by Daniel Gettinger

Generally speaking, I like what the Padres have done this winter.  The team has paid cheaply for upgrades at starting pitcher and a few bench slots.  The Padres also got better by trading Kevin Kouzmanoff for Scott Hairston and Aaron Cunningham, allowing Chase Headley to slide over to his natural third-base position and pushing Kyle Blanks to the much less demanding (at least in Petco) left-field slot.

That said, in retrospect, I would have handled the second base position differently.  I would have forgone signing David Eckstein and Yorvit Torrealba.  I would have used the savings to ink Orlando Hudson to a one-year contract.

The Padres will pay David Eckstein $1MM in 2010.  Torrealba will receive $1.25MM.  Although both may be worth slightly more than his salary, neither are different makers.  Orlando Hudson is due to earn $5MM on a one-year contract from the Twins.

According to Websoulsurfer, the Padres current payroll (which includes Eckstein and Torrealba) stands at approximately $38MM.  In December, Padres CEO Jeff Moorad said the Padres 2010 payroll would “start with a four.”  That suggests the Padres currently have at least $2MM to spend on payroll.

The following chart shows the salary and projected WAR for Torrealba and Eckstein, as well as Orlando Hudson.

Had the Padres not signed Eckstein or Torrealba, they would have had $4.25MM to play with ($2.25MM in saved salary plus the $2MM the team currently has to spend).  At that point, spending an extra $0.75MM to sign Hudson may have been approved.

Lets assume the Padres end up spending $40.075MM on their 2010 payroll.  The Padres three primary signings this season-Eckstein, Jerry Hairston and Torrealba-signed for an expected $3.36MM/win.  To reach $40.075MM, the Padres will need to spend an additional $2.075MM.  At $3.36MM/win, the Padres could expect to add 0.62 wins with their leftover funds.  0.62 plus the expected contributions of Eckstein and Torrealba totals 1.42 wins.

If the Padres had instead signed Hudson, their expected WAR would have been 2.5 for the same amount of spending.  Sure the Padres would have been a bit thinner at catcher, but under this calculation I am valuing Dusty Ryan at replacement level and the team still comes out 1.08 wins ahead.

Even if the Padres were unable to sign Hudson, they could have reached out to Felipe Lopez who is still a free agent.  It is unlikely Lopez will sign for more money than Hudson, and he provides similar expected value.  I prefer Hudson because his performance has been more consistent year-to-year than Lopez, but that extra risk is likely to result in a slightly lower salary for Lopez.

By re-signing David Eckstein, the Padres limited their options immensely.  They locked themselves in at second base with a pretty mediocre player.  This prevented the Padres from taking advantage of potential bargains at the position.  As a result, the team ended up spending much of their remaining funds on bench upgrades.  However, if Eckstein was not re-signed, the Padres could have forgone signing Yorvit Torrealba as well as whatever marginal upgrades they end up making with their remaining funds.  In return, they could have signed a quality player like Orlando Hudson (or Felipe Lopez) at a lower rate per win.

Edit: I realize Towers was the GM when Eckstein was signed.  I am not blaming Hoyer. I was merely suggesting that if we could “play” the off-season again, this is what I would do.

by Daniel Gettinger

Special thanks to Melvin for designing our new logo.  It really looks great!

by Daniel Gettinger

Recently, we were asked to join the Yardbarker Network.

Yardbarker is a network of sports blogs.  It contains over 100 personal athlete blogs, as well as team specific and general sports blogs.  Yardbarker has recently partnered with Fox Sports/MSN to begin syndicating content from network blogs on their sites.

We have decided to join the Yardbarker Network in an effort to expand our readership. The quality of discussion that takes place on Friar Forecast has been great, and we hope that by expanding our readership, those discussions will become even richer.

Although we are joining the Yardbarker Network, Friar Forecast remains an independent blog.  The content of the site will be completely unaffected.

To conform with Yardbarker regulations, we will have to make a few design adjustments:

1) As you may have already noticed, there is now a Yardbarker navigation bar at the top of the site.

2) A Yardbarker widget has been added to the side-bar underneath the recent comments.  This widget contains links to Padres related articles on other sites and blogs.

3) We are forced to include some advertisements.  I have been assured that the ads will be unobtrusive.  The ads are not being introduced in an attempt to monetize the site. Rather, they are merely a requirement of joining the Yardbarker Network.

It may take us a few weeks to get the site design straightened out.  Please be patient as we make the necessary adjustments, and get the site looking as good as possible given the introduction of the new features.

If you have any suggestions on site-design, please let us know.  I have very little (basically zero) web-design experience, so any tips/advice would be highly appreciative.

We are hopeful that our relationship with Yardbarker will help enhance the community experience here at Friar Forecast, and are excited to be joining the network!

by Daniel Gettinger

Sky Andrecheck weighed in on the Garland signing on SI.com.  He rated the signing as one of the best starting pitching gambles of this offseason:

3. Jon Garland, Padres

Age:30
Projected WAR:2.3 Wins
Contract:1 year, $5.3 million

While San Diego doesn’t look to be a contender in 2010, the Garland contract is a real steal. Garland posted a 4.01 ERA in 200 innings in 2009, a figure that was slightly better, but not totally out of line with the rest of his career numbers. The Bill James, CHONE, and Marcel projection systems put his likely 2010 ERA in the mid-to-low 4.00’s — a very respectable figure. Besides that, Garland is durable (at least 190 IP in each of the last 8 seasons), and he’s young (just 30 years old). All of that sounds like a guy who would be in the market for a big multi-year deal, especially considering the crop of starting pitchers wasn’t particularly strong this off-season. After all, he was pretty much the same pitcher in 2006 when he signed a three-year $29 million contract — a contract on which he largely paid dividends.

How then, did new Padres GM Jed Hoyer manage to sign Garland for a one-year $5.3 million contract? That’s probably what a host of other teams would like to know as well. Last year, Garland had the misfortune of going to an extremely deep Dodgers team that didn’t really have space for him, which probably affected his perceived value. Garland’s not a Cy Young candidate, but he would provide significant value as a middle of the rotation starter to most teams. On the Padres, he probably provides even more value, as they’re not exactly teeming with quality starting pitchers. Critics may point out that the Padres aren’t likely to go anywhere with or without Garland, so why make the move (some of these critics may or may not be the same ones criticizing the Padres for not spending any money)? The fact is that even if the Padres aren’t going to the World Series, respectability matters to the fans and at the box office and these types of smart signings that can slowly improve the club are a path to a better future.

Basically, Andrecheck says in a few words what I tried to express in many words. “Respectability matters.”

by Daniel Gettinger

From an offensive perspective, players who get on base are good.  Players who hit for power are too. Players who both reach base frequently, and hit for power are really good.

Because a good measure of getting on base is on-base percentage (OBP), and a decent measure of power is slugging percentage (SLG), it has become somewhat mainstream to evaluate offensive performance by combining the two measures into OPS (OBP+SLG).

Unfortunately, adding SLG to OBP, while easy to calculate, is not an entirely accurate measure of offensive performance.  The main reason is OPS treats OBP and SLG as equals that are scaled in the same manner.  In fact, OBP is actually more important than SLG.  Given two players with the same OPS, the one with the higher OBP is better offensively.

Inside the Book Blog recently published an excerpt from PAAPFLY that illustrates the issue:

Continuing my bashing of Bengie Molina, allow me to show you how his terrible OBP can be quite detrimental. Bengie Molina posted a .727 OPS in 2009, which isn’t very good. Ryan Theriot managed to post an even lower OPS of .712 in 2009. He must be the inferior offensive player. Wrong. Molina’s wOBA is actually .308 to Theriot’s .318. Though Theriot slugged 73 points less than Molina, his OBP was 58 points higher, and, wOBA shows us that his 58 OBP points to Molina’s 73 slugging points were actually worth an additional 10 points in wOBA. This is just a quick example and a good way to illustrate just how much Molina’s extraordinary out making skills truly do hurt his team, offensively of course.

From a Padres’ perspective, I liken the Molina/Theriot example to that of Chase Headley and Kevin Kouzmanoff.  This is how Kouzmanoff and Headley stacked up in 2009:

	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
Kouzmanoff	0.302	0.420	0.722	0.312
Headley	0.342	0.392	0.734	0.328

Although not a perfect example (because Headley’s OPS was slightly higher than Kouzmanoff’s OPS), we can see that Headley’s wOBA is 5% greater than Kouzmanoff’s wOBA, compared to only a 1.6% difference in OPS. The reason is Headley’s superior on base skills.

OPS is an okay estimate of offensive skill.  But the only advantage it has over a stat like wOBA, which properly weights OBP and OPS, is ease of calculability.  It would be nearly impossible to calculate a player’s wOBA based on the information given by the stadium scoreboard, or the Channel 4 stat-line.  However, outside of convenience, there is no good reason to use OPS.

by Daniel Gettinger

Earlier, Myron asked:

Would the $5.3M the Padres gave Garland be better utilized on, say, locking up young players currently on the roster, future draft pick signing bonuses, international signings, and improving the scouting, player development, and analysis departments?

Myron’s question is a good one, and some, including R.J. Anderson of Fangraphs have answered “yes, Garland’s impact on the club’s playoff aspirations is minimal, and therefore the money would be better spent in other areas.”

Tom Waits, in the comment section (2) of Myron’s post adds further complexity to the issue.  He writes:

If there was a good chance that the Padres would have spent the Garland money in other ways, I’d be on the same page with Myron. Using Garland’s 5 million in the draft or internationally could buy you 8-10 years of control each for multiple talented players. But if the major league and amateur budgets are separate, which doesn’t make a lot of sense but might still be true, then signing Garland isn’t robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter was never going to get that money anyway.

Tom is mostly correct.  If the budgets for major league talent and “everything else” are completely separate (I doubt they are), then the Garland signing probably constitutes the best use of the Padres’ remaining budgeted funds, and is in a fact a good one.

However, as Tom alluded to, I bet that management has at least some flexibility to spend funds at their discretion.  If spending additional money at the major league level is not looking like a good investment, then it can probably transfer some of that to other areas.

Even in a world where management has full discretion over its spending, it may still make sense to spend money on a team not expected to compete for a post-season birth.

Sometimes we forget that marginal wins matter even for teams not expected to reach the post-season. Those wins still result in marginal revenue.

Furthermore, revenue generated is probably dependent not just on performance in the current season, but also performance in past seasons.  The Padres’ mediocre performance in 2009 is likely to negatively affect revenue in 2010. That the Padres were also bad in 2008 further magnifies the situation.  I believe a string of consecutive poor performances may have the ability to significantly drive the revenue curve down. That is, for any given level of wins, revenue will be lower if past performance was poor than if it was good.

If you accept such a model, achieving at least some reasonable level of success in  2010 can be important, and change the result of the cost-benefit analysis Tom and Myron were discussing.  A poor 2010 season would result in three consecutive bad seasons at the major league level, shifting the 2011 revenue curve even further downward (all else equal).

Because we do not have access to the Padres detailed financial information, it is impossible to fully analyze whether the Garland signing was a good one.  However, without adequate evidence to the contrary, I like to give the team the benefit of the doubt when it makes decisions on what areas of the organization it chooses to allocate funds.  Under such a framework, we must conclude that the Garland signing will result in a greater return on investment than the next best alternative.

by Daniel Gettinger

Pitcher Jon Garland and the Padres have agreed to what is essentially a one-year deal worth $5.3MM guaranteed.   (Note: There is actually a mutual option for a second year at $6.75MM with a $600K buyout).

Garland has been consistently durable and has posted consistently average performances throughout his career.  He is a low strikeout guy, who gets away with a lack of stuff by minimizing his walks and homeruns allowed. Since 2002 Garland has thrown no fewer than 191 innings in any season, while posting WARs between 2 and 4.

The projections that are out are pretty much in agreement on Garland.  He is expected to produce a FIP around 4.5 in about 190 innings.  That is solid, valuable performance, and worth approximately 2 wins ($7MM) above replacement.

Garland takes the place of the Padres previously unnamed fifth starter.  Instead of running Stauffer, LeBlanc, or some other replacement type player currently in the Padres system, the Padres can throw Garland. If someone else in the system steps up, the team will probably be able to deal Garland to a different team.

Expected to perform at a $7MM level for only $5.3MM, Garland provides surplus value, at a position of need.  Not a bad signing.

by Daniel Gettinger

Replacement level player.  Replacement level contract.  Enough said.

by Daniel Gettinger

A few weeks ago, I recommended Chris Jaffe’s book Evaluating Baseball Managers.

For those interested, Geoff has an excerpt from the book up at Ducksnorts.  In the excerpt, Jaffe examines former Padres manager Dick Williams.

by Daniel Gettinger

Following their trade for Scott Hairston, the Padres decided to double down on Hairston’s and sign his brother Jerry.

Jerry Hairston is one of the more versatile players in baseball, capable of playing every position on the field, and seemingly doing so pretty well.  Over his career, Hairston has an above average UZR at every position except for SS and 3B.  Of course, he does not have enough innings logged at some of those positions (including 3B and SS) to really be sure about his defensive ability at particular positions.  Overall though, he appears to be a very good fielder who can at least hold his own at any position.

Fielding and versatility is what keeps Hairston in the majors.  With the exception of a flukey 2008 campaign with the Reds, Hairston has been a below average hitter.  He projects to be a below average hitter in 2010 as well, with the projection systems on fangraphs pegging him to be between 4 and 5 runs below average in about 340 plate appearances.

Hairston signed a 1-year $2.12 million deal.  His solid fielding and versatility should help the Padres, but he is unlikely to greatly outperform his salary.  While the signing makes sense, it is tough to get too excited about the addition of a weak hitting utility player.