After a week that saw the Padres win 3 in a row to climb to 12-16, leading to an echo of the reactionary media saying “hey they’re not so bad!”, the Padres then dropped four in a row, 3 of which were embarrassingly bad losses.  But hey!  On the bright side, I looked in the Gwynntelligence.com drafts and Marver has a draft in there!  Of course it’s not published yet so it may just go into the junkyard of hundreds of partial and failed Marver posts that never see the light of day.  On that note, let’s get to the hot new feature that’s sweeping the nation:

Days Since Marver Has Actually Written Something: 62 days

That’s over two full months!  Impressive!

Gwynntelligence Posts:

None.  Although there will be at least one this week.  Maybe two if Marver isn’t totally lazy!

Padres Blogosphere Posts:

East Village Times: Is it time to worry about Hunter Renfroe?

Yes, god yes.  James Clark sums up the issues facing Hunter Renfroe during his first full month in the big leagues.  Basically, he’s kind of sucked.  He doesn’t walk (except against Kershaw), he whiffs at pitches out of the zone, and his vaunted arm doesn’t have a fraction of the accuracy of Peter North’s mayonnaise cannon.  Calls to send him down to AAA have popped up on Padres Twitter.  But here’s the thing.  He’s already mastered AAA.  We’ve already seen that El Paso is an extreme hitter’s environment (let’s not forget that Cody Decker was the king of El Paso) and Renfroe torched the PCL.  It’s not going to be helpful to him to go down there an mash again, just so he can come back to the bigs and get owned again.  On top of that, what’s the point really?  While we enjoy that the Padres minor league system isn’t total trash anymore, there is a real dearth of positional talent in the upper minors (other than Urias) (and really, the lower minors don’t really have anyone lighting it up either).  If Renfroe were blocking a better prospect, then by all means send him down, but he’s not.  The Padres still need to fill the right field slot in the lineup everyday, and there’s not a better option.  There may not even be a real option, period (sorry Jabari… call me!).  For better or worse, we’re stuck watching Renfroe chase sliders out of the zone and leave runners on base in critical situations.  I’m fully confident that he’ll go on a hot streak for a week and Padres Twitter will erupt in “Hunter figured it out!”, followed by a Cassavell fluff piece about how Alan Zinter tinkered with his plant foot, followed by a return to same ol’ Hunter Renfroe whiffing and not walking.  He is what he is, a guy that can clobber the ball but can’t hit consistently.

East Village Times: The Padres’ Plate Discipline Problem:

This post was called out in this week’s MTPGA podcast, but I wanted to give due credit to the author, Patrick Brewer, who has been producing some really great content lately.  Patrick dug into the Padres’ early statistics showing they just aren’t a selective bunch.  Wil Myers’ peripherals are scary.  He is basically Hunter Renfroe as far as ability to take walks in 2017, except he’s actually good at hitting.  The fear is that his hot start will be offset by an inevitable regression.  The rest of the non-Schimpf and Blash members of the Padres’ lineup haven’t shown much ability to take pitches either.  This is bad, and it’s manifesting itself in the early stats.  I sat at the game on Thursday and realized that the lineup being fielded was a few Aybar and Renfroe 0-fer games away from having 6 of the 9 hitting under .200.  This is fine.  I’m having fun.  This is fun.

Padres Public: Hector Sanchez Is Not A Good Pitch Framer:

Sanchez hit the disabled list on Sunday, but not before displaying what a truly inept pitch framer he is.  Sac Bunt Dustin laid out the argument beautifully in this post.  It’s easy to see from the GIFs that Sanchez is careless, and even reckless, in the way he receives pitches.  His extraordinarily terrible and exaggerated glove action is pretty much the definition of anti-framing.  I know framing gets poo-poo’d sometimes, but the effect of these lost strikes is felt by the pitchers.  Luckily, the Padres have Hedges but the team is already pushing him hard and he’ll need breaks.  Even if framing was a competitive advantage that is being decreased as time goes by, having a guy like Sanchez behind the plate totally screwing it up doesn’t help anyone.  And just wait til young pitchers are up and Sanchez blows 5 of their shoulda-been strikes and their heads explode.  This is fine.  I’m having fun.  This is fun.

Padres Public: Trevor Cahill, Developing Trade Chip:

First off, Trevor Cahill is not going to be a Drew Pomeranz type as far as trade value.  Pomeranz had years of control left, was left handed, and was a former top prospect.  But Cahill is definitely improving his value for this year’s trade deadline.  If I hear one person suggest they should extend him and HEY HE’S FROM VISTA, I’ll kick them right in the crystals.  Sac Bunt Dustin (quality content from Sac Bunt Dustin is a trend here, you see) does a great job pointing out the changes in pitch selection that are leading to Cahill’s dramatic improvement (before we give Balsley all the credit, it’s kind of the Cubs that did it).  His slider is all world for whiff rate so far and he’s finally striking people out.

Fangraphs: I Guess Now Trevor Cahill is Good:

Sac Bunt Dustin made such good points that Fangraphs posted this nearly identical Cahill post hours after Padres Public.  Jeff Sullivan highlights the improvements to Cahill’s curveball.

The Golden Age of Padres Podcasts:

The Kept Faith: Geoff Young:

I am an unabashed Geoff Young fan.  I bought both editions of his Ducksnorts Annual and miss his regular writing on the Padres.  This episode has a lot of good sports talk, but it’s far better to hear another discussion of Richard Linklater’s classic Everybody Wants Some, a film that anyone that likes either baseball movies or good movies should see.

Make The Padres Great Again: Are the Padres Adding The Wrong Type of Prospects:

John and Craig dig into AJ Preller’s penchant for high risk prospects with loud tools.  I thought it was a good discussion and highlights that there is a real risk of a lot of these prospects busting.  To be fair though, in the last draft, 2 of the 3 first round draft picks (Lauer and Quantrill) are relatively lower risk, and when you’re in the international market signing 16 year olds, all you can really sign them for is their tools.

Tweet Of The Week:

And the Jaggy goes to…

I know it was from February, but it was retweeted this week so I’ll allow it.  Holy god please let Weaver pitch the entire year and break the home runs allowed record.

Terrible Marver Tweet Of The Week:

“Don’t they realize they’ll lose literally tens of my donation dollars?!?!  I am important.  DON’T THEY KNOW WHO I AM?!??!?!!?  I AM A DATA SCIENTIST FOR CHRISTSAKES”