IN THE HISTORY of baseball the Dodgers have traded 3 times with the San Diego Padres.
1969 Padres trade Al McBean to Dodgers for Tommy Dean and Leon Everitt
1998 Padres trade Widd Workman to Dodgers for Jim Bruske
2008 Padres trade (Out of gas) Greg Maddux (salary dump) to Dodgers for Eduardo Perez and Michael Watt
For people who live and die by imperfect numbers and pride themselves on their historical analysis of players, what are they missing here? The Padres have never, ever traded anything of value to their bitter rivals the Dodgers. Why? Because they don't want to. Just because a GM says their open to the idea of trading with an NL West team isn't the same as they're going to trade somebody of value to the Dodgers.
Can we move on now?
Another favorite Stat Boy belief is that you have to have a high K/9 to be a really good starting pitcher. Nate Eovaldi isn't any good because he DOESN'T MISS BATS. Oh and don't forget HE'S ONLY GOT TWO PITCHES. Well last night he threw four different pitches. Not well mind you but he threw them. He surprised me with a slow curve.
Nate's problem is he has no command to speak of. And his slider has too high a probability of sitting right in the middle of the plate saying hit me. But he's got really big potential if he can stop walking folks. And that comes with command. If your 94 mph heater is moving in the strike zone missing bats is somewhat meaningless because very few hitters are going to square that up. Keep the pitch count low Nate. A lot of coaches over the years have preached the idea that hitting bats with great stuff gets you a complete game.
Occasionally his slider is devastating. When that starts happening on a regular basis, that heater keeps running up the bats of hitters and the slow curve starts dropping in then the Dodgers have a No. 2 pitcher. Don't worry about K's just stop walking people and the Nate issues are just about solved.
TRAGEDY OF THE DAY
I could write a blog just on what Phattonez7 spews out each day at Tragic Illness. More of his endless opining about how Billingsly has pitched as well as Capuano this season and it's just the haters that don't like C Bills that don't see it. As DaveP says Phatton's material makes him sound like he's a charter member of the Get-Out-Of-Your-Basement-And-Actually-Watch-A-Game branch of the Sabre community.
Phatton take it away brother:
phattonez7
TaylorAllender Consistency is one of those meaningless, pretty words used by fans to justify their hatred of one player (Billingsley) and affection for another (Capuano), even when they have basically brought the same performance.
WestonTaylor TaylorAllender Not really. Don't be fooled by Capuano's .251 BABIP, 81.4% LOB%, and 9.9% HR/FB rate. They have virtually identical K% and BB%, and while Capuano has been getting more swinging strikes, Billingsley has been getting more groundballs. ERA through 106 IP isn't as predictive as the advanced metrics are. Those advanced metrics say they're extremely similar pitchers.
And besides, consistency is meaningless. Which pitcher would you rather have:
10 games 3 earned runs.
2 games 0 earned runs, 4 games 3 earned runs, 2 games 8 earned runs
Sure, consistent performance from the first, but it's just decent. With the latter, you get two sure wins and two sure losses. The point is, the difference between giving up 5 runs and 10 runs isn't all that great.
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