So, saw some talk today up on mlbtraderumors.com about the possibility that Travis Hafner could be available for trade, that his contract is not favorable to them anymore, that his mechanics are all jacked up...

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/SPORTS01/805110340/1108/SPORTS01

Would you trade for him?  I would...but only at the right price.  I think Cleveland might do it for a nice prospect and eating his contract...I don't mind eating the contract to see if he can work with Rudy to get his timing back.

So...would you trade? What would you trade (prospect or on ML club)?

Day games today! And, Happy Mother's Day to those of you who are mothers. I hope you all have treated your mothers well today

I'll put this up early, and I may not get around to many updates as we're busy getting the house ready for the market and getting me ready for my wife's business trip next week that will leave me alone with a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old. No hard feelings on the Jayslick front, just been too busy to post much lately.

A couple of interesting guys on the mound today. Blake goes for Clinton at 2:05 CT, while at the same time The Pirate returns to AAA.

Davis is highlighted on MJH's report today and in Lucas' farm update. I'm a little confused by the set of statistics used by each. Lucas shows Davis' numbers are almost identical to last season's, but MJH points to a regression toward the Bakersfield numbers and away from the early Frisco success. I think Lucas' numbers from last year include both Bakersfield and Frisco.

Either way, not a lot to dislike about a power hitter who has the hitting ability to bat .300+. My initial impression with Davis' success last year was that he looked like a Dean Palmer from the left side. After another year to watch his stats and read analysts, I think Davis has better hitting ability than Palmer and probably just as much power.

Another note: I'm beginning to believe that Boggs has quite a bit more upside than Murphy. Alot of folks made a big deal out of Murphy batting left handed and having relatively late career success in that it reminded folks of Rusty. I wondered the same thing during the offseason. I'm not wondering that anymore. Murphy looks more like Delucci, though with a bit more ability in the OF than Delucci. However, I think Boggs' minor league numbers are somewhat reminiscent of Rusty, especially the jump in performance from age 24 to 25.

Bottom line, if I had to place odds on who would be with the Rangers for the next 5 years, I think Murphy is more likely to stick around as a 4th OF. Boggs may very well be traded, if the Rangers decide to trade for or pick up via FA a masher LF, but he also seems more likely to be a starter for the Rangers. Boggs has made the decision to not flip Byrd for Murton appear very wise.

The Stars look to right the ship tonight in Hockeytown.

Game 2 of the
Western Conference Finals
Dallas Stars @ Detroit Red Wings
Detroit leads the best-of-seven series 1-0.
6:00 PM CST
on Versus

talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves

talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves

talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves

talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves

talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves talk amongst yourselves

The performance of the starting pitching staff this season has left many of us scratching our heads at this point, so it's fair to ask what is going on and if it will be sustainable in at least some degree.  Of course, Paddy Cake has been one of the biggest cause of scalp irritation so far, so let's see what we can learn about our starters, and see if the 2008 performances so far are sustainable.

For the most part, Vinny's pitching statistics are not spectacular.  His BB/9 (3.2), K/9 (5.86) are  worse than his career lines, (by comparison, his BB/9 and K/9 in 2006 was 3.15 and 7.02), his HR/9 rate (1.07) is about the same as previous years.   His BABIP is exactly at .300, and all this translate to a fielding-independent expected ERA of around 4.5.  His ERA right now is much lower, largely because of the amount of baserunners that have been stranded.  Of all baserunners reaching, 81.1% of them has been left on base.  On average, 70% of left on base is a reasonable number, and only the best and luckiest pitchers get to 80% left on base (no more than 1-2 per year).  So it is expected that this will regress to his career average of around 72% LOB.  A rough calculation shows that this regression along should put his expected ERA at around 4.3 (calculation assumes same ratio of unearned to earned runs).  (Incidentally, the LOB% of Gabbard and Edinson Volquez are both around 90%)  So he is getting a bit lucky, but even with the regression, the results should still be decent.

Just for fun, let's try to see if we can be more substantive in terms of balls in play profile and pitch selections.  22% of balls in play are line drives, 41.8% ground balls and 36.4% fly.  So far his ground ball rate has been slightly down from previous years and fly ball rate slightly up.  The high line drive percentage is a cause of concern.  Padilla has historically given up a lot of line drives, but he has been able to overcome that with high strikeout rates.  Now that his K rate is down, it becomes a bit unsettling.

We all know he is throwing a lot of fastball this year, and this is certainly true- he is throwing 80.4% fastballs.  He has cut down his numbers of curveballs from 14.6% last year to 6.1%, and is throwing similar numbers of sliders (7.5%) and change (6.2%) as he has throughout his career. 

I tried to used the Pitch f/x tool, but it doesn't work correctly for Vinny.  Namely, it calls every single one of his off-speed pitches as sliders, so I'll concentrate on the fastball instead, and it looks like this:

Yeah, so the movement profile of his fastball is a very large blob.  He throws his fastball on average at 92 mph, touching 96 at times.  The fastball has quite a bit of horizontal movement (average of about -6.7 inches), and quite a bit of variety, whether be design or inconsistency.  By comparison,  many pitchers with good fastball, such as Tim Lincecum are more consistent in terms of movement.  There is also a large number of fastballs here that are sinkers or mistake pitches (those with little horizontal and vertical movements).

37.8% of his fastballs are thrown for balls, which is a bit high, but nothing alarming given the movement it has. 4% of the fastballs miss bats, and 18.6% are called strikes.  Speaking of called strikes, the locations of fastballs looks like this:

called strikes:

balls:

So all this says that Padilla has a live fastball, and he gets the wide strike zone common to pitchers with large horizontal movement on their fastballs.  However, he is hurt by not getting low strike calls.  In fact, this seem to be a problem with many Rangers pitchers in general (maybe I will look into this a bit deeper at some later time).  This lack of low strike calls could be related to, if not the cause of, his low ground ball rates.  Also, given the velocity and movement of the fastball, he should be able to use more off-speed pitches to miss bats.  His change is around 80 mph, but he doesn't use it very often (and it doesn't look all that good when he does).

Finally, one last interesting observation about this season so far is the reversed platoon split.  Usually Vinny destroys right handed batters but has nothing on left handed bats.  This season, there is little difference in the splits.   Also, he is especially prone to giving up HR balls early in the season.  May is normally his worst month, but he gets steadily better as the season continues.  These factors are minor and should not affect the big picture very much.

So in conclusion, I expect Padilla to regress a bit in the near future, but his stuff and peripherals are good enough that he should be a solid pitcher.  Nevertheless, he needs to find a way to increase his K rates, since his stuff has not diminished at all.  However, it's hard to do this in the major league level when you throw such a large amount of fastball that are not spectacular in velocity.  Especially when you can't get calls for pitches lower in the strike zone, you are forced to throw them higher, and that does not bode well if they get hit in the dog days of TBIA.

1/3 of the way in:

Record: 7-2

Pitching stats (MLB Ranks):

ERA: 1.71 (1st)
WHIP:  1.03 (2nd)
BAA:  .189 (2nd)
Saves: 4 (3rd)
Save %: 100% (1st)

Interesting stat while searching: Seattle's staff leads the league in HBP for May with 6

Batting Stats (MLB Ranks):

R: 37 (t-9th)
HR: 10 (t-2nd)
OBP: .292 (t-20th)
SLG%: .402 (16th)
OPS: .695 (18th)
SO: 70 (Last)
XBH: 28 (t-5)


2008 Fielding %: .977 (t-29th)

Just throwing it out there for the hell of it. Pretty interesting stuff.

Got a kick out of this post

from the Seattle Post.  It's from the Mariner Housewife blog which is funny sometimes.  She has snarky comments about Mike Soscia that I enjoy.

I would, however, point out a few notable differences between Ralphie's Christmas Story charge at Farkus and Richie's ... 1. Ralphie had more righteous fury 2. Ralphie landed many more blows 3. Ralphie was smaller than Farkus 4. Ralphie kicked Farkus's butt. 

Max Ramirez has climbed up to #2 on this week's Hot Sheet (BA). The two most controversial Rangers first rounders since Drew Meyer both made in the team photo.

Starters tonight: Eric Hurley, Michael Ballard, Jose Quintero and probably Tommy Hunter

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

David Murphy won the balloting for the AL Rookie of the Month for April. An online vote of fans counts for 20 percent of the vote totals with writers and broadcasters handling the rest of the voting.

Murphy beat out Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, Detroit RHP Armando Galarraga (former Ranger) and Oakland LHP Greg Smith, who faces the Rangers tonight.

So that's two Rangers outfielders with great Aprils. Josh Hamilton was AL Player of the Month during that same period.

Murphy batted .277 with two homers and 14 RBIs in April and has been so consistent that he's gone from a "fourth outfielder" to a regular contributor in the lineup.

http://rangersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/05/murphy-is-al-rookie-of-the-month.html

It's a Friday, I'm stuck at work and I'm looking for a distraction.  I figured I'd start a post in the vein of AJM's movie trivia posts.  I'm going to post a list of bands that have performed in a film, your job is to name the film this performance occured in.  If anyone else has any good ones feel free to toss them into the mix.  Don't forget, no cheating!

NOTE: I am not a fan of all of these bands listed.  In fact, I straight up dislike some.  Don't interpret this list as any kind of indication of my musical taste.  Thank you.

1. Aerosmith (Multiple answers, I'm looking for the good movie)

2. Alice in Chains

3. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

4. Ministry

5. Morris Day & The Time

6. Nick Cave

7. Otis Day & The Knights

8. Rammstein

9. Smash Mouth

10. ZZ Top

Not sure if this is worthy of a whole fanpost, but I really think this might be a good fit for a trade a month or two down the road.  The Cubs have a solid team this year and should be the favorites to come out of the NL central, but their OF production has struggled this year with Soriano getting hurt and Pie being ineffective.  Reed Johnson has taken a larger role, but he is what he is. 

Because of Bradley's ability to play CF, his OBP, and his power potential, he should be of interest to the Cubs (among many other teams).  Pineilla has been clamoring for an OF upgrade since spring training.  While Byrd was obviously not enough to pull a player like Sean Gallagher, perhaps Bradley is.  As much as I enjoy watching MB play and acknowledge what he adds to this team, if we can spin him for a young pitcher like Gallagher, a groundout/strikeout pitcher, then I think we should.

Is this a realistic scenario?