The Rizzo Affair really ignited the Padres fanbase this week. In fact, I don’t think more people have cared about the Padres in years. This is the highest Padres Q-rating in recent memory. It’s been amazing. Of course it’ll soon fade, but it’s nice to know that Padres fans still have some bloodflow.
Days Since Marver Actually Wrote Something: 2 days
It’s nice that we’ve been able to reset the clock on this. With any luck, Marver will actually write something and we can kill the internet’s favorite and hottest new feature.
Gwynntelligence Post:
Andy Green Delivers Peace For Our Time
As we celebrated on the last This (Last) Week In Padres Twitter, MARVER ACTUALLY WROTE SOMETHING. In this piece, Marver does a great analysis of who won and who lost in The Rizzo Affair. I do agree with Marver that Green is likely soft, but the real question is if being soft matters. I’d argue it doesn’t matter much, if at all, and there are likely consequences of being hard also. Sexy consequences.
This (Last) Week In Padres Twitter – 6/21/17
This belated TWiPT covered a lot of ground, but I need to stress just how active the Padres blogosphere and podcastosphere has been the past few weeks. It’s been great, and it’s supplanting old media radio. Also, this edition of TWiPT has lots of GIFs!
Padres Blogosphere Posts:
Gaslamp Ball: Padres Radio Is Inadequate And Lame
Roy wrote a great, great view of just how terrible Padres Radio is this season. It made me think about just how much 94.9 must hate having the Padres on its signal. I only realized last week that during a game in my car, the radio data that usually shows song name/artist, doesn’t show things like the game score (which was brought up as an “exciting” feature of switching to FM by Dee/Entercom last year). Instead, it shows what songs are playing on the 94.9 app DURING THE GAME. Like all the ads 94.9 runs instead of revenue generating ads during games that tell you to turn off the game and turn on Twenty One Pilots on the app wasn’t bad enough, they visually put it in your face on your car radio screen. Of all the terrible blunders under the Dee/Partello regime, the failure of Padres Radio, at a time when the team needs to be stoking enthusiasm any way they can, may go down as one of the worst.
Padres Public: The Sampler 20th of June Edition
Noted millionaire and frequent business class passenger Billy Lybarger wrote a great piece covering a wide array of Padres topics. This post makes a great point about the glut of mediocrity that is about to hit the starting rotation with scrubs like Weaver, Cosart and Friedrich about to come back. This is only partially fixed by the impending death of Miguel Diaz after his “forearm strain”, and it raises the question of whether the team should be still using these retreads with no chance of gaining trade value by the trade deadline or if they should call up some semi-Major League ready guys like Kyle Lloyd or Michael Kelly and give them an audition a la Lamet.
Padres Public: Early Lamet Returns
Sac Bunt Dustin wrote a great piece analyzing how Dinelson Lamet’s pitching so far. Regression after a fast start has been a trend lately with some of the young Padres (Cordoba, Diaz, Margot, etc), and so it’s not surprising the same is happening to Lamet. Man does he need to figure out how to get left handed hitters out.
East Village Times: Luis Perdomo Is The Most Exciting Padre
Patrick Brewer wrote a great piece taking a look at Luis Perdomo and asserting that he is the most interesting Padre. I immediately disagreed with the premise, but after thinking about it, I’ve tuned in just to see Perdomo pitch more often than I’ve tuned in to see any other Padre. Perdomo is interesting in that you’ll see wipe out stuff once in a while, but in the back of my head, I always think he’s on the brink of exploding. I can’t count the number of times that he struggles through an inning, puts a bunch of runners on base, and then narrowly escapes with a double play. This is a skill that comes with being a sinkerballer, but I also worry that the bottom may fall out someday.
Padres Prospectus: Phil Maton And His Invisible Fastball
Maton has been great so far. Like, he should be the closer at this point. Let’s just ride this horse. Travis Barnett points out the analytics behind his high spin fastball. Are there people that would rather see Brandon Maurer than Phil Maton closing games? If so, point them out to me so I can kick them in the nuts.
Padres Prospectus: Scholtens Taking Minors By Storm
First off, I can’t keep up with all the content coming out of Padres Prospectus. It’s great, and it’s amazing, and I hope they can sustain this pace. I’d be bushed by now. Dan McMenamin wrote a great piece taking a look at Jesse Scholtens, who I had the pleasure of watching at Lake Elsinore. He’s got sneaky good stuff and has flown through the minors to get to Elsinore. Not a top prospect, but definitely a name to at least know.
Golden Age of Padres Podcasts:
Padres Prospectus – Hedges, Young Arms, and Prospect Rankings
Chad and Marcus discuss Padres Prospectus’ ongoing top 50 prospect rankings and discuss how critically important it is that Hedges’ dashing good looks survive his collision with Anthony Rizzo. I have no idea how Padres Prospectus is putting out this much content, this fast, but it is immensely pleasurable.
Sometimes people think I’m doing a bit when I say it, but I mean it: Pads Pod may be my favorite podcast in the Golden Age of Padres Podcasts. I was worried the Pads Pod gang was gone forever after a long hiatus, but what a delight to see an episode when I started my commute on Monday morning. With a miserable season like this one, we want… no, we NEED new Pads Pod podcast episodes.
East Village Times – Jesse Agler
East Village Times – Casey Boguslaw
I’m not complaining, but I can’t keep up with the pace of quality content coming out of EVT in a timely fashion. I did listen to the Agler episode and greatly enjoyed it, although as we could probably expect, Agler made sure not to say anything too controversial. One point of contention is the continued use of “amazing” to describe Allen Cordoba. He’s been worth -0.5 WAR and about 74 wRC+ and trending steeply downward in June. This is fine because he’s a Rule 5 prospect that should be nowhere near the Major Leagues, but it’s probably time to cut the hyperbole about Cordoba. The Boguslaw episode I’m excited to listen to, and one of my favorite features of the EVT podcasts is the discussion and explanation of advanced stats, in this case Barrel FIP. It’s on my to-listen-to list for the weekend.
The Kept Faith – Chris Cantore
The Kept Faith gang brought on a marquee guest, fellow podcaster Chris Cantore. For the first time, Cantore got into what happened at 1090 and how station management totally torpedoed what he was trying to do by forcing him to talk NFL draft and stadium talk. He also interestingly pointed out how Wayne Partello and the marketing team of the Padres refused his requests for interviews with Padres personnel/players, vindictively because Cantore came from 94.9. Another great pod by the TKF crew even though they failed to recognize Ol’ Padres Jagoff in the long list of names of people that attended the live pod. Jerks.
Make The Padres Great Again – Andy Green’s Big Mistake
Full disclosure: I’ve listened to about five minutes of this. I like the episode title because it sounds like the title of an 80s movie with Matthew Broderick. Anyways, it’s MTPGA so it’s probably good.
Full disclosure: I haven’t listened yet. Justin from Twitter, I am assuming Eric has a different opinion on The Rizzo Affair than most of the other Golden Agers.
Tweet Of The Week:
And the Jaggy goes to…
Terrible Marver Tweet Of The Week:
Nick Canepa Is An Out Of Touch Irrelevant Old Timer Or Maybe Doing A Bit Tweet Of The Week:
Gwynntelligence 