Over 1000 (presumably) Padres fans voted on Paul DePodesta’s latest poll. Somewhat surprisingly (to me, at least), 87% of the fans want the Padres to “sell” as the trade deadline approaches. At this point, I think that’s the obvious choice, but I figured more people would choose “buy” or “stand pat” with the Pads being “just” 10 games back in the putrid NL West.

Tango Tiger did not really like the poll question.

And here’s more from Tango — a good little explanation of WPA.

New Padres blog — “There are Better Deals in August.” Lots of good stuff there, including this post on being “consistently competitive”:

Second, I personally do not care too much about winning the World Series. What I actually care about is that the possibility of winning the World Series exists throughout the season. As all Padres fans have been reminded of this year, it is much more fun to root for a team that is eliminated on game 163 rather than game 63. Would I rather see the Padres win a World Series than not? Of course. But in general, I am content with the team being “consistently competitive.”

Great stuff, as usual, from Dave Studeman’s weekly column. Interestingly, a fliner — a BIP between a line drive and a fly ball – is the second most valuable type of in-play ball (from the hitter’s perspective, of course).

Here’s a breakdown of the Sabathia and Harden deals from a bunch of THT writers.

Patriot’s posted part 3 of his run estimation series — gotta finish reading that.

Skyking is back posting on his blog, and here is his NL all-star team.

Fifth Outfielder proposes a baseball website based on minor league projections and scouting reports … yeah, somebody get on this : )

At The Hardball Times, Alex Eisenberg breaks down some mid first round draft picks, including Allan Dykstra:

As for what Dykstra does well, he generally lets the ball travel deep into his hitting zone. His batting eye is praised as one of college baseball’s best (and the numbers back him up, with a .519 on-base percentage). Also, he gets excellent loft on his swing, which will help in generating plenty of fly balls.

However, I do have questions about Dykstra’s overall fit with the Padres, since his defense is barely average at first base, and since first base is locked down by Adrian Gonzalez. In addition, I’m not convinced there weren’t better players on the board to choose from.

Grade – B-

I’ve neglected to mention it (not that you haven’t found out by now anyway), but there are some medical concerns now surrounding the first round pick.

Some people have said, “Forget about Dykstra, take the pick next year.” I have two problems with that. One, we don’t really know too much about the situation. Two, prospects are worth very little in the minors … until you turn them into major leaguers or other players (via trade), they don’t really have too much value to the organization. With that in mind, the Padres would be kind of spinning their wheels if they can’t sign Dykstra, even if they bring in an equally talented player in next year’s draft. A prospect now is worth more than a prospect a year down the road … or something like that.

Young Dbacks’ pitcher Max Scherzer is a stathead:

MS: Last year he came across the whole BABIP theory and explained it to me, but I was initially very skeptical because I just could not imagine all pitchers were essentially the same. As my season went on, I kept an eye on it, and he was right—pitchers really do not have control over the balls put in play, [that's on] the defense and luck. I’m very numbers-oriented myself, so I kept digging into this wealth of information. Sure enough, the K/BB and HR/9 were really the driving numbers behind the success of pitching. It really made sense to me, but the pitcher inside couldn’t comprehend that, of everything involved, just three outcomes can determine one’s success.

Melvin Nieves takes exception to a recent Tom Krasovic article.

Mike Fast has moved his PITCHf/x catalog to The Hardball Times, and it’s pretty cool. There are a few of my older posts buried in there (thanks, Mike), but they obviously don’t stack up to all of those brilliant pieces. Take a few minutes to browse some articles. Tons of fascinating stuff.

Didn’t get me, believe it or not : )

Pizza Cutter has developed a new fielding metric using retrosheet data (part 1, part 2), similar to Dan Fox’s and Sean Smith’s. Good discussion at The Book Blog.

If you’re interested in “run estimation stuff,” check out Patriot’s last few posts. Sticking with the theme, there’s some additional discussion of the topic here.

 Geoff Young compares Adrian Gonzalez and Justin Morneau … and Jeff from Lookout Landing thinks Gonzalez is one of the most underrated players in the game.  

jbox and the GLB crew discuss Sandy Alderson’s interview on 1090. I’d listen to it, but the volume on my computer is awful (and/or it’s something with the recording …). Anyway, sounds like they got into it (again) about the Pads not having an advance scout. My opinion on the issue? I don’t really know (hey, what’s new?). There are some things you can only get from being there in person, I suppose. But there’s also a lot you can pick up without actually having a scout watch a team live, whether it is from video analysis or things like PITCHf/x. fwiw, here’s an older article from the USA Today on advance scouting.

There’s some good fielding analysis talk in this thread at DS (starting around post 24).

Peter Friberg has returned to blogging at Padres RunDown. Have always enjoyed his thoughts and analysis …

Brian Giles has been the 6th best position player in the NL so far, according to Justin’s calculations (based on hitting, fielding, and a positional adjustment).

Do ya need proof that you should take everything I write with a huge grain of salt? Here you are … on February 26th I wrote: “Well, I’m not going to post every day. Or I’m at least not going to plan to … blah, blah, blah.”

Since then: 122 posts in 123 days : )

Geoff Young’s posted parts one and two of a three part interview with  Padres’ CEO Sandy Alderson. Certainly, as you’d expect, some fascinating stuff. Here’s Alderson on prospects and appeasing the fans:

That’s one of the issues with Chase Headley, with our farm system in general. We keep saying the farm system is improved, and Baseball America and people agree — it’s a vast improvement over the last couple years — but people want to see players [pounds fist on desk], they want to see guys come out of the system: “Don’t tell me about what’s coming, I want to see Chase Headley.” And I understand that. It can’t just be this conceptual improvement. It can’t be something that’s invisible. We’ve got to have some tangible results, and we’re about to see some of that.

The Mariners fired GM Bill Bavasi yesterday. And now they (USSM, that is) are in full Chris Antonetti mode. Speaking of Antonetti, Indians fan and sabermetrician Pizza Cutter has some thoughts on what his hiring could mean:

The Mariners could actually send the message that baseball is ready for a statistical revolution, that no longer will they be afraid of guys with calculators who might challenge the accepted wisdom.  Baseball might actually move into the Enlightenment.  An amazing thought.

J.C. Bradbury doesn’t really like VORP. I agree with some of his points, but certainly not all of them (at least, I don’t think). The discussion that takes place in the comment section is pretty interesting, too …

For what it’s worth, the original article that J.C. links to, by Dan Sheinin of the Washington Post, is very good (at least in my opinion). I actually think it’s a lot better than the usual intro-to-sabermetrics type posts that you’ll get from a mainstream writer. Sheinin seems to have a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about, as opposed to many writers who appear to do 20 minutes of research, throw in a few of the cookie cutter stathead zings (mother’s basement, slide rule, etc.), and then get back to writing about something else.

Preston Gomez at Sac Bunt has a couple of nice breakdowns of the Pads’ draft.