Do the Padres need to reevaluate how they evaluate players?
May 22nd, 2008 | Published in Padres, baseball | 13 Comments
I don’t think so. But a lot of Pads fans think that this year is evidence that the Padres have flawed ways of evaluating players or evaluating what wins in Petco or what kind of offense scores runs, etc. If you bring up the Padres success over the last four years, they say that it was luck or that it happened in a bad division or something else. Maybe there is some bit of truth to that, but to me it seems like a convenient way to say that 48 games are more important than four seasons worth of games, because that’s what you want to believe.
Take a look at the 2006 Red Sox. They won ~10 games less than the Sox did in ‘05 and ‘07. By Pythagoras, they were even worse, a .500 team, 20 wins away from last year’s world champion team’s pythagorean record. So, for the Red Sox, this was a pretty terrible year. Did Theo and company need to reevaluate their whole strategy because, after one bad year, they didn’t know how to do anything anymore? Well, maybe they did, but I highly doubt it. I mean, I think if you’re a progressive organization, you’re always tinkering here and there. You’re always looking for new and better ways to evaluate players and put a winner on the field. But I don’t think you let 50 games, or 162 in the Red Sox case, change the whole way you look at the game.
That Red Sox team had a lot of holes on the offense. Jason Varitek hit .238/.325/.400 and wasn’t getting any younger. Mark Loretta was probably a mistake at second and put up an 80 ops+. Alex Gonzalez had a .299 obp at short and fielding that did not appear to make up for it. Coco Crisp put up a 77 ops+ in center. Outside of Wily Mo Pena, the bench was filled with guys who had ugly years.
On the pitching side, Josh Beckett put up a 5 era and gave up 36 homers. Only Beckett and Schilling pitched over 140 innings (Wakefield threw 140 average innings). The rest of the starts went to guys like Matt Clement, Kyle Snyder, David Wells, etc — they struggled.
The Red Sox were spending more than any team outside of the Yanks, and they were average. So what did they do? They let Varitek bounce back and have a more expected campaign — .255/.367/.421. They replaced Loretta (*cough* Iguchi) with prospect Dustin Pedroia (*cough* Antonelli). They replaced Alex Gonzalez with Julio Lugo and found the Curse of Nomar wouldn’t go away. Crisp got a little better with the bat and played great defensively in 07.
They didn’t bail on Josh Beckett because of one bad year, and he came back with a Cy Young caliber campaign. They spent a lot on Matsuzaka, who wasn’t great.
Outside of bringing in J.D. Drew, who also didn’t perform as good as expected, that’s about it. I definitley wouldn’t call that off season a fire sale of any sorts. Of course, they went on to win 96 games and another WS.
I guess I have two points — sometimes even the best organizations, if you don’t put the Padres in that category, make mistakes. The Red Sox haven’t been able to find a shortstop in years and they’ve spent a good chunk of money there, too. Coco Crisp hasn’t really panned out. Loretta was awful. Clement, etc.
And sometimes after a year, you cannot tell if a move is a mistake or not. Josh Beckett for Ramirez and Sanchez? Looked terrible in ‘06. Now … not so bad, as Beckett was the ace of another world series team. Coco Crisp is bouncing back a bit with the bat and has played what appears to be great defense … Andy Marte still hasn’t panned out.
I think the Padres have a mix of players. Some can stay, some can go, some can stay or go. Kouzmanoff and Bard bounce back, Antonelli and Headley fill in here or there, a few nice trades and free agent signings = an 85-90 win team again in ‘09. One off year doesn’t mean an organization is clueless.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:01 pm (#)
Good Blog. I will continue reading it in the future. Nice layout too.
Aaron Wakling
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm (#)
Well said, Myron.
However, the Padres do need to fix the drafting policy.
Not having the proper fallback plan when things go wrong is awfully devastating for an organization with limited budget like the Padres. And Antonelli is coming around with his bat but his errors are piling up too (not much but noticeable).
BTW, I just checked the standings and notice that the Snakes are 20-5 within NL West and sub .500 outside. The Dodgers at least have winning record in NL. I don’t think they are a cinch to win the division yet. Of course, if the Rockies, Giants and Padres are not playing better anytime soon, punch the ticket for the Snakes.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm (#)
Yeah, I agree on the draft. I wanted Porcello last year … I do think they draft too much on the college side and too “cheap” in general.
hmm … funny thing with the Dbacks. I also just noticed the other night that the dbacks had a ton of home games and the Padres had a lot of road games. If we were closer, these would probably be reasons to get excited, but I’m afraid we’ve dug too deep of a hole.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm (#)
Nice article but. I think one big flaw the Padres made this year was not letting Chase Headley start the year with the big boys. In spring training, he looked more then ready. Mind you that wouldn’t have made a complete difference but it would of been a nice start.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 pm (#)
Hey MB go to XX 1090 and listen to the Sandy Alderson interview from yesterday. Philly Billy and Darren brought up this same “problem” with how we evaluate players. I thought Sandy did a great job responding to it.
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:12 pm (#)
Well played, Myron. I don’t think the Padres are doomed to a few more losing seasons either.
Here is the link to the Alderson interview:
http://www.xxsportsradio.com/common/global_audio/40/1316.mp3
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm (#)
Thanks, fellas. Will check it out later tonight if the internet connection stays up (I’m at a different location …).
Edit: Thanks for the comment, Paul … got caught up in the spam thing. Yeah, I think Headley could play in the bigs. I actually didn’t mind it, though, that he stayed down. If they can get another year of service time out of him by keeping him down to a certain date (I don’t even know what that date is), I think it’s a good move, although I know they don’t like to publicly admit that that is why they are keeping him down (and maybe it’s not).
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 am (#)
Hi
first up I’d like to say I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of months and that I’ve been loving it for the same amount of time
Now besides that I really think this is a great post. On other blogs you hear a lot of talk about wholesale changes -even KT said something about that- and maybe even firesales but I honestly don’t think that’s what the Padres need to do at the moment. It looks to me like the Padres have a core of good young players around which they can build to be competitive again in ‘O9. I see no need to blow up this team. This especially because one of the biggest problem early on was some players playing below their career avg. With these guys there is a good possibility that they’ll turn it around.
But then again this is only the first season that I’m watching baseballgames regularly so what do I know
I guess what I’m trying to say is that in general I’m more of an optimist so it’s good to see people who share this optimism with me and see the Padres future more as a halffull rather than a halfempty glass.
greetings from a staunch Belgium biased Padres fan
Arne
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:47 am (#)
[...] are more important than four seasons worth of games” (thanks to MB at Friar Forecast for expressing this sentiment more eloquently than I can). The important thing is to make incremental improvements and maintain a [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm (#)
Arne, great to see you drop in the comments … always neat to know that there are readers from other countries!
Yeah, I agree with you. I think they need some tinkering here and there, more so than they need to blow up the team. Retool, repatch, reshape (I like Geoff’s term at Ducksnorts) whatever you want to call it. I’m pretty confident they’ll be a solid club again in ‘09 because I have a lot of confidence in this front office.
A few more rough years like this, well, then we can start talking about big time changes with players, management, etc.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:42 pm (#)
lol … I’m listening to the Alderson interview linked above. Funny that the one guy goes … “do the Padres need to reevaluate the way they evaluate players” or something like that. I honestly hadn’t heard the interview, though maybe I did hear some discussion about it … I’ll edit this comment if I have anything to add about the interview …
edit: Liked his answer on the advance scout question … essentially, if not having as advance scout is hurting us now, what do you say about the last few years where we did not have one …?
Liked his answer on the strikeouts. Good stuff, as usual. Don’t know why some are so put off by his interviews …
May 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm (#)
Yeah I like Sandy’s interviews. It’s funny how often he says “ummm” though (it’s like he’s playing his comments through his head first and once it passes inspection it’s OK for him to say it out loud).
“do the Padres need to reevaluate the way they evaluate players”
haha yeah I loved that question too….that’s a lot of evaluating there. If that doesn’t work then perhaps they should reevaluate how they reevaluate the way they evaluate players.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:53 pm (#)
Or they could just go by their gut : )