Off-Season Acquisition: Andrew Cashner

With FriarFest behind us and pitchers/catchers reported, let's take a look at the Padres off-season acquisitions, working backwards.  Today, Andrew Cashner.

Starter?  Reliever?  Time will tell

Warning:  this post may end up more about Jed Hoyer than Cashner.

On January 6th the Padres sent Anthony Rizzo and RHP Zach Cates to Chicago for RHP Andrew Cashner and  OF Kyung-Min Na.

Cashner is a former first-round draft pick of the Cubs (19th overall in 2008), so he has talent.  However, he lost the 2011 season after straining the rotator cuff in his throwing arm in April of last year.  He apparently successfully rehabilitated it with rest and physical therapy, as he threw 10 2/3 innings in September.  Cashner hurt his shoulder during a start, which explains why the Padres think he'll eventually be a starter.  It is his only major-league start to date.

Cashner has value but at this point in his career it is uncertain if that will be as a starter or reliever.  He's also a big risk for the Padres, in that the club acquired a recently-injured pitcher.  Yes he passed his physical, but that is no guarantee he won't hurt that arm during spring training.  Heck Adam Wainwright passed his physical prior to 2011 spring training and then missed the entire year to Tommy John surgery.

So much for the Anthony Rizzo Era.

To get Cashner the Padres gave up Anthony Rizzo.  Rizzo, evaluated as the third best prospect in the Boston Red Sox organization (and their best power prospect) prior to the 2010 season, came to San Diego in the Adrian Gonzalez trade.  Fairly or unfairly, he was seen as the replacement for Gonzalez, and was expected to produce once brought up to the major league level.  That he destroyed AAA pitching at Tucson to the tune of a .331/.404/.652 line only added to the hype and expectation.  However, once in the majors he was exposed as a left-handed hitter with a long swing who couldn't handle fastballs under his hands.  He might eventually be able to fix that - make his swing more compact and learn to turn on an inside fastball.

But that was not going to help him in Petco.  The Padres (and their fans) soon learned, to their dismay, that Anthony Rizzo was a completely different hitter from Adrian Gonzalez.  Gonzo's strength revolved around his opposite-field power.  He posted a .808 OPS at Petco largely because of his ability to hit the ball out to left.  Rizzo is a dead-pull left-handed power hitter playing in a ballpark that is death to dead-pull left-handed power hitters.

By all accounts, Rizzo is a mentally tough, courageous, great character guy who happens to play baseball.  He's beaten cancer at the ripe old age of 22.  Jed Hoyer knew him from his time with the Red Sox and obviously thinks very highly of him.  But even great character guys are susceptible to the same doubts that plague you and I.  Watching balls he crushed get knocked down in straight-away right, or go into the 411-foot triangle in RC before being caught, can get to the most mentally tough individual.  Ask Ryan Ludwick - and he was hitting to left.

Which brings us to Hoyer.  Jed relieved Kevin Towers following the 2009 season and was obviously charged with rebuilding the Padres minor league system.  He, along with Jason McLeod, did just that; in fact, San Diego's farm was recently ranked as the best in MLB by ESPN's Keith Law.  But I think it's safe to say they made a mistake when they acquired Anthony Rizzo for the Padres.  His power did not play well in downtown San Diego.

Since that blockbuster trade prior to the 2011 season, Hoyer (and McLeod) have moved on to Chicago's North Side, where Former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein had also relocated.  They reunited with Rizzo via this trade.  At Wrigley Rizzo's power should play very well, whether the wind is blowing out or not.  The Padres also got a very pleasant surprise in Jesus Guzman's play last season, and traded ace Mat Latos for Yonder Alonso (among others), whom we will talk about in a future post.

Not discussed above, but certainly factoring in the decision to ship Rizzo out of town, are the number of players in the Padre farm system who can play first at the major league level.  We've mentioned Guzman and Alonso, but San Diego also has Kyle Blanks who can play the bag.  First base is one position where the Padres have a lot of options and can't give each guy lots of at-bats.  They're also not going to carry 4 guys on the ML bench who can play first - that's just silly.

So the Padres acquired a recently injured potential starting pitcher for the best prospect in their farm system.  This trade may turn out to be a wash, but today it looks pretty lopsided in favor of the Cubs.

Rizzo Sent to AAA, Blanks Recalled

Initially I was not a big advocate for promoting Rizzo before he was ready.  Lately I've thought that, since this is not a year that will produce a post-season berth, why not keep him on the roster?

Well, San Diego sent Anthony Rizzo down following today's 5-3 win in Miami.  This is why I'm not working in a front office somewhere.

One hundred seventeen plate appearances does not a career make.  It is a small sample size, given that most everyday players log upwards of 700 PA's in a season.  But 117 PA is enough to draw some conclusions and see some trends.  Rizzo came up and made some great contact initially, including a RF HR at Petco off Washington's John Lannan.  His high water mark may have been the Boston series, in which he hit 3 balls to the deepest part of Fenway (two doubles and an out courtesy of Jacoby Ellsbury).  Two days later he had the second multi-hit game of his career.

Since, as Geoff over at Ducksnorts noted (slightly updated), he's hit .107/.206/.143 in 63 PA.  He was 6 strikeouts short of striking out every other at bat.  Teams routinely busted him in, and he routinely swung at those pitches, whether they were up, or down, or in the strike zone, or off the plate.  He made very little contact.

He was outmatched.  There was no point in keeping him in SD.  There are things he clearly needs to work on at the plate, and now that he has an idea of what they are he can spend the time to fix them.

Anthony Rizzo will be back.  It won't be until after 1 September, and might not be until next year (although I would be real surprised if he wasn't a roster expansion call-up).

In his place, we welcome Kyle Blanks back to the roster. Finally I can put my Blanks bobble head out and not get ridiculed ('Hey isn't that guy who had a bobble head night when he wasn't on the roster?'  yes, thanks for the reminder.)  Blanks is the original Rizzo: the kid who tore it up in the minors, then struggled mightily at the major league level when holes in his approach appeared (like an inability to hit a pitch low and away).  Like Rizzo, Blanks has legitimate big-league power, and assuming he can hit the pitches he couldn't reach last season will be a middle-of-the-order threat here.  Headley, Ludwick (for the next 10 days at least), and Blanks 3-4-5 is pretty good.

Not Pujols-Holliday-Berkman good, but still pretty darn good.

Padres start a 4-game set in scorched Philadelphia tomorrow.  My regular Thursday Podcast will air tonight, hope you can join me.

Karmic Payback

After leaving 11 runners stranded it felt like the Padres were doomed to fail again. After Orlando Hudson and Will Venable played hot potato with the ball on consecutive plays int the eighth, the groan from 24000+ in the ballpark was audible.

Here we go again.

Then a funny thing happened. "It seems Destiny has taken a hand," ; Richard Blain would say. San Diego loaded the bases again in the bottom of the inning, weathered a bunt lineout by Venable that thankfully was part of a safety squeeze, then exulted when Johnny Venters deflected Jason Bartlett's ball into no-mans land to drive in Denorfia.

Seven pitches later the Padres had three more runs off Venters. It should be noted Venters was the stingiest relief pitcher in baseball at the start of the day; he had allowed 3 earned runs to the league.

Destiny took a hand indeed.

Two other non-game action notes for your consideration:

- What were the odds I'd put a post up about squeeze plays, and Bud Black would call for one in the eighth? It also means my stats are wrong; Black's Padres had successfully EXECUTED 307 sacrifices prior to last nights game; he may have tried many more. I'll have to go back to the data.

- On the post-game show Ted Mendenhall suggested maybe the Padres should send Rizzo back to AAA and try out Jesus Guzman at first. His rationale: Guzman is hitting .308 at the moment, Rizzo .175. Personally I didn't think there was a need to rush Rizzo to the majors, but now that he's here the Padres should take a long look at him to determine if he is the first baseman of the future.

The kid is 21. He tore up a hitter friendly league in AAA. There's a reason guys pitch at AAA - they ain't good enough for the Majors. The jump from AAA to the Majors is the biggest improvement in talent Rizzo has experienced during he advancement through the minors. Only one guy in my recent memory went right from the minors to being a great Major League hitter, and he may well turn out to be the greatest right-handed hitter ever. Rizzo is good, with ML-caliber power, but he's not Albert Pujols.

An adjustment period was inevitable. Rizzo will figure it out. Let's not panic after two weeks of plate appearances.

Rizzo vs Headley - first 10 games

Three brutal losses this weekend.  Five unearned runs enroute to a 6-5 loss, shutout for the 12th time this season, then losing a game they led 3-1 in the sixth.  Now we go to Boston to play the other hot AL team.

"Nice to see you, Adrian.  Can you sit these 3 games out so we have a 10% chance of winning?"

Speaking of Adrian, how's his replacement holding up?  After a double, triple, and HR in his first four games, he's struggled a bit:  .148/.361/.370 in 36 PA.  The best think we can say about Anthony Rizzo is the slow start on balls in play has not affected his batters eye.  His OPS+ still sits at 112, which on this Padre team is 4th best.

Here's something interesting - how does Rizzo's first 10 games compare with Chase Headley's?  Rizzo's line is above.  Here's Headley's: .250/.250/.525 (40 PA).  Headley hit 3 HR in his first 10 games with the Padres (hence the high SLG), but had not walked in 40 PA (and had struck out 15 times) which drove his OBP down.  Padres were 1-9 in Headley's first 10 games, 2-8 so far in Rizzos (appropos of nothing).

People soured pretty quickly on Headley, which I at the time thought was inherently unfair.  He did not lift a bad team out of being bad by himself, and it was unrealistic to expect he would.  People's expectations of Rizzo seem much more reasonable; this is also a bad team, Rizzo is not going to lift them out of being bad by himself.

It might also be helping to manage Rizzo expectations that he's only played 4 of his first 10 games at home.  Headley played 7 of his first 10 at Petco.

I thought that'd be more interesting than rehashing this weekend's series.  Ugh.