Peavy Nixed Deal To ChiSox

Jake Peavy will remain in San Diego, for now. The reason that the former Cy Young winner is not packing his bags for a foursome of prospects is that Kevin Towers and the Padres continue to give up their leverage in order to sign players to a more discounted deal by giving players the power of a full no trade clause. Jake Peavy has stated time and again that he has a strong preference to stay in the National League. He, as FF would have, used his power to dictate his destination. FF urges fans not to be upset with Peavy; when he signed a discounted deal to stay in San Diego he gave up the right of free agency thus his right to decide where to sign. This clause was earned by Peavy, just should not be given away by the Padres front office.

All Padres fans remember the multiple deals that Phil Nevin turned down to stay in SD (one to the Reds that would have brought Ken Griffey, Jr, and another to Baltimore) as well as Brian Giles last season to Boston. This continuously come back to bite the Padres and is frustrating for the organization and the fans.


Foxsports Ken Rosenthal agrees with FF.

Tony Gywnn Jr A Padre

Amid all the Jake Peavy to the Chicago White Sox rumors on Thursday the Friars did pull the trigger to bring Tony Gywnn Jr to San Diego in exchange for Jody Gerut. While FF has enjoyed watching Jody Gerut resurrect his career in a Padres uniform we are excited to have the son of Mr Padre roaming the spacious outfield in Petco Park (19 Tony Gywnn Ave)! FF wrote about the possibility of bringing Gywnn Jr in at the beginning of the season, but we were about 45 days early.

Text Chat: May 19, 2009

1st Inning:
Scott: Scotty top tank
Ryan: Nice
Scott: Hundley HR in second straight ab... walk off and then this to straight away CF
Scott: Go team

7th Inning:
Ryan: That last pitch - WOW
Scott: Not watching... what happened?
Scott: Was it the Burke guy? He looks solid, goes right after people
Ryan: It looked like a screwball (probably a changeup). Seriously, rewind it. It is that worth it.
Scott: Wow, nice catch by Lewis... not amazing - but nice
Scott: I will after this half inning...
Ryan: Indeed.
Scott: Pitch around Hairston to get to AGone? Idiot

9th Inning:
Ryan: I hate to sound like Dad, but Heath is overdue for a less than steller outing
Scott: I can't wait for you to sound like him when you say 'O-V-E-R'
Ryan: O-V-E-R.

Draft Day Decision

The Padres own the 3rd overall pick in this June's draft and mlbtraderumors.com shuffles through a few possibilities to help rebuild the Friars farm system. A silver lining after another road loss (now at 11 straight) is that the Padres are posturing for a very high pick in the 2010 draft as well...

SIGH

With the exception of the phenomenal talent of Adrian Gonzalez this team is unbearable to watch.


The End

Running Wild on Chris Young

This topic has been covered extensively elsewhere (most notably on FanGraphs.com: "Chris Young's fatal flaw"). Dave Cameron neatly sums up his article: "[q]uite simply, Young is worse at holding runners than anyone else in baseball is at any other skill."

Of course, many great pitchers have been notoriously poor at holding runners. Greg Maddux, for his career, was stolen against at a 76.3% rate (league average usually varies between about 68-72%). Chris Young, for his career, is 91% (and 100% last year and so far this season). Statistical analyses show that the "break-even" point for steals sits around 75%, implying that teams generally deploy a sub-optimal stolen base strategy.

Back to Young. On April 27, the Rockies went 8-8 in stolen bases in Young's 3 innings. Dexter Fowler went 5-5. Watching the start, it was clear that Young wouldn't have lasted long, with or without the stolen bases. However, we can estimate exactly how many runs he cost the Padres during that start.

To start, familiarize yourself with the run expectancy matrix (data is from 1999-2002, but other studies have shown that these rates are acceptable for the modern era). Basically, this is MLB-wide data showing how many runs a team can expect to score in a general runners-out situation. There are more specific systems available that customize these on a team-by-team basis, but these are more difficult to use, and do not provide a significantly greater amount of accuracy.

Using the matrix linked above, we look at each stolen base against Young on his 27 April start. Additionally, I have pulled film from MLB.tv to look at each base and give a rough estimation of the Nick Hundley's chance at preventing the theft. I'll run through the first 2 stolen bases then will present the summary.

SB #1: Fowler on 1B, steals 2B, 0 out. With 0 out, runner on 1st, a team can expect to score .953 runs. With 0 out, runner on 2nd, that becomes 1.189 runs; essentially, the stolen base is "worth" the difference, or .236 runs.
SB #2 and #3: This was a double-steal. Fowler stole 3rd while Spilboroghs stole 2nd. 1st and 2nd with 0 outs expects 1.573 runs; 2nd and 3rd with 0 out expects 2.052 runs, a difference of .479 runs.

Summary data for all 8 SB against Chris Young: the expected cost was 1.61 runs. Of course, several times the Rockies would've scored those runs with or without the stolen bases, but it's fair to say that Young likely cost himself between 1-2 runs because of the 8 SB against him. In reviewing video, Hundley had no chance at 4 of the stolen bases. Twice he dropped the pitch, and twice could have gotten the runner with a perfect throw. I think it's fair to lay most of the blame at Young's feet: several times, the runners had a head start before C.Y. started his motion!

I have two thoughts to this: first, stolen bases generally aren't worth that much. The most valuable situation in this example (excluding double steals) was Fowler's 1 out steal of third; it "earned" the Rockies about .293 runs. Even in an extreme example, 8SB in 3IP only cost (at most) 2 runs. Secondly, I think that Young is so outrageously bad at holding runners, that an event with such a small effect on runs (the stolen base) will force him to focus on something other than pitching to the hitter.

For last season, runners were a perfect 44-44 in stolen bases against Chris Young. Assuming that the overall weighted run expectancy for the stolen base is about .20 (as has been shown elsewhere), Young cost himself almost 10 runs last year in stolen bases. 10 runs is about equal to 1 win; Young's value in 2007 (remember, 2008 was marred by horrific injuries) was about 4.5 wins. This suggests that Young gives away about a quarter of his positive value simply because he's unable to hold a runner.

For several years now, the Padres defense against the running game has been an absolute joke. Opposing teams were 150-176 (85.2%) in 2006, 189-209 (90.4%) in 2007, 268-208 (81.5%) in 2008, and are 25-29 this year (86.2%). Fortunately, opponents haven't yet begun to steal as much as they should against the Pads, but the question remains: how long will it take other teams to follow Clint Hurdle's lead and give the entire team the green light? The Padres are costing themselves 2-5 wins per year by not defending against the stolen base at a league average rate. FF wonders how long the Padres can afford to get dismal offensive as well as defensive production coming out of the catcher's spot...

Giles Rests, Friar Bats Follow Suit

Harry "Bud" Black finally gave Brian Giles most of the night off (who did earn a walk in the 8th, staying the game after pinch hitting), giving a nod to rarely utilized reserve Edgar Gonzalez. Reminiscent of the 2008 campaign, Edgar made the most of his opportunity, swatting a bomb off former Padre Randy Wolf, staking the Padres to a 1 run lead in the top of the first. Unfortunately, the Padre bats were otherwise quiet, and Chris Young, who allowed one run in 7 innings vice 5 punch outs, was just short of the perfect pitcher he had to be in order to capitalize on the offense his club would contribute for the night. After giving way to Edwin Moreno and Cla Meredith, who both posted zeros on the board, Luke Gregerson allowed 3 hits and run without recording an out, giving the Dodgers their second walk off win in as many nights.

Run Bud Run?
After reaching first on a fielding error in the 4th, Edgar Gonzalez (leading off the inning while batting second) was erased attempting to swipe second base. Scott Hairston, hitting third, then fouled out for the second out, bringing up cleanup hitter Adrian Gonzelez with nobody on base. FF understands that a struggling team needs to shake things up at times to score a few runs, but we'd also love to see a station-to-station approach with the Adrian, who is the only hitter on the team that strikes consistent fear in opposing pitchers. It may very well be that this was a calculated approach with Adrian facing a lefty in Wolf, but he is still the club's finest, most consistent batting threat.

Lead Off Out

Padres RF, Brian Giles, is absolutely killing the Padres lineup by not getting on base in front of Adrian Gonzalez. A Gon broke his own team record by pounding 9 (previously 7) homers in the season's first month in the clean-up spot in the order. Adrain produced more than just power he hit at an impressive .333 clip and only drove in 20 runs. FF has placed blame on Giles, and will continue doing so until he is hitting above the Mendoza line. FF has been waiting for Giles to (at the very least) be moved from the 3 hole, and manager Bud Black finally cooperated...but moved him to lead off! Wow, way to "jump-start" the offense by getting Giles more AB's. FF understands that Giles has had a long and fruitful MLB career, but he no longer deserves to play every day at this very low level. He is just shy of 100 at bats in '09 and he has 2 extra base hits, FF remains underwhelmed with Giles, and Black.

FF will start to follow the Giles-Mendoza watch as we enter the 2nd month of the season.

FF continues to question Bud Black's bullpen usage, but that rant will have to come at a future date.