by Daniel Gettinger
- As a team the San Diego Padres have performed pretty much as expected. They are currently 6-6 with a slightly positive run differential. I still think 75-80 wins is a realistic expectation for this team.
- Chase Headley has been locked in offensively, but his defense needs immediate improvement. He has five errors in 32 chances. UZR data is not yet available for this season, and even if it was, the sample would be too small to be meaningful. But Headley’s defense has been so bad that much of his offensive value has likely been negated.
- Will Venable needs to stop swinging at so many pitches out of the strike zone. He has swung at 34 percent of the pitches out of the zone. His lack of plate discipline thus far has resulted in a minuscule 4.7 percent walk rate. Venable has never shown a ton of plate discipline (in either the majors or the minors). It is something he will need to work on if he wants to become an above average player.
- Perhaps last season was no fluke for Kevin Correia after all. He’s looked pretty solid.
- Gregerson’s and Adams’ artificially high ERAs are not reflective of the way they have been pitching.
- The Padres bullpen has a lot of good pitchers. I remain convinced the team will not miss Heath Bell too much once he is traded.
- Labrum surgery is not Tommy John surgery. Many pitchers never fully recover after having labrum surgery. They almost never come back stronger. I hope we have not seen the last of Chris Young as an effective pitcher, but there is a non- trivial chance that might be the case. (As an aside, I had labrum surgery four months ago, and can certainly understand what Young is going through. At times the shoulder feels great, but often tightens up after being tested a bit).
- Mat Latos will be fine. He has given up too many homeruns, but his 30 percent HR/FB rate is nowhere near sustainable. Braden Looper had the major league’s highest HR/FB rate last season (amongst qualified pitchers), and he was only at 15 percent. With Latos pitching half of his games at Petco Park, he is highly unlikely to continue serving up home runs at such a high rate.
- Adrian Gonzalez is fantastic. Nobody wants to pitch to him, and I don’t blame them. Some team will get an excellent player and the Padres will be properly compensated for trading that excellent player.
I had Labrum surgery 10 years ago. I went through a very extensive rehab to prepare my shoulder for the sport that I played which did not involve an overhand throwing motion. Consequently I can’t throw for shit and the thought of throwing a ball actually hurts me. Due to this first hand knowledge I would say that Chris Young is effed.
It should be noted that Drew Brees also had Labrum surgery and has done alright for himself. There is hope.
Will Venable has left a ridiculous number of players on base thus far. This is a concern.
I have a hard time believing that Headley’s defense has negated his offense thus far or could be a net loss in comparison to what Kouzmanoff brought to the table. KK didn’t start hitting until the end of June each year and apparently his defense was vastly overrated.
Mike-You’re correct, Kouz’s defense was immensely overrated. But ignoring any comparison to him, Headley needs to cut down on the errors. 5 in 32 chances is completely unacceptable.
Also, good point regarding Brees. I’m not sure how throwing a football compares to throwing a baseball, but Brees has certainly shown that someone who throws for a living can be just fine after labrum surgery.
At first glance, Scott Hairston has been just as bad as Venable. Do you have the same impression? I’ll look over the numbers this week in any case…
Mike-Hairston does not have as many PA’s as Venable, so the sample size issues are magnified even more, but it looks like Hairston’s troubles have not been at swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone (only 21%), but making contact with pitches in general (61% total contact rate, 66% in-zone contact rate). He’s been pretty consistent in his career in contact rate (76% average with minimal variation), so I’m not too worried yet.
Daniel–Agreed. 5 errors this early is terrible. Chase seems like a hard worker so I’m not overly concerned, though.
Mike, is he “effed” or is there hope? Enquiring minds want to know!
At this point in a season isn’t it more reasonable to simply note things such as Venable’s rates or Latos’ rates and not try to draw any conclusions from them? Don’t we really need a couple of months worth of data to have a feel for a player’s performance and not a couple of weeks? It’s interesting to know how often Venable has swung at pitches out of the zone and how many errors Headley has, but it doesn’t seem meaningful to me at this point.
Throwing a baseball involves more rotation than throwing a football, which is more linear. Given Young’s history on the DL, regardless of how serious his injury is/was, I go into each season almost not factoring him in the starting rotation at all.
I know this is absolutely meaningless with such a small sample size, but I wanted to point out anyway that Headley has a positive (1.2) UZR so far this season.
Zach-Yeah, I noticed that too. He has made a decent amount of “out of zone” plays so far this season. As you said though, not at all meaningful yet.