I’ve been on the road the past two weeks in Hawaii and Washington DC with a godawful undependable Asus Transformer laptop/tablet hybrid that kept me from writing this feature. Luckily, we’re back! And better than ever! And also lucky, barely anything happens with the Padres these days. I went from watching every game to having seen part of one game in the past two and a half weeks, and that was just because they were playing the Nationals and MASN was on in a bar in DC. True to the marketing copy, being a Padres fan truly is a journey to memorable moments. Let’s get to the hottest feature on the interwebs.
Days Since Marver Actually Wrote Something: 67 Days
Marver has been promising his vaunted review of the accuracy of prospect rankers, with a focus on Keith Law. This would be especially pertinent for Padres fans because Law stated yesterday that Tatis Jr. will be in the top 10 of his winter prospect rankings, which appears to be much higher than other prospect rankers. The problem is that Law is notoriously terrible at rankings, historically being the most inaccurate, so how excited should we get? If only there was some kind of longform analysis of the issue written by a self-anointed statistical genius. If only…
Gwynntelligence Posts:
We had a big podcast week. Really last week was the big podcast week but Marver lazily sat on the episodes until I got fed up and just posted them on Tuesday.
Mission: Get Bob Chandler Inducted Into The Padres Hall of Fame
I just posted this this morning, but it should be mandatory reading. Not to take anything from Jerry or Ted, or the other guys’ Center would prefer to induct into the Padres Hall of Fame, but Bob Chandler was as essential a part of the Padres’ broadcast as Ted or Jerry for THIRTY THREE YEARS. He helped make Jerry and Ted better, he gave his life to the team. And Bill Center thinks that Ron Fowler by many orders of magnitude more worthy of celebrating than Bob Chandler. I just don’t get it. We’ve known Center is out of touch, hostile to readers, and holds grudges, but to a man as kind, accomplished, and universally well liked as Bob Chandler, Center’s repeated and seemingly deliberate snubbing of the man is at the same time enraging and sad. This is a call to arms for all readers: INDUCT BOB CHANDLER NOW!!!
Gwynntelligence Podcast: Madfriars’ John Conniff
John and I are starting a yearly tradition of a nice meal at Nando’s Peri-Peri, the UK’s #1 fast casual chicken restaurant with chavs. It’s also made a strong foothold in the Washington DC area, and people usually think I’m joking, but if the flight option existed to pull this off, I would fly to DC to eat a Nando’s meal and fly back the same day. John and I got into a variety of topics ranging from the media to some quick prospect opinions. It wasn’t your usual prospect interview where it’s nothing but “hey what do you think about Fernando Tatis Jr.” Actually, can we stop with this question? Every single Fangraphs and Keith Law chat has someone asking the same old “HEY WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TATIS”. We get it. He’s having a really good year and he’s a really good prospect. It’s basically common knowledge at this point. Repeatedly asking the question only serves the purpose of being a circle jerk. Basically what I’m saying is more Blash questions, less self-aggrandizing Tatis questions.
Gwynntelligence Podcast: Just Plain Ol’ Jagoff and Marver
I have very little recollection of taping this podcast. It’s not like I was blacked out or anything, but I had been enjoying some alcoholic beverages and it was late when this was recorded. A note on Washington DC. It is a great place for a long weekend trip. Hotels are centrally located in the District, the dining is great, and the drinking options are outstanding. Sure it’s a little expensive, but it’s a really rich city. If you’re nickel and diming, maybe a weekend trip to Wilmington, Delaware is more your speed. I have no doubt it was a great podcast though.
Padres Blogosphere Posts:
East Village Times: The Demotion of Hunter Renfroe Was The Right Move
Patrick Brewer did the best job of summing up just how bad Renfroe was this season. Using a variety of stats, he pretty perfectly captures what his issues are and what needs to improve in AAA. What he didn’t get into is what keeps getting brought up by guys like Scott Miller and Darren Smith: that he “had a lack of urgency”, which to me sounds like a lack of effort or willingness to take advice. I guess 2 weeks in AAA may help this, but I have my doubts. I mean, do we really think this season is the first time anyone in the organization has told Hunter “hey maybe take some pitches and some walks”? This kind of seems to be just who and what he is. It’s unfortunate that the modest Drew Stubbs comps may have even been an overreach.
Padres Public: Twitter Mailbag: Overrated GM Interview Edition
Sadly, the only Sac Bunt Dustin work we get nowadays is his always excellent Twitter Mailbag. Dustin had a great question from Safety Squeeze Dustin about the recent Darren Smith Billy Eppler interview. Local media types fawned over Eppler, mostly because he’s from San Diego. He’s also really well spoken like Jed Hoyer, which is dramatically different from our resident savant but mush mouthed GM AJ Preller. Can we stop giving a ton of leeway to people just because they’re from here? This is how we ended up with Marcus Giles and Sean O’Sullivan on the Padres. I’m from here but nobody wants me to be GM. Plus I’m not even Uni scum like Eppler. The whole let’s give bonus points to people that grew up here is a sad statement for the insular and tunnel visioned nature that this city has sometimes.
Padres Prospectus: What Is Different About Cory Spangenberg?
Spangenberg has been really good this year. Like, he almost makes Marver’s demands to sign him to a cushy extension look sane (he is not the kind of player that will cash in at arbitration). I am super happy with his performance, but the thing I’m not getting too excited about is his home runs. In case we’ve all forgotten, there have been eleventy billion articles written about juiced balls and inflated home run numbers this season. Let’s not go pulling our puds about the home runs quite yet (conversely, this kind of makes seemingly OK home run numbers by Myers look worse). For the time being, he seems like a keeper out of the logjam of infielders. As good as Solarte can be sometimes, and as much as we love his crocodile celebration and his personal resilience, he’s getting old, he gets hurt, and he should probably be shipped out. Spang is a former first rounder who, when he plays and is healthy, has always been pretty good.
Golden Age of Padres Podcasts:
Gwynntelligence: Like I said, I think we put out some pretty good podcasts this week.
Gwynntelligence Podcast: Madfriars’ John Conniff
Gwynntelligence Podcast: Just Plain Ol’ Jagoff and Marver
The 5.5 Hole: Thank You, Jered
Eric and noted #SingleDad devilish Danny Ortiz had a great episode, highlighted by Eric’s ode to Jered Weaver and everything he meant to us. It was also highlighted by Danny Ortiz’s stated desire for public support for a nice trip to Adelita’s. This is a campaign we should all get behind, at the very least for a nice thanks for one of the current best Padres podcasts out there. I’m sure we could all spare $5, that’s one coffee at Starbucks, to get a podcast host we all treasure a nice smooth handy jay, or maybe even a sweet blowie. Hopefully his best pal Eric can get the Gofundme together, I’ve got my credit card out.
East Village Times: Nathan Ruiz
East Village Times: James and Patrick
Like usual, EVT had a flurry of content this week. Their two podcasts were excellent as usual, although I enjoyed the James and Patrick episode more. They had Cassavell on last week, and Ruiz kind of falls into the same category, but I don’t get much value out of guys that are paid to not express their full true opinions. They are paid to put the team and the players in the best possible light. Cassavell used the tired “well we just haven’t seen enough from Wil Myers to know what he really is, better wait til next year to evaluate” that we’ve heard for like three straight off seasons now. The work done by James and Patrick is better than the weekly “IS WIL MYERS OUT OF HIS SLUMP” post on padres.com. I think they treat the episodes where it’s just them as some kind of disappointment for listeners, but I really enjoy them. Kind of like on old Loveline episodes where they couldn’t some band like Lit or Kottonmouth Kings and it was just Adam and Drew playing off of each other, these were always the best episodes. It’s the same here.
Speaking of EVT’s James Clark, he was the guest on The Kept Faith this week. Highlighted by Dallas’ rant on the media’s insistence that we want more Chargers coverage, while simultaneously pushing people to hate watch, boost the ratings and page views, and further justify media outlets to continue covering the Chargers in a huge cycle of self hatred and pathetic behavior, the TKF gang continued on to talk Solarte and the tank in another great episode.
Make the Padres Great Again: What’s The Real Story Behind Renfroe’s Demotion?
This was put out about an hour ago. I haven’t listened. I’m sure it’s good. Put out episodes earlier in the week if you want to be in TWIPT.
Tweet of the Week:
And the Jaggy goes to…
I know it’s just a GIF, but it’s arguably the best beat off GIF there is. Also, I did a bad job of tracking candidates this week, so in a good example of the value of a brand, I checked the usual winners’ feeds for a Jaggy winner.
Actually, as I wrote this, there’s another tweet I forgot, and it’s not a Jaggy winner for being funny, just for being so right. So we have co-winners this week. Congrats to everyone for playing, and congrats to RJ’s Fro for his first Jaggy award.
Terrible Marver Tweet of the Week:
Oh god. There are so many. The suggestions poured in this week from across Twitter.
They are all equally terrible in just a banner week of awful Marver tweets. If I had to choose one, I’d probably choose the patent one, but I also have totally lost interest.
Nick Canepa Is An Out Of Touch Irrelevant Old Timer Or Maybe Doing A Bit Tweet Of The Week:
I like when members of the media that attend games for free complain about a stadium because they don’t like the press box.
Gwynntelligence 