Can the San Diego Padres contend in 2015?
(* See also: fellow Staff Writer’s Owen Sanborn’s piece last week “Are the San Diego Padres Contenders now?”)
The San Diego Padres have made a flurry of moves over the past few weeks, adding the likes of Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, Wil Myers, Derek Norris and Will Middlebrooks to improve an offense that in 2014 scored the least amount of runs in Major League Baseball. While it is evident these additions will help them from an offensive standpoint, the question is if these new collection of players will forge the Padres into contenders next season.
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It is a question which Beyond the Box Score’s Ryan Romano attempted to answer with his article on December 20th titled “
.” The title says it all: Romano does not believe the Padres will be contenders in 2015. To spare you of reading the entire piece, here is a snippet that basically sums up his stance.
"“Let’s look at the numbers. As you’d suspect, the aforementioned acquisitions did improve their team: Whereas earlier in the week, FanGraphs projected San Diego to accrue 21.4 total WAR, now it presages a formidable…25.9. That translates to 73.6 wins — not exactly contending level. Indeed, it ranks fourth-worst in the majors, ahead of only the Phillies, Braves, Diamondbacks, and Astros.How is this possible? Easy: The new pieces are overrated, and the existing ones, well, suck.”"
Projected fWAR is a fine starting point to gauge how talented a team’s current roster is, but using it to determine whether a team will play meaningful baseball in September is ludicrous. Injuries happen, luck happens, and transactions happen; things of which the projections cannot possibly predict without a time machine. Now, this isn’t to say the projections are useless because they are immensely helpful tools, but as Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan noted in an article last week the relationship between projected and actual fWAR between 2013 and 2014, while being linear, was just .43 — note: the coefficient of determination ranges from 0 to 1. In comparison, the relationship between winning and WAR from 2002 to 2014 was a crisp .78 according to the same article.
It is thus imperative that one sees the limitation of these systems; something of which I did not feel Romano recognized. I do agree, however, with him that San Diego is not as good as the general consensus believes. Kemp and Myers, despite their offensive value, are defensive liabilities, Norris’ horrendous second-half and poor arm behind the dish are concerning, and Seth Smith in all likelihood is not the player he was in 2014. These things do matter but the potential negatives do not completely negate the potential positives.
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Let’s reword that in a positive way real quick: Kemp and Myers, despite their suspect defense, hit the ball with force, Norris came into his own last season and was arguably the Oakland Athletics best offensive commodity in the first-half of the season last year, and Smith broke out by slugging .440 while playing half his games in the spacious confines of PETCO Park in 2014. Simply changing my syntax makes one feel a lot better about the outlook of the Padres. This is not to say the positives outweigh the negatives, rather, this was to show that pros and cons come with every player and while we can predict, to some degree, the extremity that these pros and cons will surface going forward, it is impossible to know for sure.
It is entirely possible Jedd Gyorko performs like he is projected to, which is a 2.0 fWAR player, but it is also entirely possible he doesn’t and plays like the pedestrian player he was most of last year. Matt Kemp could be one of the premier offensive players in the game and consequently make the value he gives back on defense negligible; then again, he could not. Wil Myers could be a bargain yet there is also the possibility that Steven Souza outperforms him with the Tampa Bay Rays.
The truth of the matter is we do not know which teams will contend. We can make reasonable guesses, sure. But at the end of the day that is all they are: reasonable guesses. Personally, I think the Friars’ rotation, especially Andrew Cashner and Tyson Ross, is unfairly judged by these projection systems. Ross and Cahner have a track record of being more valuable pieces from a run prevention standpoint than a peripheral standpoint. If Steamer, one of the most utilized projection system, used runs allowed per nine innings WAR instead of fWAR in their projections then the Padres would be in a better position than they are.
With that said, there is a logical argument that fWAR, not RA9-wins, should be used in these projection systems considering peripherals such as strikeouts and walks are much better indicators of future performance than basic ERA. After all, projections systems are trying to objectively forecast what is going to happen in the future.
I apologize for temporarily straying from the point I was trying to make. Anyway, nothing in baseball nor life is a guarantee. Things will alter the sensible course of action; it is inevitable. Therefore, as disappointing as this may sound, I am confident asserting that I do not know if A.J. Preller’s revamped team will compete or not. I do not know which players will outperform their career norms and which will under-perform them, unlike Romano, who seems confident that all the most likely outcomes will happen.
"“Ian Kennedy‘s mini-breakout will regress, as will Andrew Cashner’s; Tyson Ross, throwing an ungodly amount of sliders, will succumb to injuries and ineffectiveness from that dastardly pitch; and Morrow and Johnson will pitch like the injured veterans they are.”"
Baseball is a weird game with so much uncertainty surrounding it. The only thing that I am certain about is the fact that Padres fans have more to be excited about than they have had in a long time, and there is nothing wrong with that.