Out Of The Frying Pan

And Into The Trap Game

The Padres just completed an intense three game series against the Yankees which saw 27 very competitive innings of baseball against a team with the second best run differential in all of baseball¹, and one cataclysmic inning in which the Yankees demolished every offering from Adrian Morejon and Wandy Peralta. The series unfolded the way a playoff series would, with the Yankees lining up their best starting pitching all three games. The games were in New York which is an advantage to one of the most extreme fly ball hitting teams in MLB. There might even have been some skullduggery² afoot. But it gave a realistic glimpse of what it will take to beat the best.

Now the Padres head to Colorado where the task is to show they can beat the worst. The Rockies were eviscerated by the Tigers on Thursday, losing both games of a doubleheader by a cumulative score of 21-3. If you’ve watched Padres baseball for long enough you’re probably sensing a trap game. Because we’ve seen that all too many times in the past. And Randy Vasquez will be on the mound trying to spin breaking balls in the thin air of baseball’s Bermuda Triangle. There may be some vapor trails seen in the Colorado sky Friday night. But it looks like the Padres may soon have something they haven’t had most of the season: a full arsenal to fire back.

On Opening day the Padres put forth this starting lineup:

Since then Yuli Gurriel has been released, Jackson Merrill spent two-thirds of the season on the IL, Jake Cronenworth missed nearly as much time, Brandon Lockridge missed 14 games with injury, and Luis Arraez missed six games with injury.

Indications are that Jake Cronenworth will join the team very soon (almost certainly replacing Oscar Gonzalez). When he joins the team, the Padres will be able to put forth their opening day lineup (with the upgrade of Sheets over Gurriel) for the first time since April 6th:

And this is a welcome sight because the Padres have struggled to score runs this season:

This has already caused some catastrophizing. Even if you intuitively understand that the rash of injuries had compounding effects on the team’s offense, it’s anxiety provoking to see the team’s well-below league average scoring, and easy to lose faith that things may improve. That’s why it’s really helpful to complement gestalt with data. Here is how Padres opening day starters (with Sheets instead of Gurriel) have performed cumulatively:

This isn’t what the output of the lineup would be on a per game bases because the at-bats would be distributed more evenly, but you get the idea, there is a lot of production coming from this cohort. It’s more disproportionate than you might think.

We can separate the rest of the hitters into two more cohorts, those likely to remain rostered (the bench), and those likely to be back in AAA or released (the replacement players). The bench players have not produced as well as the opening day lineup, which is not surprising:

That’s a drastic difference in production. But right away you can see two things that should be different once Cronenworth returns and the team is near full strength:

1. Jose Iglesias has had far more at-bats than a typical bench utility player through the first six weeks. Wade has had fewer than Iglesias, but still far more than he would have if the whole roster had been intact. So one effect of getting healthy should be fewer at-bats for both.

2. The other big effect is the type of at-bats that Iglesias and Wade are likely to get. When at full strength far more of their at-bats will come strategically when there is an opportunity to give them an edge with a favorable platoon matchup.

Compare Iglesias and Wade’s performance against their unfavorable platoon matchups:

86 plate appearances in the first six weeks were either Wade or Iglesias in a bad platoon matchup where they are nearly unplayable. But contrast that with their performance when able to face the favorable matchup:

For comparison here are the top 10 teams in the league by OPS:

Platoon matchups are a very big deal. With the roster at full strength the bench will take fewer plate appearances overall, and when they do it will more often be in a favorable matchup.

And there’s a final cohort, perhaps the most significant from the first six weeks of the Padres offensive performance. The replacement players:

Largely due to injury Oscar Gonzalez, Yuli Gurriel³, Tirso Ornelas, Connor Joe, Luis Campusano, and Mason McCoy made 142 plate appearances and had a combined OPS of an unthinkable .373. Even the Rockies have an OPS of .623.

One of the reasons WAR is such a wonderful statistic is that there most certainly is a gulf in class between a quadruple A replacement players and actual major leaguers, and WAR does a very good job of capturing this:

There is an enormous step-off in production between the players that were in the opening day starting lineup, and their replacements during the injury cascade. As discussed above, the WAR Iglesias and Wade accumulated was attenuated by how often they had to be deployed in unfavorable platoon matchups, so the bench production going forward is likely to be greater than what the WAR accumulation to date suggests, and barring injury the replacement players will not be taking any at-bats at all⁴. Addition by subtraction.

For the moment it looks like the Padres may put forth their intended lineup as soon as Saturday (it was since announced he will join the team Friday). There are still likely to be hiccups. Fernando Tatis Jr is almost certainly still playing through pain, his launch angles and squared up rate have waned since he was hit in the forearm by an errant fastball from Mitch Keller in Pittsburgh. Jackson Merrill was hit in the left forearm in his final at-bat in New York Wednesday and it remains to be seen if any performance degradation will come about while he’s playing through the bruising. Cronenworth will be making his return after not having faced major league pitching in a long while.

Still, getting to full strength should be a salve to anxieties about the offensive production through the first six weeks of the season in which the Padres had many replacement players on the roster.

But nothing’s ever guaranteed in baseball. If over the next six weeks this version of the Padres only scores at the level that the team scored over the first six profoundly injury laden weeks of the season, there will indeed be cause for concern. Though if over that stretch they produce the same 23-13 record, it will be hard to complain.

1. The Yankees were narrowly trailing the Tigers for the league lead until the Tigers outscored the Rockies 21-3 across a doubleheader Thursday in Coors Field.

2. There’ve been three instances in the past week in which it seemed like the opposing players may have picked up on a tell for the upcoming pitch call. This is something to watch. And something that, if true, you want exposed before the postseason. Maybe the Yankees did the Padres a favor in the 7th inning of game two.

3. Gurriel got the opening day start but we presume he would have gotten far fewer at-bats had the roster remained healthy.

4. Luis Campusano is perhaps unfairly put in this category, because he did not look overmatched and has had some success in the majors. He may return to the roster at some point.