Today marks the 79th day of the owner-initiated lockout. It still remains to be seen how long the lockout will last, but whatever its length, we’re likely to see a whirlwind of a mini-offseason as soon as the league and the players come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. While that kind of thing is fun to cover — the week before the lockout was a thrilling frenzy — there’s still quite a lot for baseball to do. So let’s roll up our sleeves, lend a hand, and find some new homes for a few of the remaining free agents. The trick here is that they actually have to make at least a lick of sense for the team signing them. But just a lick.

As we have a lot of work to do, we’ll nail down the hitters first and then divvy up the pitchers in another piece to follow.

Carlos Correa to the Angels – Seven years, $240 million

While there has been some speculation around the interwebs about Carlos Correa possibly landing a $300 million deal, I don’t think that is the likeliest result. Correa had a fabulous 2021 season, reminding people of the phenom he was when he won American League Rookie of the Year back in 2015, but there’s going to be at least some concerns about his durability. Not alarming ones, mind you, but the fact is that before 2021’s 148-game campaign, Correa hadn’t played in 120 games since ’16, a long time for a young player, and that’s even ignoring a pandemic-shortened season during which no one could play 120 games. That’s probably not going to scare teams off, but it will inevitably be priced into his offers since front offices these days are populated more by mean nerds like me than they are dewy-eyed optimists. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Jake Peavy has a claim as the best player the Padres have drafted and signed since choosing Tony Gwynn in the third round in 1981, and probably the most important as well. From 2004 until he was traded in mid-’09, Peavy, a 1999 15th-round pick out of an Alabama high school, was their ace, winning two ERA titles and a Cy Young award, making two of his three All-Star appearances, and helping the team to back-to-back NL West titles in ’05 and ’06 — the franchise’s only playoff appearances between the 1998 World Series and the expanded playoffs in 2020.

Undersized at 6-foot-1, 195 pounds, and dismissed as “frail and wild” by talent evaluators, Peavy parlayed a mid-90s fastball/slider/changeup combination and a bulldog mentality into a 15-year major league career (2002–16). During that time, he made four trips to the playoffs with three different franchises and earned two World Series rings (though he struggled mightily in October), all while battling through a variety of injuries that turned him from an extraordinary pitcher into a rather ordinary one.

Through it all, Peavy’s irrepressibly competitive nature remained apparent. As Baseball Prospectus 2016 noted just before he headed into the final season of his career, “Few pitchers present a bigger contradiction between stuff and mound demeanor than Peavy, whose fiery outbursts and furious soliloquies mask a finesse approach that no longer intimidates his foes.” A tip that Peavy picked up from Roger Clemens, one of his many high-profile mentors, may have had something to do with that. According to Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller, Clemens introduced Peavy to Icy Hot Balm, telling him “to take a little and put it on no-man’s land down there.”

“So over the next 12 years, you might say, Peavy regularly pitched with his balls on fire,” wrote Miller.
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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Diego Padres.

Batters

There’s no lying: 2021 was a tough year for the Padres, at least the last six weeks or so. As late as August 10, they were firmly in control of a playoff spot and, at 67–49, on pace for a 94-win season. The rest of the year was as brutal a run as I can remember for any team, certainly for one that had legitimate playoff hopes beforehand. Over the last 46 games of the season, San Diego went 12–34, the worst in baseball, even worse than the Orioles, who were nearly at the level of dragooning fans into throwing mop-up innings. Before the Friars, only one team, the 1986 Orioles, ever finished the season this poorly while winning at least 70 games. That was a team I remember well, being an eight-year-old in Baltimore at the time; it basically sent Earl Weaver back to retirement at a relatively young 56.

The good news is that the best reasons for liking the Padres before 2021 remain on the team. Fernando Tatis Jr. has the best projection for any player on a team run so far, by a two-win cushion, though this is partially thanks to ZiPS having anxiety about Mike Trout’s injury record in recent seasons and will change when the ZiPS for the Nats go public, but he is the foundation of this team, even if he eventually has to move to another position because of shoulder problems. Manny Machado is still in his 20s, Jake Cronenworth had a star-level season, and ZiPS thinks Trent Grisham will have a better 2022.

The bad news is that outside of Tatis, Cronenworth and Joe Musgrove, there are precious few Padres to feel clearly more confident about this time around, and they don’t have enough wiggle room to justify scraping by with holes at three of the four corner positions. San Diego appeared, late in the season, to realize finally that the Eric Hosmer situation wasn’t going to work itself out magically but still hasn’t committed to doing anything significant at first other than “insert coin to try again” like it’s 1993 and it just lost to M. Bison in Street Fighter II. That Nomar Mazara might be part of the left field mess if the season started today is not something a fan should be excited about. Wil Myers reverting to non-2020 form leaves right field as another weak spot, though it may be tough for the Padres to do anything here while also fixing first and left. And ZiPS sees no in-house saviors on the short-term horizon; ask me next year about Robert Hassell III.
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The Padres announced Bob Melvin’s 2022 coaching staff earlier this week, and the group is at once progressive and diverse. Notable among the new hires is 27-year-old hitting coach Michael Brdar, who comes to San Diego via the San Francisco Giants organization. Asked about him in Zoom session, Melvin — himself a newcomer to the club — told reporters that Brdar “Talks a language that I don’t talk; he talks the language that younger hitters are talking now.”

Clarifying that he does “talk it a little bit,” the 60-year-old, three-time Manager of the Year went on to say that “You need to be able reach these guys and speak their language.”

Following up on the question posed by MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell, I asked Melvin how much the hiring process has changed since he first joined the managerial ranks in 2003.

“I came here from Oakland, where we did everything pretty much in-house,” said Melvin, whose 11-year tenure with the A’s followed managerial stints in Seattle and Arizona. “We would look in-house to begin with; that was just kind of how the organization flowed. This was a little bit of a different process, knowing we were probably going to bring some guys in from the outside. We wanted it to be diverse in age, we wanted it to be diverse in thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late 30s did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »

In an accord between familiar and frenetic trading partners, the San Diego Padres sent Adam Frazier to the Seattle Mariners on Saturday in exchange for prospects Ray Kerr and Corey Rosier. It’s a bit of an odd move. The Padres, nominally in win-now mode, just shipped off a 3.5-win player for prospects. Meanwhile, the Mariners beefed up their thin infield, but at the risk of incurring a considerable opportunity cost in a free agent market that seemed tailor made for their needs.

Let’s touch on San Diego’s side first, since it’s the more perplexing one at a glance. Frazier is the big name in the deal. The National League’s starting second baseman in last summer’s All-Star Game, the 29-year-old hit .305/.368/.411 last season while accruing the aforementioned 3.5 WAR, though his production dipped following the trade. Always a good contact hitter, Frazier joined the game’s elite in 2021 with a 10.8% strikeout rate — only Michael Brantley, David Fletcher, and Kevin Newman whiffed less often. While 2021 may well have been his peak, Frazier’s been a pretty good player for a long time: Since debuting in 2016, he’s notched a 103 wRC+ and has averaged 2.4 WAR per 162 games. Contending teams looking to gain ground don’t usually trade away this kind of production, particularly from a player they just acquired last July.

Despite that, you can understand why the Padres considered him surplus to requirements. With no path to a starting job in the infield, and Ha-Seong Kim around to fill a multi-positional utility role, Frazier was a bit of a square peg on a roster of round holes. Yes, the Friars could have used him in the outfield — as they sometimes did last summer — but it’s not the best use of his skills. In theory, exchanging him for players who could offer the Pads more stick in the outfield or depth in the bullpen makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Intern

Department: Sports Science
Reports To: Director, Sports Science

Summary:
The San Diego Padres are seeking Interns in Sports Science. Each Sports Science Intern will be based out of one of the Padres minor league affiliates (Low-A Lake Elsinore, High-A Fort Wayne, Double-A San Antonio, Triple-A El Paso, or our Complex in Peoria). Candidates can indicate which affiliates they are able to locate to during the application process. Interns will be responsible for collecting/maintaining/organizing data from all player development technologies and using that data to assist coaches and other Sports Science staff in designing and implementing development plans for players in the Padres organization. Read the rest of this entry »

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below. We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central, as well as the AL East. Today, we’ll consider the NL West.

San Francisco Giants (107-55)

The Big Question
Could a low-key winter get the Giants on pace with the Dodgers and Padres? 2020 was the fourth consecutive losing season for San Francisco, and the division’s two best teams were extremely active in the offseason. It wasn’t the kind of doom and gloom it appeared to be for the Rockies and Diamondbacks, both of which ZiPS pegged for under 70 wins, but the Giants’ offseason seemed like it was geared more towards enjoyable respectability than elite status. The offense was solid in 2020 as new manager Gabe Kapler showed a real knack for using the expanded rosters to weaponize role-player talent, but it was also the oldest lineup in baseball. I was personally optimistic about the team’s reconstructed rotation, but there were a lot of moving parts to get the offense and pitching both clicking.

How It Went
Suffice it to say, it went really well, with the Giants outperforming ZiPS by more wins than any other team in the history of the projections. Outperforming projections by more than 30 wins is a rare feat, and the Giants did in the most difficult way, like climbing Mt. Everest in a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. Generally speaking, the teams that crush expectations have a lot of high-variance players, often extremely young talent with upside but an uncertain short-term outlook or guys with an injury history. But this wasn’t the case with the Giants; a bunch of 30-to-35-year-old veterans are the easiest type of player to project. Of the 20 teams that outperformed their ZiPS by the most wins (going back to 2005), the Giants were the only team that ZiPS had with tighter projection bands than the average team.

While there was one colossal breakout season from a young player (more below), San Francisco’s astounding 2021 season was built on shocking seasons from established veterans coupled with a solid bullpen built on a shoestring budget, a feat California teams all seem to have an odd affinity for managing. Brandon Crawford had his best season at age 34. Buster Posey and Evan Longoria thought it was 2012 or 2013. Darin Ruf, a journeyman role player who looked to be wrapping up his career in Korea, had a 143 OPS+. Read the rest of this entry »

With five days remaining in the 2021 regular season, it’s abundantly clear that there won’t be much clarity offered in the National League Most Valuable Player race. Yes, Bryce Harper’s Phillies still have a mathematical shot at a postseason spot per our Playoff Odds, unlike Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Padres and Juan Soto’s Nationals, but not everybody is of the belief that an MVP needs to hail from a postseason-bound team or even a contender.

From a practical standpoint, it’s usually the case that an MVP does hail from such a team; in the Wild Card era (1995 onward), 42 of 52 (80.8%) have done so. The tendency shows an upward trend, the degree of which depends upon where one sets the cutoff. For example, three out of 18 MVPs from 1995-2003 missed the postseason, and likewise three of 18 from 2004-12, but four of 16 from 2013 onward; it’s just as accurate to say that from 1995-2004, four of 20 missed the playoffs, dipping to two of 20 from 2005-14 and then four of 12 since. Either way, all-time greats Larry Walker (1997), Barry Bonds (2001 and ’04), Albert Pujols (2008), Alex Rodriguez (2003) and Mike Trout (2016 and ’19) account for the vast majority of those exceptions, with Ryan Howard (2006), Harper (2015), and Giancarlo Stanton (2017) rounding out the group. That Rodriguez, Stanton, and Trout have doubled the all-time total of MVPs who have won while hailing from sub-.500 teams — a list that previously included only Ernie Banks (1958 and ’59), Andre Dawson (1987), and Cal Ripken Jr. (1991) — is perhaps the more notable trend, with Shohei Ohtani likely to increase that count this year. Effectively, that’s a green light for Soto’s late entry into the race, and also worth pointing out with regards to Tatis, as the Padres slipped to 78-79 with Tuesday night’s loss to the Dodgers.

From a practical standpoint, it’s also true that the notion of value is extensively tied to the things that can be measured via Wins Above Replacement. As old friend Eno Sarris noted at The Athletic (in an article on the value of Ohtani’s roster spot that’s well worth a read), in the past 14 years, only two MVP winners were not in their league’s top three by FanGraphs’ WAR, namely Jimmy Rollins in 2007, and Justin Verlander in ’11. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll start with some screen shots.

The author of that trickery is Ryan Weathers, a 21-year-old rookie for the San Diego Padres who leads all of baseball in pickoffs this season with nine. Runners have only stolen two bases off of him and he hasn’t been called for a balk yet. His pickoff proficiency has been historic, as he has retired those nine runners in only 89.2 innings, or 127 baserunners allowed. On a per baserunner basis, Weathers is having one of the best pickoff seasons of all time:

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