters in a sense), the comment section of a post is better than the actual post. Many times, on different types of blogs, it is just the other way around (you have to differentiate the commenters and the bloggers, though, which Bissenger/Costas (and many of the blog critics) do not seem able to do).

• Being an ‘outsider’. In one sense access is great, but I think not having it (not counting Mr. Chris Long : ) gives bloggers a different perspective. They don’t have to worry about looking that player or front office guy in the face in the next morning. I think that may actually be one of the more important aspects of blogging. And I also think it’s probably one of the most important aspects of MSM (the access, that is). And that’s why blogs and MSM can (or at least should) coexist. Of course, this is more complex than that. Naturally, the best blogs are going to want — and eventually get — access. Take MetsBlog or A’s Nation as a couple of examples (out of many). How does that change the coverage? I don’t know. You could probably write a thesis paper on this stuff ….

So those are a few things I like about blogs (there are a bunch of others, fwiw). Yeah, I’m sure they’ve been said before a million times. This is a pretty tired debate, imo, but it is somewhat interesting.

Okay, now let me say that there are a bunch of things I like about the mainstream sports writing, although I admittedly don’t read it as often. Obviously, they have the access. That’s invaluable. They are there day in and day out, and they give you recaps and quotes and all of that. They are also decent analysts in some cases. And I would assume that, on average, they are much better writers than bloggers are. I will go to them for that stuff. But if I want a PITCHf/x breakdown of Pedro’s first start, I’m not going to a mainstream site or to a newspaper. I’ll go to The Hardball Times, or Statistically Speaking, or MetsGeek, or the many (perhaps, few, depending on how you look at it) other places that may have such a thing.

The problem with Bissinger’s argument, besides the presentation, is that he lumps all blogs together as one. That’s silly and I don’t know why people do it. I guess it makes for an easy criticism of blogs, but it’s far from the truth. Like I talked about above, there are many types of blogs with many different types of people running them. Me? I am a 20 year old kid with no particular expertise in anything. Some bloggers are terrific writers with extensive backgrounds in writing/journalism. Some are dermatologists who do it on the side. Some are professional bloggers (i.e., they do it for a living). Some are magician/screen writer/sabermetricians. Some are probably worse at writing than me. There are all kinds. Why lump them together as one?

I’m not really defending blogs, though. It is just that reason — that I don’t see blogs as one  – that makes me feel that I should not. There are probably many, many blogs I wouldn’t particularly care for. I wouldn’t necessarily want to defend them and I don’t see any reason to. I guess I would defend the medium in a general sense, however, because it gives people a chance to express their opinions, and because it gives me a chance to find exactly what I’m looking for.

End of story … I thought that video clip was pretty funny — perhaps not, depending on your mood — and I felt like linking it (thought Leitch did a pretty good job and Edwards probably did not understand why he was there — it could have been a good debate, I think, but I don’t think Buzz or Costas were all that interested in that). Then I ended up writing a little bit about it, even though I said I would not at the beginning. Any thoughts? Let me have ‘em.

The radar gun on the Phillies’ broadcast had one of Heath Bell’s fastballs to Howard at 101 mph. I thought that was interesting, as I knew Bell’s velocity had been down this year.

Josh Kalk has his ‘07 fastball velocity at 96.3 and his curve at 84.6. This year they’re at 93.5 and 81.8, respectively (with a slider at 84 and a few changes and cutters). Fan Graphs goes back to ‘05 (with a different data source, mind you):

Fastball … slider
05: 92 …. 83
06: 94 …. 82.8
07: 94.7 .. 83.5
08: 91.9 .. 81.5

Clearly, his velocity is down. Now, a few questions pop into my mind right away. What if he — or all pitchers — is a slow starter, in terms of velocity? What if it’s just randomness or something (although, I assume there’s less of that with something like pitch speed)? What significance does it have?

All of those question are probably answerable, but I don’t have them at this point. Anyway, how ’bout his pitch speeds last night vs. the Phils? I downloaded the PITCHf/x data and took a quick look:

Fastball: 92.2 (16 of ‘em)
Slider: 81.5 (2)
Curve: 80.6 (5)

Here’s a graph of his fastballs in order (i.e., his first pitch is one, last pitch is 16):

Click for a larger image …

Interesting how his velocity went up as the inning went on, not that I wouldn’t expect that. Anyway, the radar gun the Phils’ broadcast was using was way off. Bell’s velocity appears to be down a good 2-3 mph this year. The results are still there, at least to a degree, although the decrease in k rate may be a bit troubling. Are ya worried?

One of the things I like to do is see how Bud Black is using his relievers. Fan Graphs makes that easy with leverage index. For this little analysis that I do, note that I use gmLI, which is the leverage index when the pitcher enters the game. I don’t think a pitcher should be able to create his own clutch situations or whatever. Or, more correctly, I don’t think we should worry about that when we’re evaluating how Bud Black uses these guys. If he brings in Kevin Cameron with a 3 run lead in the 8th, that’s a pretty low leverage spot. If Cameron proceeds to give up 5 hits in a row and ends up pitching in relatively crucial spot, well, Bud Black wasn’t planning on that. I suppose there could be an argument for using a different type of LI because he is leaving that guy in there, but for now I’m using this one. (edit: Now that I think about it, perhaps inLI would be better for next time, although I don’t think it would make much of a difference). Here’s a detailed description of leverage index from Tom Tango. So below we’ve got gmLI with innings and ERA in parenthesis:

Hoffman: 2.57 (8.7/7.27)
Thatcher: 1.84 (12.7/7.82)
Bell: …… 1.72 (15.7/2.87)
Meredith: 1.34 (12.7/4.26)
Rusch: ….. 1.04 (14.3/6.28)
Cameron: .95 (8.3/4.32)
Ledezma: .65 (15.7/1.15)
Gonzalez: .46 (3.3/10.80)

Hopefully you are quick to note that this season’s ERA is not all that useful, but I put it there anyway. What you would like to do in a perfect world is have your best pitchers at the top and your worst at the bottom. Here’s how I’d line it up — again, in a “perfect world” where you don’t owe anything to Trevor Hoffman.

Bell, Meredith, Hoffman, Thatcher, Cameron, Ledezma, Rusch, Gonzalez

Obviously, you could quibble here or there and I think the difference between Meredith, Hoffman, and Thatcher is quite small. If you can establish a hierarchy like this – preferably based on projections that incorporate minor and major league numbers, scouting data, etc — well, that’s great. But it really comes down to a situation by situation basis, and that’s where you can use superior knowledge of match ups to maximize the talent that you have. Thatcher, for instance, would obviously face a lot of lefties. Our projections might say that Meredith is better than Thatcher overall, but against, say, Todd Helton it would be Thatcher that would be the optimal choice.

I hear some people say that if Hoffman can’t close, what can he do. I don’t really get that. In my utopian bullpen, he wouldn’t be the “closer” because he isn’t the best overall pitcher. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a valuable guy in the 7th and 8th (or 6th, or 9th, or extra innings). And you know his best pitch is the changeup. Who does he do best against? Fly ball, power hitting righties? Pitch him against them.

Anyway, at this point of the season, this stuff is probably somewhat fruitless. But I wanted to take a look at how Buddy’s been using the relievers. He seems to have them is pretty solid order, considering that I expect Hoffman to continue to close no matter what. I would expect (er, hope) that Bell rises to number #2 and that the gap between Bell and Hoffman gets much smaller. I presume those things will happen.

By the way, who do you think has the highest gmLI so far? Yeah, Hoffman (well, that’s if you discard Mike O’Connor’s 1 inning).

This is a typical, rambling post with no real theme. After I get done discussing something completely unrelated to baseball, I’ve got some thoughts on Dave Bush and Josh Banks, along with some links …

I was just thinking, with finals coming up, why aren’t college (and high school) grades adjusted in any way? I would say the class that I learned the most from this year — a history class — is also the one that will get me the lowest grade (probably a C or C+). I am perfectly fine with that because, in general, I’m not all that worried about grades. I’d like to go to a class, put in the amount of work that I usually put in, and learn something from it. Now it’s nice when that also comes with a decent grade, but with the amount of work that I do put in, that is not always possible.

Anyway, there are two main reasons why my grade will be lower in that class than the others: the teacher (whoops, I guess it’s “professor” now) is pretty difficult and the material is difficult, at least relative to my other classes. If I had to guess I’d say the class average will be like a C and the class average in my other four classes will be in the B area.

Now let’s figure somebody takes five ‘easy’ classes (B averages) and sombody else takes five tough ones. Obviously, it’s not hard to see what’s going on here. One kid can get a C overall and be completely average, compared to the class averages, and another kid can get a B overall and also be completely average. One has a 2.0 gpa or whatever and the other a 3. But, really, they both performed similarly. Like I said before, I don’t really care all that much about grades. But when so much depends on them (playing sports, academic awards, scholarships, staying in the school, getting a job, etc.), why is there no effort to normalize them? Hah! Scholasticmetrics — a new field.

If I write four paragraphs on adjusting school grades, you know it’s going to be a relatively long post. Well, is anyone interested in seeing the Pads pick up Dave Bush? The Brewers just sent him down to the minors. Whenever I see the idea of dealing for pitching brought up, I usually see a similar response from Pads’ fans – “Sure, if we needed pitching, he’d be fine” or something like that. There are two reasons why I don’t particularly agree with that notion:

1. Due to Petco (I’m sure you know what’s coming), the pitching always looks overrated and the hitting always looked underrated. Take a look at BP’s projected final standings — NL averages: 774 RS, 776 RA; Padres: 692 RS, 708 RA

Initially, they look like a team with a great pitching staff and a terrible offense. But, after you throw in the .92 park adjustment, you get: 752 RS, 769 RA. Now they look like a team with a slightly above average pitching (actually, run prevention) and slightly below average hitting. Yeah, it’s quite a difference. Suddenly, trading for a pitcher doesn’t seem that absurd. Combine that we the fact that the Padres have significant injury risks in the rotation (Wolf, Young, even Maddux if you buy PECOTA, not to mention Prior if you’re counting on him) and I think it makes all the more sense.

2. The second reason is that even if you believe the pitching is that much better than the offense, there is still value to add there. If you can create a situation where you give up even less runs, you’re going to win more games, regardless of the performance of the offense. You may be able to gain more wins by adding an impact bat, but it’s not like there’s a point where it stops making sense to reduce the amount of runs you allow. As quickly as somebody says, “you can’t win if you don’t score,” I can say, “you can’t lose if you don’t give up any runs” or something of equivalent ridiculousness.

The real crux of the issue, though, is Dave Bush and his ability to pitch in the majors. MGL has his normalized component ERA over the last four years at:

04: 3.61
05: 4.44
06: 3.42
07: 4.47

Average, for MGL’s version, is 4, by the way. That’s an unweighted (but weighted for inning, of course) average of 3.98 — so he’s been very much an average pitcher over the last four seasons. This year, in a measly 23 innings, it’s 4.87. Of course, the Padres don’t get bonus points for finding a guy who has pitched well in the past. What they want is a guy who will pitch well in the future. I’d certainly argue that four years of average pitching outweigh, by far, 23 innings of well below average pitching, if we only can use the numbers.

If, for whatever reason, Bush is a different pitcher, the usefulness of the numbers is obviously going to be lessened. If you look at his fan graphs page, Bush’s fastball velocity has dropped about 1.5 mph from his 05-06 level (his other pitches have dropped as well). This could be due to, in my best guess, a myriad of factors: the data recorders are off, Bush is a slow starter, everyone starts slow, he’s aging, parks/mounds, there’s trouble with his mechanics or arm, randomness, etc.

But I think that Bush, or a guy like him (that a team ditches early), is a great candidate for the Padres to investigate. One other good thing about him, before I move on to something else, is his contract; he’s under control for 2009 and ‘10. So he’s a legitimate investment and not just a guy that will patch a hole this season.

The Padres picked up a pitcher, Josh Banks, off waivers the other day. If you look at his First Inning card there, you can see that he has great control and what I would assume is not dominating stuff. His strikeout rates are not very impressive and he also gets absolutely pounded quite often (157 extra base hits in ‘06 and ‘07 combined). I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t trust an analysis which merely glances over his minor league numbers, but I’m not impressed with Banks really. That said, maybe the Padres see something … maybe they figure his power numbers against will be suppressed by Petco or something. Maybe the scouts see something. I don’t know. I’m not expecting much.

Now for some links:

Jonathan Hale has a fascinating look at the Peavy vs. Webb battle from Sunday. That’s just fun stuff. And it’s great to watch these guys, with such different styles, battle for Cy Young’s every year. Then you throw in Johan Santana, and his lefhandedness and great changeup, and you’ve got another different type of pitcher in the mix.

Eric Seidman has a detailed analysis of Matt Cain with PITCHf/x up at Statistically Speaking.

Speaking of Statspeak, Geoff Young was in a round table over there. Regarding what stats I’d like to see on tv broadcasts, I’d personally be fine (thrilled, actually) with BA/OBP/SLG. To make everyone happy, they could throw in runs and rbi and steals and whatever else. It’s not really because I think the masses need to be educated on stats; it’s simply because I’d like to know how the guy is playing! .200, 8 home runs, 20 rbis really means very little to me … but if they show .200/.387/.521, 8 home runs, 20 rbis then I know it’s Adam Dunn in a mid-May. And, more importantly, I know the guy is having a nice offensive season. Most fans know about obp and slg. and they would not be really hard to explain or display. In fact, I’ve seen them listed a few times on various telecasts. Another thing I hate is when they stop showing seasonal numbers after each players’ first ab and switch to game stats. I know NESN used to do this (and still may; I haven’t noticed).