Larry on 1

Good news, the Padres didn’t fall further out of first today. The bad news is, it took an off day to get that good news.

In other news, apparently ESPN and The Sporting News (p. 41 of the May 6, 2005 print magazine) both thought to do a piece on Padres’ hiring of Sandy Alderson as CEO. …This just in…

I was thinking about what to write tonight and I decided I should take a look at the team statistics and see what kind of picture they painted…

I found a few trends worth noting.

First, let’s look at hitting:

- Surprisingly, the Padres are 6th in HR with 22
- Not surprisingly (and unfortunately) they’re 14th in BA at .242
- Despite doing well in the long-ball department, they rank 12th in team slugging
- In large part due to their low BA the Padres are 10th in team on-base percentage at .330
- Combining OBP & SLG for their OPS shows the Padres in 11th at .721
- Yet somehow the Padres are 7th in Runs with 98

What can we learn from those stats? Despite playing their home games in park seemingly built for doubles, the Padres aren’t hitting them. Furthermore, their just not getting enough hits.

Now let’s look at pitching:

- The Padres are middle-of-the-pack in HR allowed; tied for 7th with 19
- The staff is showing signs of dominance ranking 4th in SO with 148 (in 193.1 IP)
- They are so-so when it comes to handing out free passes; 7th in BB issued
- Unfortunately the Padres are giving up lots of XBH; they rank 10th in slugging allowed
- To go along with an average level of walks, the team allows an 8th place on-base percentage
- Somehow despite only one ranking being better than 7th, the Padres have the 6th best ERA: 4.00

Now one last stat. Despite having a team ERA of 4.00 and getting – here’s the kicker – 4.56 runs of support per game, the Padres are 9-13. The Padres lead the league in un-earned runs with 15; more than 1 run per loss.

“Larry, Sandy Alderson is holding for you line one.”