Rave: Peavy / Rant: Media

To review:

On Monday, April 18th, I wrote:

Do you want to know how to identify a truly dominant pitching performance when
you see one?

Here are the indicators:

1. More strikeouts than innings pitched
2. Fewer than 1 BB per every 3 SO
3. Fewer hits than innings pitched
4. Two or fewer runs allowed
5. Zero home runs allowed
6. Seven+ innings pitched
7. Fewer than 110 pitches thrown

Check, check, check, check, check, check, and check.

Folks we have it, a dominant start from one of the most dominant starters in baseball.

Peavy’s line from the night:

7.0 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 SO, 0 HR, 98 pitches

Peavy has just been sick.

Peavy’s season numbers so far:

4 G, 2-0, 1.30 ERA, 27.2 IP, 4 BB, 32 SO

Wow!

…Yet we lost.

This offense has to come alive.

I’m going to go on a tangent here – don’t worry; I’ll get back to my point.

I was listening to ESPN radio recently and I heard some “local expert” suggesting that we shouldn’t expect anything more than mediocrity from the Padres (or worse). After all, he argued, Towers claimed he would spend more after the ballpark opened but that hasn’t come to fruition. …Or so the “expert” argued. The “expert” brought up one piece of “evidence” in his support, that Towers only had $4m to upgrade the pitching this past off-season. Note that the “expert” didn’t claim the Padres only “spent” $4m, he said Towers only “had” $4m to upgrade the staff.

Let’s look at this a little closer:

The Padres signed Woody Williams for $3m.
The Padres signed Chris Hammond for $750,000.
The Padres signed Dennys Reyes for $550,000.
The Padres signed Rudy Seanez for $550,000.
And, the Padres had a one-year offer on the table for David Wells of over $5m.

Furthermore, the Padres gave a pretty significant raise to the ever-impressive Jake Peavy.

Add it all up (even without Peavy’s raise) and that’s just a shade under $10m to upgrade the staff.

And that sums up my beef with most mainstream media types. They don’t care about being right. They just want to make sound bites to impassion the fans (positively or negatively) so people will pay attention (and stay tuned) so they can sell more advertisements.

The reality is, we don’t want the Padres spending for the sake of spending. Having a larger budget gives greater room for errors (you can spend money to fix mistakes) but it doesn’t ensure success.

Good decision-making does ensure success.

Getting off the tangent and back to my first thought… Since Towers didn’t spend all the money he had available for him, we should be able to look for a way to correct some shortfalls on the team. Except, what kind of move could we make? Our farm isn’t that fertile at the moment. A trade would feel more expensive since we don’t have a lot top prospects close to the majors…

Now, even if we could make a trade, what position would we trade for? Our worst performing hitter has to be Phil Nevin (.208/.244/.389). So do we tell Phil that we have to make a move and that he’ll be relegated to the bench? Or, do we up and cut Phil? Am I being too rash? Maybe I am.

The big problem is that poor decision-making led to no-trade clauses for aging players (as if anyone would want Phil or Ryno anyway).

Phil is a much more accomplished hitter than he’s shown so far. There’s no reason he’ll continue to be THIS bad. Is there?

In other news, Dave Roberts went 0-fer… Again, he’s awesome when he’s on, I just fear he won’t be on base often enough.

On an almost non-baseball note, I went to see “Fever Pitch” tonight with my wife and her parents; good flick. Not great, but no-where near as “too cute” that I feared it would be.