Garland, Gonzalez, Torrealba Options Resolved

The Padres picked up Adrian Gonzalez's 2011 option yesterday.  As if there was any doubt.

According to Baseball Reference, Gonzalez had the highest NL WAR for position players not named Albert Pujols, and 4th highest overall (fangraphs is not as enamored; they rank Gonzo 13th in the league).  Gonzalez's value by Fangraphs came in at $21.1 million; his actual 2011 contract option is for $5.5 million.

Two other options were reported yesterday by XX1090 during the drive home.  Jon Garland exercised his player option and declined to return to San Diego in 2011.  He receives the $300K buyout.  Yorvit Torrealba also declined his $3.5 million option for 2011, and he receives a $500K buyout.

Gonzo gets a $750K raise.  The Padres spent $800K and cleared $10.25M off the books for 2011, making $9.45M more available to sign players in 2011.

I'm a little surprised Torrealba declined to return, however, 2010 was his best season in the majors.  He had the most PA he's had since 2007, and he put up his best-ever WAR (2.4, again by Fangraphs).  He's 32 years old.  Perhaps he thinks he proved himself this past season, and believes he can find an everyday catching gig on the free agent market.  That's certainly possible.  I love an optimist, so best of luck Yorvit.

I'm not all that surprised Garland is leaving.  He seemed irritated at how he was used by Black, especially towards the end of the season.  There were a couple of games (against the Giants in early September, against the Cubs the last home game of the season) where he either was visibly upset at being lifted, or verbally indicated he was miffed in the post-game interview.  Garland professed to really wanting to pitch at Petco when the Padres signed him in the off-season; things must have gone sour indeed for him to leave after only one season. 

Garland had the best K/9 rate, and the second-worst BB/9 rate, of his career in 2010.  His xFIP was the seocnd-lowest of his career, so he pitched about as well as he could; yet his WAR was the lowest it had ever been when throwing 200+ innings (and his lowest since 2001, his second year in the majors).  His 3.47 ERA was the best of his career.

How crowded would the Padres rotation have been in 2011?  Latos, Richard, and Stauffer return.  Young has an $8.5M club option.  Correia is a free agent.  LeBlanc is probably done as a starter.  There was room for Garland here in 2011, had he opted to stay.

Well Jon it was fun while it lasted.  Wish you could have stopped that 10-game losing streak before it reached 10 games.

Three and Five

MLB handed down their decision on Yorvit Torrealba's 'discussion' with home plate umpire Larry Vanover Monday night - 3 game suspension.  Yorvit was not amused, as quoted by Chris Jenkins:

If it’s a fine, all right, whatever, but three games is a little bit too much. One game, two games, I’m gonna get my lesson no matter what. But I don’t see umpires getting fined and I don’t see umpires getting suspended. They make a lot of mistakes.

Jon Garland had a choice comment too.  I love this one:

Garland said Wednesday that he’d pay Torrealba’s fine in appreciation for the catcher backing [him] up.

The Padres will appeal the suspension, but now that Torrealba has continued to rip the umpire in the press, I would not expect the length to get reduced.  I wonder if an appeal has ever resulted in the suspension getting longer.  For the record, good for Torrealba for expressing himself clearly, and when will MLB make the review of umpiring performance more transparent?  I think some level of public accountability with umpires who make repeated bad calls, are confrontational, and/or are inconsistent pitch-to-pitch or inning-to-inning would go a long way to restoring their reputation as a whole with the players and fans.

Short Rest and Short Tempers

To start last night's series with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Padres decided to thrown Jon Garland on three days (or short) rest.  Garland has not fared well in short rest situations; in fact, according to facts I heard after the game, he had only made 2 previous career starts on 3 days rest and was 0-1 with a 7.20 ERA.  Even if you are one who does not put a lot of stock in the traditional statistics (and as a general rule, I do not), those numbers do not portend to a good result.

So watching Garland labor through 3 innings while throwing 84 pitches was no surprise.  One would think throwing that many pitches meant he wasn't pitching well.  In fact, he got 6 of those 9 outs via strikeout.  The John Buck 2-run shot in the second hurt, but what really killed him was the walk to Toronto starter Shaun Marcum with two out in the same inning.  In fact, it appeared Marcum got a borderline pitch called a ball on a 2-2 count, then proceeded to walk.

It also appeared that call got to Garland - as evidenced by the 2 doubles he then gave up, and the two looks he gave home plate umpire Larry Vanover as he left the field.  Garland eventually made it through 5, and allowed only one hit the rest of the way (a two-out single to Lyle Overbay in the fifth).

In the meantime, the Padres were hitting home runs too - except theirs came with no one on.  Jerry Hairston Jr homered to lead off the third, an inning after he was left in the batters box while Will Venable was caught stealing.  Adrian Gonzalez homered leading off the fourth, cutting the deficit in half. 

The Curious Case of Edward Mujica came on, and while he didn't give up a tater, he didn't disappoint by allowing another run to score.  With the score 5-2 the Padres finally got a look at the game.  Singles by Scott 'Big Country'* Hairston and Venable sandwiched Yorvit Torrealba reaching on an error by the Toronto shortstop Alex Gonzalez**.

*The stadium PA system played 'Big Country' by Big Country before Hairston's first at bat in the second inning.  He will forever be known as Big Country on this blog.

** Yorvit wore out Gonzalez in this game - single to short, ground out to short, reach on an error by short.  He didn't get a chance to go for the quad though...

Unfortunately, the Hairston Jr just missed a Marcum fastball and popped out to left.  Not deep enough to score the run.  The Gwynn Jr then hit a slow roller to third.  A run scored, but there were two out.  Oscar Salazer's soft line out to center ended the majority of the drama for this game.

That is, until the earthquake hit in the eighth.  I truly was not worried until the tremor kept going and going.  The PA announcement to 'REMAIN CALM' did more to excite the crowd than the earthquake did.  Of course, I immediately said, to no one in particular, "They're not out of coffee are they?  THEY BETTER NOT RUN OUT OF COFFEE!!!" fully realizing no one under 40 would get that joke.  Judging from the high school kids looking at me quizzically, they didn't.

The final excitement was Torrealba's final at bat of the night, with Big Country on first and no one out.  Based on Torrealba's reaction the pitch was inside; my seats did not support a good angle to see the pitch. Vanover called it strike three and Yorvit went ballistic.  Vanover stuck his finger in Torrealba's face (here we go again), and Torrealba got right in his grill.  Yorvit also bumped the umpire a couple of times.

Yorvit's going to get fined and probably suspended, and that's too bad.  I'll save my umpire rant for the Podcast.*

*I'll also point out that on my last Podcast I stated the Blue Jays had never played San Diego.  That's wrong, they faced off in San Diego back in 2004.  The Padres have never played in Toronto.

Podcast Recap

Spent an hour talking to Steve Adler of Friarhood, Peter Friberg of Padres RunDown, and Web SoulSurfer of websoulsurfer last night on the Podcast.  We also had Mike from Avenging Jack Murphy, and for a time RJ's Fro in the chatroom during the discussion.  That's a lot of Padres expertise in one chat, and it generated a high level of discussion, references to Joe Randa aside.

Some of the highlights:

- No issues with Jon Garland/Chris Young making the opening day starts (on the road and at home, respectively).  Who the leader of this staff will be needs to be sorted out amongst the guys in the rotation; it may not be Young by default based on seniority.

- Wade LeBlanc will definitely be up this season, if for no other reason than attrition during the 162-game season.

- Lots of discussion on potential trades should the Padres fall out of the race.  Heath Bell, Chris Young, Gonzo moving all covered.  Listening to the podcast is worth it just for that part.

- The Padres are pretty deep at second base, according to Pete.  I was not aware of this.  Even if Antonelli doesn't carry his spring training success into the AAA schedule, the Padres have some up and comers in their farm system.

- All agreed Catcher is still an organizational concern, but aren't worried about the offensive production from that position as much as how they call a game, shut down the opposition's running game, and so on.  Lots of love for Hundley (and some for Dusty Ryan), not so much for Torrealba.

A great way to conclude the spring training season and get ready for Opening Day on Monday at Arizona.  Besides, the Padres beat Anaheim in Anaheim while the podcast was in progress - doesn't get much better than that.

Yoorrrrrrrvit signs with the Padres

Best first name in baseball. "Merkin Valdez" is a close second, but only because of this definition.

During the Padres Open House, Jed Hoyer deflected a question about the team's back-up catching situation. Basically he just described the two minor league catchers acquired this off-season, Dusty Ryan and Chris Stewart. Implied in that comment was one of those two guys would suffice as the back-up to Nick Hundley.

Well Hoyer seems to have reconsidered that position, as yesterday the Padres announced they'd signed Yorvit Torrealba to a 2 year deal. OK, it's actually a one year deal ($1.25 million) with an option for a second at $3.5 mil. The club holds a $500K buyout clause for 2011.

Torrealba was rumored to want $6 mil for 2010. He must smoke crack, since in his best year (2007) he was only a 1.1 WAR player. In this off-season that's barely $4 mil. Even so, kudos are in order for Jed Hoyer's team since they brought him in for possibly two years at less than $5 million total.

Some comments on Torrealba. He is not an offensive force; in fact, his wOBA (.316) last year is the same as Nick Hundley's. Matt Klaassen wrote a catcher defense article over at Driveline Mechanics after the 2009 season ended. You can read the entire article at your convenience. The stats he looked at were

- Stolen Bases/Caught Stealing
- Wild Pitches/Passed Balls
- Throwing Errors
- Fielding Errors

and he took these for each catcher in the league, compared them to the league average, and added/subtracted the linear weight of each event, as appropriate, to come up with a total runs for each event. He then summed those values up to get a total runs number (NOTE: This is a GROSS over-simplification of his methodology, and you shouldn't judge what he did based on what I've written here. You really ought to read the article.).


Hundley is better at throwing runners out, but Yorvit is the overall better defensive catcher, at least he was in 2009, in terms of total runs allowed. Notice that Henry Blanco was the 7th best defensive catcher based on Klaassen's methodology, so you can see why the Padres were saddened when he didn't re-sign with the club.

I know Bud Black is high on Nick Hundley, but I can't help but wonder if there'll come a point in 2010 when Yorvit becomes the starter because he's better at preventing runs. Especially since preventing runs is one of the tenets of Jed Hoyer's philosophy. Keep in mind that 66% of all games played at Petco are decided by 3 runs or less.