Before the start of the year, the Padres’ starting rotation was the butt of so many jokes. They essentially had to build it out through free agency, but not even through the appealing parts of free agency. More like the Jered Weaver parts. Here and there, there was occasional speculation the Padres could go on to have one of the worse rotations in recent memory. At the same time, people held the Cubs in the conversation for having maybe the best rotation around. It was certainly one of the best a season ago. Why would anything change? Cubs good. Padres bad. These statements were inarguable.

We’ve completed just a sixth or so of the season. You should be sticking to many of your preseason thoughts. But let me just show six numbers. Here’s how the Cubs’ rotation has done:

• ERA-: 109
• FIP-: 109
• xFIP-: 94

And here’s how the Padres’ rotation has done:

• ERA-: 106
• FIP-: 106
• xFIP-: 95

The Padres are basically right in the middle in WAR. It’s been a mixed bag of results, but overall it’s been fine, even slightly more effective than the Cubs. It’s a strange place for us to be, and surprising group effectiveness is driven by surprising individuals. Trevor Cahill has earned a front-page post.

Read the rest of this entry »

When asked recently about his post-retirement plans, the fabulous Ichiro Suzuki provided a response as memorable as his career: “I think I’ll just die,” he told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. It’s possible that he might just play forever. So it’s premature to call this remarkable at-bat in Seattle on April 19th his last in Seattle, as many did when it occurred.

But it does remind us of another great response Ichiro provided — one that gave life to the idea that he would be a great Home Run Derby entrant. “If I’m allowed to hit .220, I could probably hit 40 [homers],” he told Bob Nightengale back in 2007. “But nobody wants that.”

Ben Lindbergh once looked at the hypothetical shift in Ichiro’s outcomes if the player had attempted to hit for power, but now that we have even better batted-ball data, we can maybe take a look and see if he could have even been that 40-homer hitter at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once someone who’s erred has done his time, apologized, and satisfied society institutionally, there’s the matter of going on with life. This is true with every crime, however horrible, and the things Matt Bush did were horrible. He’s served his time — 39 months — and hopes we can forgive him. But that’s almost of secondary concern to him, at this point: life, and living, remains.

And Matt Bush, now perhaps the closer for the Texas Rangers, is doing his best to be a good baseball player because that’s the path in front of him. He believes any success he experiences in that role is due to the help he’s gotten. “Our pitching coaches are great, man, really great,” he suggested multiple times in our talk before a game against the Athletics this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the winter, Eric Longenhagen had very nice things to say about Padres outfield prospect Manny Margot. He ranked Margot and 23rd overall in baseball. He also gave four of Margot’s five tools a grade of 60 or higher. Margot’s power was the only tool that didn’t receive a plus grade. Eric assigned Margot’s game power a present grade of 30 (or three to five homers per year) and a future grade of 40 (10-12 homers per year). In sum, he projected Margot to do everything but hit for power.

Nine games into the season, Margot has not adhered to those power grades. He already has three dingers to his name, tying him for eighth in baseball. His .343/.396/.686 batting line works out to a 182 wRC+. The guy who was supposed to do everything but hit for power is hitting for power. Eric said the following in his write-up of Margot, which is starting to look prescient.

It’s possible Margot may learn to elevate the ball more regularly as he matures, and if he does he’ll become a star-level player.

Yes, it’s only nine games. And, yes, punchless hitters sometimes bunch a few homers together by pure chance. Noted bunt machine Mallex Smith hit two in one game, for example, but few noticed because it didn’t happen in the first week of the season. But Margot is doing something very different than what he’s done in the past, and if he keeps doing it, he could be a bonafide star.

Read the rest of this entry »

On opening day, the Padres lost to the Dodgers by 11 runs, and the score makes the game seem closer than it was. It was more or less how the game was expected to go, and half the postgame stories revolved around the same narrative: It’s going to be a long season for San Diego. And, you know what, it probably will be a long season for San Diego. But after game number two, the Padres and Dodgers are even at .500. The Dodgers didn’t just lose on Tuesday — they got blanked, 4-0.

Yangervis Solarte hit a home run. That was a big deal. Erick Aybar went 3-for-3 with two doubles and a walk. That was a big deal. Wil Myers scored on a pop-up to short. That was a big deal. But the biggest deal of all was Clayton Richard, and his eight shutout innings. Richard threw 69% strikes and induced four double plays, and he wound up with a game score of 75, tied for the second-best mark of his career. His only better game came in 2012. Clayton Richard isn’t supposed to turn in these outings.

He won’t make a habit of it. Nobody could. But that isn’t the point. The larger point is that Richard is back, he’s healthy, and he’s rebuilt. He’s 33 years old and he’s part of a rotation many expect to be the worst in the league, but you have to give Richard some credit. He possesses a true 80 skill.

Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I got a text from a baseball friend, asking if the Padres and Dodgers were getting prepped for the most lopsided opening-day matchup in baseball history. I didn’t and don’t have any good way to respond, since the necessary calculations would be way over my head, but it’s at least fun to poke around here to show just how awful this really looks. The Padres are bad, and the Dodgers are good. To make matters worse, the opening-day Padres get Jhoulys Chacin, and the opening-day Dodgers get Clayton Kershaw. One of the best teams in baseball, at home, against one of the worst teams in baseball, and the best team gets to use the best starting pitcher on the planet. Fantastic!

You might know that we calculate game odds, based on matchups, lineups, and location. When the Nationals hosted the Marlins earlier today, we put the Nationals’ pregame odds of winning at 63.2%. When the Mets hosted the Braves, we put the Mets’ pregame odds of winning at 65.2%. Here is where the Dodgers started off:

75.6%. Before anything had happened, we gave the Dodgers a 75.6% chance of winning. You don’t need the numbers to tell you the Padres were already up against it coming in, but for reference, all of last season, there were just seven games with the favorite at at least 75%. The most lopsided matchup of all had the favorite at 77.8%. Of the seven games in this table, four were Kershaw starts.

You see that the favorite won all of those games. This Dodgers-Padres showdown would’ve ranked as the seventh-most lopsided game of last year. No one’s going to be favored against Kershaw and the Dodgers, but at least in theory, on opening day, you get to put your best foot forward. The Padres’ best foot involves Jhoulys Chacin. The next game, at least, should look a lot better.

I’ll point out that last year’s biggest upset had the Phillies overcoming pregame odds of 74.4% in the Pirates’ favor. One day in, and the Padres have a shot to pull off a bigger upset than anything we saw all of 2016. How have things been going since I started this entry, when the teams were knotted up 1-1?

I see.

Christian Bethancourt made the Padres! This is exciting, because he’s making the team as a catcher and a reliever at the same time. His existence challenges norms in a sport that’s known for the specialized roles of its participants. That said, we’ll have to see if he’s more Brooks Kieschnick or more Kenley Jansen eventually. Because hitter-slash-pitcher Kieschnick was nearly a unicorn, while Jansen — though a special reliever since abandoning his work as a catcher — has a story that’s been told in baseball’s history before.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year we release team projections, and every year people express disagreement with them. But it’s not large-scale disagreement — typically, people differ on one or two or three specific teams. Sometimes it’s been the Royals, sometimes it’s been the Orioles, and this year it’s the Rockies. Most of the projections are considered basically fine. The FanGraphs crowd has determined that the Padres’ 2017 projection is basically fine. The Padres are projected to be the worst team in baseball, at 65-97, and we put their playoff odds at 0.1%.

But there are certain numbers I love to bring up. I have team projections going back to 2005, and since then, all the teams projected to win no more than 70 games have averaged 68 projected wins, and 68 actual wins. In that sense, the projections have been great. Yet the 2008 Marlins were projected to win 68 games, and they won 84. The 2010 Blue Jays were projected to win 65 games, and they won 85. The 2012 Orioles were projected to win 70 games, and they won 93. All of those teams were thought to be bad. All of those teams were contenders.

The Padres, right now, are thought to be bad. What if they turned into contenders? Let’s follow an 11-step process to make that happen. Let’s try to get these Padres into the playoffs, without doing anything too unrealistic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Zinter has a challenging job. The 48-year-old former first baseman is San Diego’s hitting coach, and the position players on the Padres roster are, with few exceptions, young and inexperienced. There is a plenty of raw talent, but there are also plenty of learning curves. Works-in-progress abound.

Zinter embraces the challenge, in large part because he enjoys teaching. By all accounts, he is very good at it. Prior to joining the Padres a little over a year ago, he served as assistant hitting coach in Houston, and before that he was Cleveland’s minor-league hitting coordinator. He began his coaching career in the Diamondbacks system.

He’s anything but old-fashioned in his understanding of the craft. Zinter is well-versed in launch angles and exit velocities, and as a result, he’s not interested in seeing his hitters — not even the speedy ones — slap balls on the ground and run. He wants them driving through the baseball with a swing plane that opens up a window and results in gap shots. From his perspective, it all starts from the launch position.

———

Zinter on teaching proper swing mechanics: “With technology being what it is today, with the slo-mo cameras — the ability to slow down the swing — we can actually see what a good swing looks like. A lot of times, what’s taught is ‘chop wood, swing down on the ball, knob to the ball’ — things like that, which make for a shorter compact swing. But some guys who feel they’re doing that end up swinging improperly.

“A lot of hitters, when they try to swing down, lead with their hands. They’re too steep into the zone. Other hitters, for whatever reason, think the same thing and do it properly.

Read the rest of this entry »

As if being a 27-year old rookie weren’t hard enough, Ryan Schimpf went at things in an unprecedented way last season. While the fighter — schimpf literally means “to curse and fight” in German — probably established himself as a useful major leaguer with a couple of important tools, regression will come for a player with such an extreme batted-ball mix.

Since we started recording these things, no batter has ever had a qualified season during which he hit fewer than four grounders for every 10 fly balls. Schimpf hit three for every 10 in his debut last year. Even if you relax the entry to 300 plate appearances, the San Diego second baseman is an outlier — only one person has ever recorded a higher fly-ball rate.

Read the rest of this entry »