The Deadline
The Price of Padresing
The Padres just completed a three game sweep of the first place Rangers. The trade deadline is here and the general consensus about the Padres is they’re an enigma. A.J. Preller needs to commit to a strategy, and ‘paralyzed by indecision’ doesn’t count as a strategy. Let’s see what clarity we can impose on this murky situation.
Historical Context
Baseball history aides our understanding of this strange, strange team.
1883-1884 saw the most dominant stretch of pitching in baseball history. Providence Grays star Charles ‘Old Hoss’ Radbourn amassed 105 wins, including an otherworldly 73 complete games, 60-12 record, 1.38 ERA, and 204 ERA+ in 1884 alone. True, his opponents were probably mostly Civil War pensioners wielding ‘bats’ made from wagon wheel spokes, but that’s still dominance. Amazingly, 1883-1884 also included one of the worst hitting performances of all-time, coming from the incredibly-aptly-named Tony Suck. The ‘futility infielder’ played for the Buffalo Bisons and Pittsburgh Stogies amongst others, and hit .151, while slugging only .161, for a ghoulish 24 OPS+. “Oh,” you’re thinking “He was a wizard with the glove,” alas…no. Suck lived up to his name by making 32 errors in 32 games. He was out of the big leagues by 1885.
Why does this matter? In 1883 the Providence Grays played the Buffalo Bisons 14 times. It’s entirely possible1 that Old Hoss Radbourn faced off against rookie Tony Suck. And if so, that is likely the most overmatched a hitter has ever been in baseball history. This is the exact dynamic of every 2023 Padres at bat with runners in scoring position. This is the first thing to know about the 2023 Padres: When the Padres have runners in scoring position, every pitcher becomes Old Hoss Radbourn, and every hitter morphs into Tony Suck.
We wrote a 2 part series on why a rigid batting strategy might be behind the Padres remarkable struggles; the upshot is that they swing for the fences even when solid contact would be more productive. And that futility has contributed to losing many close games. It can’t explain everything though; going 0-9 in extra innings is more than just a bad approach, there is bad luck as well. Fixing clutch hitting is challenging. The best the Padres might be able to do here is upgrade the lineup generally (DH in particular) and hope for good luck to normalize their close game W-L record the rest of the way. If you’ve been following the team all year this is the part you already know.
The Part You Might Not Know
The Padres woes in the clutch go beyond the offense. The bullpen also has a horrendous record in clutch situations this season. The Padres have had 46 save opportunities this year; Josh Hader has converted 24 of his 28 chances, which is a good result. The problem lies with the remaining 18 save opportunities: The Padres have blown 16 out of 18 non-Hader save opportunities!!! That is not a typo: 16 of 18. Look upon the statistics, if you dare:
Overall, the Padres are the best team in the NL in run prevention, and they have the best closer in the league. That might be why such an astounding weakness could be hidden in plain sight all year. Outside of Hader’s 86% save percentage, the rest of the bullpen is a ghastly 11%2. That’s unspeakable futility. The padres are 4-12 in these games. That hurts.
Bad clutch hitting and atrocious clutch pitching (outside of Hader) are why the Padres are under .500 despite other indications that they are a very good team. They have unrivaled star power on offense and the best starting pitching in baseball, but they convert their hits into runs at a low rate and have blown an absurd percentage of late leads.
The great news is that, unlike clutch hitting, the problems with bullpen performance in the clutch may be more easily addressable. In fact, it’s already started. The return of Robert Suarez is huge. If the 10 blown save opportunities given to Hill, Honeywell, Garcia, Carlton, and Kerr had been given to Suarez instead, the Padres would almost certainly be better off. In fact, if they had gone even 5-5 in those games, they’d be holding a Wild Card spot. If one of those wins was the June 19th game against the Giants, they’d be in first place in the Wild Card. The Padres might well have 5-6 more wins if they had one more elite pitcher in the bullpen. Robert Suarez was supposed to be that pitcher…and now he’s back.
Here are the worst teams in the league at holding leads:
The surprising team on this list is the first-place Texas Rangers. Of course, the Rangers surely noticed this shortcoming, which is why they traded for Aroldis Chapman back on June 30th. They isolated a weakness and addressed it. The Padres have been trying to go with in-house solutions, and now they’re 24 hours from the trade deadline without having traded for a bullpen arm.
If there is any good to come from painfully vivisecting the disappointment of this season, it’s this: This team appears to be fixable. High-leverage bullpen arms are needed. The return of Robert Suarez is a godsend. Steven Wilson’s emergence has been the fruits of player development realized. But more is needed.
The Secret Is Out
Nick Martinez was supposed to be one of the high-leverage bullpen arms, but he leads the team in blown saves. We wonder if part of the reason why is that the secret playbook Martinez follows is no longer a secret. Martinez clearly knows that first-pitch strikes shave about 100 points off the hitters OPS. What he might not be factoring in is that that number comes from the entire corpus of pitcher/hitter matchups, and in those matchups, the batter usually doesn’t know what’s coming. But it sure looks like Martinez’s opponents are strategically ambushing his tendency to throw the first pitch cutter/sinker for a strike. A lot of them are timing it up. Here is the pitch sequence from Martinez’s miserable sixth inning on Sunday:
Garver, Duran, Huff, Taveras, and Semien all swung at first-pitch offerings in the zone. Only Taveras missed, probably because he was looking sinker/cutter and got a changeup. But the other four made hard contact. Martinez should probably mix up his pitches; he’s become too predictable. He needs to mix in more off-speed stuff and throw more first pitches outside the zone. This is a fixable problem, but the final third of a season for a team with high expectations is not exactly the best spot for a pitcher to work things out. The Padres need another high-leverage bullpen arm.
Rough Seas Ahead
The sweep of the Rangers boosted the Padres postseason odds significantly. But the remaining strength of schedule is daunting:
A remaining strength of schedule of .569 makes the task of playing almost .700 baseball much harder, but there is an upside…
Six Pointers
In soccer, some games are called “six-pointers”. These are games where both teams are in contention for the same prize, be it the glory of a title or the booby prize of relegation. The term comes from the fact that the stakes are higher than the normal three points for a win: The winning team will get three valuable points and deny three points to their opponent. Hence, “six-pointer”.
A similar situation exists in baseball. The Padres need to finish in front of any three of San Francisco, Milwaukee, Miami, Philadelphia, Arizona, and Chicago. A look at the Padres’ August schedule is dotted with six pointers:
So, while the Padres have to play a lot of good teams, they also get to play the teams they need to catch. This is the flip side of the difficult remaining schedule: it’s difficult because it includes many of the teams the Padres are trying to leapfrog.
Let’s take another look at the Wild Card standings:
The Padres are clearly one of the best teams on this list. They have five fewer wins than the Brewers and Marlins, and four fewer than the Diamondbacks. As discussed, this win differential may have been negated by having a healthy Suarez all year… Alas. But Suarez is now back in the bullpen. Going forward the Padres have a chance to make their own destiny.
Coming Into Focus
It does seem like in recent weeks there has been a change in the Padres: a true focus on winning winnable games and assembling lineups in a meritocratic way. Evidence of these changes is everywhere: On Saturday, Hader was brought in to close a 4-0 game. Matt Carpenter didn’t play in the Rangers series, and he’s only had one at-bat since his ill-fated start in Detroit. Taylor Kohlway was sent down and Brett Sullivan was brought up, which allows for two-catcher lineups with less risk of injury chaos (though we’re less afraid of that injury chaos than some). Unfortunately, there were still a few signs that priorities other than winning are still finding purchase. Bob Melvin suggested that it was a team priority to get Carpenter at bats. Melvin’s announcement and fans reactions were captured perfectly by @TooMuchMortons_
Melvin might feel obligated to say this for the sake of clubhouse morale. It’s worrisome though. We mean this in the nicest way possible, but when the team’s hopes hang by thread, and every game is a must win, you don’t need to hunt for at bats for Tony Suck. Matt Carpenter has had an amazing career, but there is evidence he’s no longer a major league quality hitter. This team should not feel obligated to hunt at bats for any player except the best player suited to the moment. If ever the best player suited to the moment is Matt Carpenter, by all means let him hit. Otherwise please avoid succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy.
The Price Of Padresing
Tragedy nearly struck Sunday when Ha-Seong Kim took a hard dive into home plate:
Kim has his right arm fully extended when he slides into Rangers catcher Sam Huff, who is (legally?) blocking the plate. The force of his momentum is transferred through his outstretched arm into his right shoulder. This is the exact type of energy transfer usually seen in shoulder subluxations or dislocations. Thankfully, Kim seems to have avoided a serious injury. Unlike injuries elsewhere in the body, the physical exam for diagnosing shoulder subluxations and dislocations tends to be quite reliable. So, the doctors are probably right, and even though Kim will probably need some days off, it looks like disaster was avoided.
Another scary moment happened on Sunday when Machado fouled a ball hard off his foot. He seems to be okay. Of course, Soto recently missed a start with a finger injury, and these bumps and bruises make it easy to see just how dramatically injuries can alter the Padres’ season. If they were running away with a wild cards spot, then they could ease Kim back into the lineup, and maybe give Machado and Soto days off to let small injuries heal. Unfortunately, they don’t have that luxury. Similarly, if they were clearly a playoff team, they could follow the trade deadline strategy of a playoff-bound team (as the Rangers did in acquiring Chapman) instead of having to hedge. These things are the price of the early season Padresing.
The Padres Are Not the Mets
The Padres and Mets have been compared all year because they both have high payrolls and disappointing records. But there are differences, and one of the big differences is that this week, the Mets appeared to give up on the season: They traded starter Max Scherzer and closer David Robertson. This was probably the right decision. After all: The Mets are not a good team. They spent huge sums of money on players who were past their primes, and also players who are not clearly above average. They’re simply bad; they haven’t suffered from bad game luck the way the Padres have. Simply put: The Padres might be fixable. The Mets don’t appear to be.
The Worst Of All Time
Sometimes you see an example of something so bad that you immediately know that it’s the worst example in its genre, even if it’s the only example you’ve ever seen. Here was Steve Phillips’ idea of a win-win trade:
Steve Phillips was once an actual baseball GM. What a world.
Deadline
The season to date has been a 106-game test of faith. But the sweep of the Rangers may have been the baseball Gods giving Padres fans a sign that this team is good enough to do anything. It certainly gave A.J. Preller the signs he needed to pursue a buy-at-the-deadline strategy. The baseball Gods may have given another blessing given that the Angels just acquired Padres uber-nemeses CJ Cron and Randal Grichuk, which means that the Padres won’t face either during their three-game series in Colorado. The Padres weaknesses have been laid bare across the first 106 games and there is just time, just over 24 hours in fact, for A.J. Preller to fix the team’s sputtering engines. An upgrade at the DH platoon and a bolstered bullpen could very well give this team wings. The runway is clear. If you’ve stayed on board this long there’s reason to believe the team is poised to take off. Here’s hoping they take flight against the Rockies.
One of the curiosities about 1800’s baseball is that although individual player statistics are available, the box score was not widely used and it’s very difficult to know exactly which pitchers faced which hitters and when.
Many remember June 19th as the worst loss of the season. In that game, Luis Garcia was brought in with a 4-2 lead; he promptly blew the lead. Interestingly, the blown save went to Drew Carlton, since he was pitching when Garcia’s inherited runner scored; Garcia was credited with a hold. This is a terrible indictment of the hold as a meaningful stat.