Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 06, 2008
San Diego Speed

Tom Krasovic pens a good article on the lack of speed among the players on the Padres. Alderson points out they didn't have much speed last year, but with people getting on base, no one really noticed.

Bill James in his 1980s Abstracts wrote that every strength covers a weakness. What's happened this season is the strength of getting on base disappeared, exposing the speed weakness. It's showing up on the base paths. The Padres made only nine stolen base attempts this season, fewest in the NL (they were successful seven times, however). The article leads you to believe it's showing up in the outfield, and while their Zone Rating is below average, they've made a good many plays out of the zone as well.

When a team goes into an offensive funk, speed helps make the most out of the limited scoring opportunities presented, and helps the pitching staff keep the score low. San Diego is in that situation now, and they don't have the speed dimension to on which to fall back.


Posted by David Pinto at 12:21 PM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Is that link coming up 404 for anybody else? I know the link isn't wrong since the same link is on the Sports page and also breaks. Using search on the site got me the same article at http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080506/news_1s6padres.html which works for me...

Posted by: metapundit at May 6, 2008 02:01 PM

That link is broken, try this one:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080506/news_1s6padres.html

Posted by: David at May 6, 2008 02:48 PM

For what it's worth, in 2007, the Padres ranked 28th in MLB in OBP.

Posted by: Michael at May 6, 2008 05:01 PM
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