Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 20, 2008
Towers Lack of Power

Scott Miller notes that Kevin Towers is livid about the performance of the Padres. Of course, the blame may fall on his shoulders:

A wicked combination of underachieving players and poor offseason personnel decisions following the best three-season stretch in club history has veteran players angry, coaches searching and the general manager downright livid.

"There comes a point in time where we can't just say it's early," GM Kevin Towers said late Monday following another debacle, this one an 8-2 loss to St. Louis featuring left fielder Scott Hairston misplaying Ryan Ludwick's first-inning drive to the wall into a two-run homer. "I haven't seen any signs the last couple of weeks that leads me to believe, or our fans to believe, that we're trying to turn this thing around.

"It's up to the guys in the clubhouse. I'm certainly not going to watch this for another four months."

Add to that Jake Peavy going on the DL and it's turning into a real disaster. Miller also gets off the line of the story:

They have the ultra-rare combination of no power AND no speed.

Miller blames this on Moneyball, but it really came from the Padres doing a poor job of replacing their outfielders. They would not follow the market and overspend for quality and ended up with nothing.


Posted by David Pinto at 07:27 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

It is pretty clear that Scott Miller doesn't have the slightest clue to what "Moneyball" actually is. I find it amazing that people think of it, in literal terms, based upon the metrics and leanings from 2002. Scott, those days are past. The entire idea is finding value that is under-compensated in the market. In 2002, it just so happened people overvalued things like saves and undervalued OBP, but that is no longer the case. It is quite possible that things like stolen bases and ground ball/fly ball ratio are undervalued. Christ, wake up! A lack of speed doesn't have anything to do with the concepts that Michael Lewis wrote a book about. Nothing!

Posted by: SS at May 20, 2008 02:19 PM
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