Rearranging the Padres, By Popular Suggestion

A few minutes ago, I noticed that “Padres” was trending on Twitter. Imagine knowing that, and only that, several months ago. If I told you last June that “Padres” would be trending in the middle of February, you probably would’ve assumed one of two things. One, perhaps the San Diego Padres had been officially contracted. Or two, perhaps some citizen investigator had discovered that the Padres still exist. But we know the astonishing reality with which we’re growing accustomed: the Padres are a thing, and with all the moves they’ve made, there’s no question the team wants to win as soon as this season. They don’t want to win just this season, but it stands to reason the Padres would like to make this team as good as they can.

OK, perfect, keep that in mind. The Padres want to be good, right? How could they optimize the team? I’m going to blockquote some of you.

From Dave’s chat:

Comment From Drew
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Padres to Move Kemp to 1B, Myers to RF, and platoon Maybin/Venable in CF? No drop in offense, and definite improvement in defense.

From the comments underneath a recent Petriello post:

Anthony Rescan says:
I honestly think they’d be better off flipping Alonso and buying Matt Kemp a sweet, new first baseman’s mitt.

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Spa City says:
I assume Matt Kemp will work his way to 1B before too long, no? If nothing else, his bat should be reasonable for a first baseman.

Timbooya says:
Moving Kemp to first could be the easiest way for the Padres to improve their team.

High ceilings says:
If the team has as bad an infield as projected, presumably personnel would shuffle, perhaps including a switch from the outfield to first base for Kemp.

Now for the math. Let’s take this idea and work through it. As things stand, this is how the Padres seem to line up:

1B: Yonder Alonso
CF: Wil Myers
RF: Matt Kemp

But, there are bench players still on the team, outfielders among them, and what if, say, the Padres opted for this?

1B: Matt Kemp
CF: Will Venable / Cameron Maybin
RF: Wil Myers

There’s no way for us to actually know. But there are ways for us to estimate. Let’s do that to see if we can make the Padres better than they already are, just by rearranging a few pieces they already have. I’ll make some use of the Steamer projections, the ZiPS projections and the positional adjustments.

Offensively speaking, this is fairly straightforward. You’re removing from the lineup one Yonder Alonso, and you’re adding a platoon of Cameron Maybin and Will Venable. Last season, all of these hitters were bad. Alonso was the least bad. But we can do better than looking at just last season’s statistics. Over careers, Alonso and Venable have been about the same, and Maybin has brought up the rear. ZiPS likes Alonso to be the best hitter in 2015. The same goes for Steamer. I’d estimate a wOBA gap of around 20 points, which, over nearly a full season, is worth 10 runs. That’s an approximate difference between the two options, swinging the bat.

But wait! There’s also the minor — but relevant — matter of base running. Alonso’s a first baseman, and it won’t surprise you to learn he has a slightly negative career base-running score. Maybin comes in at +24 runs. Venable, +21 runs. This is all looking at careers, instead of individual seasons, but there’s nothing revelatory here; you’re comparing a first baseman against two guys who’ve shown the ability to play center field. Of course the center fielders are better on the bases. We’ll call the difference, over nearly a full year, roughly five runs. And this might well be conservative.

So you’d be looking at an offensive deficit of five runs. It would be up to the defense to balance that out. And you’d be dealing with defensive changes at three positions. So much of this is guesswork, but let’s guess about those three positions.

At first base, you’d be going from Alonso to Kemp. Alonso, we have a read on: He seems to be an above-average defensive first baseman. Call it +5 runs. Kemp’s a mystery, because he’s only ever played the outfield. We also have a good idea that, in recent years, he’s been real bad in the outfield. If you think of Kemp as a -15 corner outfielder, then applying the positional adjustment would make him a -10 first baseman. On the one hand, he’s never played the position before; on the other hand, his big problem in the outfield is range. The worst qualified first baseman last year by UZR/150 came out at -5. Let’s just stick with -10. Let’s say that Kemp really is a defensive liability anywhere.

In center, it’s Myers to Venable and Maybin. Myers has mostly played right, and he’s been in the vicinity of league-average. So the positional adjustment would put him at something like -10 in the middle. No one expects him to be good. Venable and Maybin? They’ve both been above-average center fielders in the past. Venable would probably play more, being left-handed, and he’s been a little worse than Maybin. He’s also older. Let’s just call them average, as a group. It’s safe, if maybe a bit conservative. So this is an upgrade in center.

And then there’s right, where you’d go from Kemp to Myers. Earlier, we considered Kemp a -15 corner outfielder. We also just figured Myers is roughly a +0 corner outfielder. So, that makes this simple. If you prefer a different Myers rating, then you also have to change his rating in center, and that just cancels out. Same deal with Kemp, if you apply the positional adjustment to move him to first. So the specific numbers here aren’t that important. Kemp moves down the spectrum, Myers moves down the spectrum and you subtract Alonso and introduce Venable and Maybin. You don’t need math to understand that makes for a stronger defense.

Using these estimates, the defense would be 15 runs worse at first, 10 runs better in center, and 15 runs better in right. In all, that would be a 10-run upgrade. Now, maybe, with the way things stand, the Padres will be aggressive about defensive replacements, like the Giants have previously been in left field. But on the other side, maybe Kemp would have a smoother transition to first base, and he wouldn’t be a -10 defender. You can argue in both directions. Maybe first base would be better for Kemp’s health. I don’t know. Let’s stick with +10.

The estimates, then, would be +10 in the field, and -5 on offense. Which, obviously, works out to roughly +5 runs overall. There are a few ways to interpret this. One, it’s not a bad idea. Any edge is an edge, right? The Padres should try to squeeze as many runs as possible out of the players they have. But five runs is also a terribly small margin, and it’s well within our error bars. And then there’s the contentedness issue: Kemp didn’t much like being demoted from center field in Los Angeles. He’s already having to adjust to a new ballclub in a new market, and maybe he’d hate the idea of learning a new position on top of everything else. A new and somewhat insulting position, a position that would make it difficult for Kemp to ever be able to return to the grass. These personality concerns can be resolved with few problema, some of the time, but the Padres are also probably looking to make Kemp maximally comfortable, and there’s risk in upsetting him. The Padres traded for Kemp on purpose. It’s now up to them to figure out how to use him.

So, in theory, with a defensive rearrangement the Padres might project a handful or two of runs better. Yet, the gap isn’t very big, and the risk is that the Padres upset one of their biggest-ever investments in the first year of his tenure. Maybe they could take care of that. Maybe they’d see to it that Kemp would be fine. It just seems like it comes down to a coin flip. There’s a little bit of negative value in asking Kemp to do something I’m sure he doesn’t want to do. Would it make sense for the Padres to rearrange, putting Kemp at first base? There’s a good argument for it. There’s a just about equally good argument against it. Which suggests there’s minimal advantage either way. All that work to get here. The Padres are about as optimized as they can be.