Time to panic?

April 21, 2008 in San Diego Padres with 4 Comments

Reading through the Padre blogs and message boards I certainly get a sense that many fans are in ‘panic mode.’ Now I’m not exactly sure what that is, but for these purposes, let’s assume it means that, based on the first 20 games, your expectation of the Padres final record has dramatically changed. Something like that. So, are you panicked?

Frankly, I am not. I’m honestly not sure what you can tell in 20 games, and that’s why I’m not all that concerned. I expected them to win around 85 games — now, if I had to guess, I’d say maybe 83 or 84. And if you do the math, that’s simply .525 ball (an 85 win team) from here on out.

If there is an area of concern to me, it’s how badly they have been outscored (surely, I’m not alone in this concern). The Padres have scored 65 and allowed 92. By Pythagenpat, that’s .348% baseball through the first 20 games. That’s certainly terrible, and at this point of the year, I think it resembles bad performance over leveraging the pen or anything like that (but, as usual, I’m not really sure). But the question is … Is 20 games of bad performance (or any kind of performance, really) predictive of future performance. I’m not sure of the answer, but at this point I think preseason projections would be weighted more heavily, especially if nothing catastrophic has happened (like losing a star player to injury).

The Tigers pythagenpat record so far? ~.330%. The Indians and Yankees have been outscored in ’08. How about the ’07 standings about 20 games into the year? Take a look. The Rockies had been outscored by 22 and sat in last place. We know how that turned out … The Cubs and Yankees sat in last place, despite mediocre RS/RA numbers. The Dodgers were +30 in run differential and sitting in first in the N.L West. They were outscored by 22 the rest of the way and finished in 4th.

Being a Padres blog and ‘covering’ the team on a semi-daily basis, it’s tough to say, “we need more games to see how good or bad we are … and even at 162, we won’t really have enough.” That probably isn’t what anybody is looking for, although it is part of the reason why I stay away from the day-by-day analysis for the most part. Anyway, I’m not saying 20 games doesn’t matter. Over the long haul, I’m sure a .350% pythagorean record through 20 games is not exactly a good sign. At the same time, I don’t think it’s enough games to severely alter my preseason thoughts.

If they end up playing .450 ball, well, then I was wrong. For now I’m stickin’ with the Pads … at least as a competitive, 82-86 win team. How about you? Are ya in panic mode yet?

Peavy: Masterful again

April 18, 2008 in Jake Peavy, pitchf/x, San Diego Padres with 5 Comments

This game is still going on — it is 0-0 and we’re headed to the 12th. Here’s Peavy’s pitch mix, with frequency and average mph in parenthesis (this is by PITCHf/x, of course).

Fastball: 60 (93.8)
Slider: 32 (84.1)
Curve: 7 (79.7)
Splitter: 4 (85.8)
Cutter: 3 (87.7)
Change: 2 (86.3)

3 pitches get the unknown classification — camera messed up. Here’s a quick glance at Peavy’s fastball velocity throughout the game:

peavy-pitch-speed.JPG
Still can’t figure out how to format these, but whatever. Anyway, like I’ve mentioned before, I plan to get more detailed with this stuff in the future – I’ve actually been pretty busy with homework lately. Let’s pull out a win here, ey?

Friday links

April 17, 2008 in links, San Diego Padres with Comments Off

Quick, Padre-centric friday links … with a look at Peavy (by PITCHf/x) later tonight …

Howlin’ Wolf — GY’s take on Randy Wolf’s last start.
Must read books — Dex and the GLB gang discuss their favorite baseball books.
On Justin Germano — Richard takes a look at Germano and some advanced stats.
Downtown Padres — New Padres blog I found a little while back. Give it a look-see.
PITCHf/x — Mike Fast with a tremendous list of questions that PITCHf/x will hopefully help answer.

Centerfield defense

April 17, 2008 in fielding, San Diego Padres with Comments Off

Played around with the Hardball Times’ fielding data to get a plus/minus stat like Justin did last year. I followed his process step-by-step and you can see his explanation in the link above. Quick version: plays above/below avg. on in zone chances + plays above avg. on out of zone balls … convert that to runs and voila. To get the opportunities part of the out of zone balls you estimate it based on in zone balls. There is some controversy as to what proxy is best here, and I believe some have argued balls in play would be better, but I stuck with this.

Anyway, these numbers are probably very close to meaningless at this point of the year, but I wanted to see where Edmonds stacked up, so I figured I’d go through the whole league. Here are the top and bottom 10 so far:

Top 10
Rick Ankiel: +6.4 runs
Nick Swisher:+6.1
Joey Gathright: +6.1
Clete Thomas: +5.6
Chris Young: +5.6
B.J. Upton: +5.2
Gabe Kapler: +5.2
Carlos Gomez: +4.2
Melky Cabrera: +3.4
Gary Matthews Jr.: +3.2

Bottom 10
Vernon Wells: -10.3
Ichiro: -9.9
Torii Hunter: -8.2
Ryan Sweeney:-4.9
Nate McLouth: -4.6
Aaron Rowand: -3.2
Carlos Beltran: -3.1
Rajai Davis: -2.9
Lastings Milledge: -2.4
Marlon Byrd: -2.2 

Jim Edmonds is at -.6 or about average.

Now take a look at this spreadsheet and tell me if you think something is going on: cf-fielding-2008.xls

It appears to me like the leaders all have fewer in zone opps than you’d expect and more out of zone plays. Conversely, the bottom guys have a lot of in zone chances and not many out of zone plays made. Maybe that’s really what’s happening, but I’m kind of skeptical. Things will probably even out as the season goes along and I’d be surprised if guys like Ichiro didn’t rise toward the top and Ankiel, Swisher, etc. toward the middle (or bottom or wherever). Like I said before, 100 innings of fielding data like this is probably not very representative of anything, but I wanted to go through the process anyway …

Dan Fox to the Pirates

April 17, 2008 in Sabermetrics with 3 Comments

If you’ve been around these parts for any length of time, you know I’m not commenting on some obscure minor leaguer the Pads traded today. Dan Fox has been writing for Baseball Prospectus for a while now and before that for the Hardball Times (he also has his own blog). I’ve mentioned probably about five times here that Fox’s weekly column at BP was my favorite one on the Internet. His style, writing, and most importantly his research was tremendous — always felt like pure sabermetrics to me, whatever the hell that is. Well, Fox is leaving BP to join the Pittsburgh Pirates as Director of Baseball Systems Development (h/t: Tango):

To be sure, I’ve had a ball analyzing and writing about baseball over the past two years here at BP, and previously at THT, but, as they say, all good things must come to an end. That isn’t because I’ve run out of topics to explore, but is instead because I will be leaving Baseball Prospectus to join the front office of the Pittsburgh Pirates to become their Director of Baseball Systems Development. In that capacity I’ll be assisting the excellent staff–including Kyle Stark, Bryan Minniti, Greg Smith, and Joe Delli Carri, under the direction of General Manager Neal Huntington–in building systems to support and inform the decision-making process of the baseball operations staff. All of those individuals mentioned, and many others, have made me feel more than welcome, and I’m thrilled to start the process of integrating the array of quantitative and qualitative information in a way that makes both even more instructive.

Of course, I’m also more than a little sad to be leaving BP, where I’ve had the pleasure of working with such supremely talented individuals and interacting on a daily basis with an informed and passionate readership. To both the staff at BP and to you in the audience, I can only say thank you, and wish you all the best.

I’d just like to say congrats to Dan and thanks for all the great work on PITCHf/x, baserunning, fielding, outfield throwing arms, and numerous other subjects. Our loss is the Pirates’ gain, I suppose.

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