Despite nearly making the playoffs last season, the San Diego Padres decided it was time to rebuild. In order to restock the farm system, San Diego traded away Adrian Gonzalez — easily their best player — and acquired Cameron Maybin, who may roam center field in Petco Park for many, many years. For teams like the Padres, who have essentially punted this season to rebuild their team, the performance of young players or prospects is one of the few positives ownership can sell to the fans. Cory Luebke, a former first-round pick, was given the opportunity to make his first start of the season this past Sunday.

Although Luebke, 26, was having a phenomenal season in the bullpen, the Padres decided he could be a larger asset in the rotation. In his first start, Luebke didn’t disappoint — going five innings with six strikeouts, while allowing only one hit. It may have been a successful debut for Luebke, but there are reasons for concern going forward.

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What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s a-happening.

As part of his ongoing efforts to bring light into the hearts of every man, woman, and child on this great and stupid planet, Mr. Paul Swydan submits to these pages each Monday the very able FanGraphs Power Rankings. Using a combination of calculations and spells, Swydan attempts to distill and render into electronic print the successes and failures of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams.

Swydan’s work is invaluable — both Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the Slap Chop guy agree. But here’s what people like: lists and rankings. And, after those lists and rankings are digested, what they like is more frigging lists and rankings. Which, that’s what I wanna talk about right now.

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You all may know me as the Japanese baseball guy, but my interest in the sport developed as a kid growing up in the Chicago suburbs as a die-hard White Sox fan. Because of my Chicago roots, my favorite part of the FanGraphs gathering in Arizona during spring training was our chat with White Sox assistant general manager Rick Hahn, who mentioned something that I’ve known for years: trainer Herm Schneider is a great asset to the Sox organization.

Rick specifically mentioned Jermaine Dye as an example of the success the White Sox have had limiting injury risks, but I have many fond and bittersweet memories of rehab projects the ChiSox took on in the 1990s. Here are some of my favorites: Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time in three weeks, the Brewers sport a higher WAR% than do the Phillies. At this point, the difference between the Phillies and the Brewers amounts to the weight of preseason expectations, which were somewhat muted for the Bierbrauers. They have few glaring weaknesses — a reliever or two would be nice, and they could stand to get better performance from their third baseman and shortstop, not they are alone in that respect. They even match up well with the Phillies, as while the Halladay-Hamels-Lee trifecta is still better on paper, the Greinke-Marcum-Gallardo trio is more than capable of besting them on any given day. And the righty-heavy Brewers also don’t lose any performance against lefties (105 wRC+ vs. RHP, 104 vs. LHP). Now at fourth place overall in the rankings, the Brewers are threatening to put some distance between them and the 26 teams below them, and if they can, the conversation moving into September may not be “can the Brewers win the National League Central,” but “can the Brewers beat the Phillies.” The answer to both questions very well could be “yes.”

1. Boston: Last week – 1, WAR% – .653 (2), FAN% – .605 (1), TOTAL% – .628
With 20 walks against just 7 strike outs, Dustin Pedroia has had a June to remember — just like last year. His wOBA of .471 last June and .463 this June (assuming it holds up in this last week) are two of his three best monthly marks.
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With the increasing popularity of wOBA and other linear-weights-based offensive measures, OPS and its derivatives have become obsolete. That is as it should be. However, three “three slash” (AVG/OBP/SLG) still has its uses. While wOBA and its cousins are to be preferred as an evaluative measure of a player’s offense, the AVG/OBP/SLG combination still has a helpful descriptive role.

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Sandy Koufax is rightfully considered one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. His run from 1963 to 1966 – before his career was cut short by injury – is one of the best four year stretches of pitching in the history of the game, and his dominance is why he was elected to the Hall Of Fame the first time he was eligible in 1972. He might not have had the career length of other all-time greats, but his peak was so good that it was impossible to come to any other conclusion than that he belonged in Cooperstown.

It’s time we say the same thing about Roy Halladay.

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One interesting aspect of the proposed realignment is the effect it will have on team travel. As Dave Cameron noted without division there would be fewer games between geographically close teams, and more between teams farther way from each other — travel will increase. Last Thursday On the Forecheck, a hockey blog, posted the total distance each NHL team will travel in the upcoming 2011-2012 season (hat tip Tango). That made me think that, in light of realignment, it would be interesting to see how much teams are already traveling — and how much variation is there between teams — as a baseline for the current system.

I wanted to get a broad picture of travel distances for each team under the current system, so rather than use just one year’s worth of data I looked at all seasons from 2005 (when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals) to 2011. I counted how many miles each team traveled and also the number of miles traveled on trips taken without a travel day (i.e., back-to-back games). Since this no-off day travel should be especially grueling. Here are the results averaged over the seven years, thanks to retrosheet for the data:

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Some teams get it, and some teams do not. As we discussed last week, the White Sox apparently do not. They’re just 4.5 games out of the AL Central lead after an abysmal start, yet they continue playing one of the league’s weakest hitters and placing him atop their lineup. That’s only going to hamper their chances to overtake the Tigers and Indians. A move is necessary, but they’re not making it.

The Seattle Mariners, on the other hand, appear to understand their current position. They’re at .500, just a game and a half behind Texas for the AL West crown. They have the league’s least potent offense, which surprises no one. But they had areas where they can improve. Earlier this month I wrote about Chone Figgins and his job security. Last week the Mariners finally made the move, recalling Dustin Ackley and benching Figgins. It might not be a cure-all for the offense, but the move shows their willingness to make the team better even if it means bruising some egos.

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Josh Hamilton thinks his eye color is the cause of his hitting problems during day games, and at least one optometrist agrees with him. After initially thinking it was just talk, the idea that there could be some scientific explanation that explained his problems made this story more interesting. So, the next natural step was to look at some data.

On Friday, we asked you guys to come up with blue-eyed players, and you responded with enthusiasm. Over the weekend, I went through that thread and looked at all the nominated players, compiling a list of guys who might make for a useful comparison to Hamilton. I left out players who played a significant part of their career in a dome, for instance, and left out guys who were noted sunglass/tinted contact lens wearers, as we wanted to measure the performance of light eyes in day light with as few compounding factors as possible. Overall, I came up with 25 players who fit the criteria. It doesn’t sound like a huge number, but those guys combined for over 47,000 day-time plate appearances and over 100,000 night time plate appearances in their careers, so sample size shouldn’t be a problem.

The results? Well, you probably won’t be too surprised.

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