Tag: NL West

Stock Up, Stock Down for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Top 10 Prospects for Week 12

The Los Angeles Dodgers have had a moderately successful 2015 thus far. They sit in first place in the National League West even though half of their Opening Day rotation is out for the year, Joc Pederson has been a breakout star and new additions Yasmani Grandal and Howie Kendrick have been valuable members of the lineup.

All has not been perfect, however. Jimmy Rollins has struggled, and the bullpen has suffered its fair share of injuries. The farm system appears to be well-equipped to handle this problem, though. With a series of high-strikeout arms and an elite shortstop, the Dodgers may be able to solve many of their problems internally.

 

Notes: The following list is courtesy of MLB.com. Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and are current through June 28.

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Padres Still Have Time on Their Side for Turnaround, but It’s Dwindling Fast

The hype machine is out of service.

Disappointment has surpassed hope as the overwhelming emotion. 

A scapegoat has already been unfairly blamed because it was the easiest, most predictable target.

As the three-month mark of the season and the All-Star break creeps near, the San Diego Padres are running out of excuses, remedies and time. The offseason makeover that made the Padres a popular pick for the postseason and led star acquisition Matt Kemp to call general manager A.J. Preller “a GM rock star” just seems empty now, a rebuild lacking enough substance to take the club into the realm of sincere contender.

The franchise that had finished third or worse in each of the previous four seasons currently sits in fourth in the National League West, 6.5 games out of first place and six games out of a wild-card spot. Kemp, Justin Upton, James Shields, Wil Myers, Derek Norris and Craig Kimbrel were legitimate reasons for the hype, but through 75 games the Padres are five games below .500.

And a little more than a week ago, manager Bud Black paid the price for the underwhelming first half as Preller fired the longtime, respected skipper. Since then, the Padres are 3-7.

The offense, which was supposed to be dramatically better than it was last season, had a .241/.296/.371 slash line entering Thursday. Those numbers were all below league averages, as was its wOBA (.292) and wRC+ (88), although all these numbers were slightly better than in 2014.

Kemp has been the biggest letdown. After being about the best offensive player in the majors in the second half last season, he is having a brutal 2015 for his new team and was recently moved to the leadoff spot for the first time since 2010 in hopes of igniting his bat.

“Still have a lot of at-bats to go and a lot of things to do,” Kemp told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times this week. “I’m not worried, I’m not panicking.”

The pitching staff, which was supposed to be bolstered in the rotation by Shields and in the bullpen by Kimbrel, has also failed to live up to its billing. The rotation’s ERA, FIP and home run rates are all worse than league average, according to Fangraphs. And the bullpen suffers from all the same afflictions.

The overall defense is about the worst in the majors, and, as expected, the outfield defense is as well, Fangraphs numbers say.

Of the team’s next 15 games, 10 of them come on the road against the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Texas Rangers

“The Padres a little over a week ago dismissed Bud Black as manager. Last 10 games: 3-7. The managerial change so far has not worked,” analyst Dan Plesac said on MLB Network on Thursday. “This is a team in transition right now, and I think they, along with the [Chicago] White Sox and [Seattle] Mariners, need to get something going prior to the All-Star break, because I think the All-Star break is when you find out if you’re for real or if you’re on the outside looking in.”

Time is still an ally for now. There are still 87 games to play, and the rest of the NL West has failed to drown the Padres in their wake. Injuries to the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have prevented them from fully stepping on the gas, so the Padres are still breathing with more than half the season remaining.

Fan interest also remains. The Padres have drawn nearly 1.1 million fans this season, which is still in the bottom half of the league. But for the franchise, its attendance is up by more than 15 percent from last year, when it drew just over 27,000 fans a game. This season that total is more than 31,000 a game.

Talent-wise, few teams can boast what the Padres can. That is why the offseason was filled with promise. That is why fans are showing up. It is why the team’s record is such a source of news.

“We haven’t gone out there every day with high expectations since 2010, when we had a really good team and you just knew you were going to win every time you went to the ballpark,” Will Venable, the longest-tenured Padre, told Kepner. “We expect that with this group, too. We have some guys with some serious track records and a lot of success in this game.”

The hope is Kemp’s second half this year resembles his second half last year. It is that Andrew Cashner finds a way to start stranding more runners and giving up fewer homers. The hope is that Myers stays healthy enough to be a dynamic offensive player, and that Shields starts striking out hitters again and keeps the ball in the ballpark.

Their shortcomings have cost the Padres a manager. They have made San Diego one of the game’s biggest disappointments, and they have it looking up at three teams in a division in which it was expected to contend.

Time still holds hope for the flawed Padres to rebound. But the grasp is weakening by the day and by the loss.

 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired first-hand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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San Diego Padres vs. San Francisco Giants Live Blog: Instant Analysis

The San Diego Padres, losers of six of their last eight games, begin a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park in the worst possible way—by facing reigning World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner.

The game is tied 0-0 through three innings, and Bumgarner has been dominant so far.

At the start of the day, the Giants trail the Dodgers for first place in the NL West by one game, while the Padres currently sit in fourth place and are 5.5 games back. The Dodger lost to the Cubs 1-0 earlier Tuesday evening.

After a busy offseason that brought in the likes of Matt Kemp and Justin Upton, the Padres are 12th in the majors in runs scored but lead the league in managers used with three. 

The Padres are 2-5 since firing former manager Bud Black. After Dave Roberts served as the interim manager for one game, Pat Murphy, who was the manager for the Padres’ AAA affiliate El Paso Chihuahuas, was chosen to finish out the season as the Padres’ manager.

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What We’ve Learned About the Los Angeles Dodgers Near the Halfway Mark

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ lead in the National League West is just 1.5 games, which can be seen as both a positive and a negative at this point of the season. On one hand, the team has suffered massive injuries to key contributors and remains in first place. On the other hand, though, it has gotten some surprisingly positive performances but has been unable to build any kind of lead on San Francisco.

Thus we have learned that this team is flawed. Its flaws are not irreparable, nor are they necessarily damning. The team certainly has many positives as well. The following sections will touch on the main takeaways from the first half of the season—both positively and negatively.

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Pat Murphy Named Padres Interim Manager: Latest Details and Reaction

The San Diego Padres wasted little time replacing Bud Black after firing him Monday, naming Pat Murphy as the interim manager for the remainder of the season, according to a release posted on the team’s Twitter account.   

Murphy spoke of his new position after the club made the news official:

General manager A.J. Preller also spoke of the decision:

Murphy served previously as the manager for the organization’s Triple-A team in El Paso, Texas. Jon Heyman of CBS Sports offered more information on his background as a skipper:

Despite loading up on talent this offseason with the likes of Justin Upton, Matt Kemp and Wil Myers, the Padres have stumbled out of the gate, starting the year 32-34 and falling to fourth in the competitive NL West.

Murphy will now have the tricky task of getting this team to play up to its ability.

Clearly, Black’s message was no longer resonating with the players. The hope in San Diego will be that Murphy—who certainly has a lengthy managerial career behind him—will be able to jolt this underachieving club to life.

 

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Wil Myers Injury: Updates on Padres OF’s Wrist and Return

San Diego Padres outfielder and occasional first baseman Wil Myers is returning to the disabled list with a nagging left wrist injury just days after returning to the lineup.

Continue for updates.    


Myers Placed on DL with Left Wrist Tendinitis

Monday, June 15

Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune passed along the latest discouraging news about Myers:

Myers spoke about the probability of undergoing surgery in the offseason to address his left wrist bone spur as recently as this last Friday.

“It’s a high possibility, but not during the year,” said Myers, per AJ Cassavell of MLB.com. “It’s a simple fix, but I can’t do it now because of the rehab during the season. I want to be out there.”

ESPN’s Diane Firstman weighed in on Myers’ situation using that as context:

After playing in three recent games in his first action since May 10, Myers sat out Sunday’s 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Wrist problems have plagued Myers during his young MLB career, though this latest setback isn’t related to the right wrist fracture that kept him out last year as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Padres announced Monday that they’ve relieved manager Bud Black of his duties. Interim skipper Dave Roberts will already have adversity to face and an outfield rotation to shuffle around now that Myers is out of action.

For a San Diego team seeking stability and eventual improvement amid a 32-33 start, injuries are the last thing it needs right now. Myers’ latest stint on the DL is as untimely as it is unfortunate amid a power shift in the Padres dugout.

Veteran Will Venable figures to fill in for Myers until the latter is healthy enough to return. Now that he’s returned to the disabled list, though, perhaps he has indeed changed his mindset about surgery during the 2015 campaign.

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Biggest Issues the Dodgers Must Address at the Trade Deadline

When examining the Los Angeles Dodgers on the surface, it’s difficult to find anything significantly wrong with the team.

Not only do they rank among the top of the league in runs scored and ERA while having committed the sixth-fewest errors, the Dodgers have also maintained control of the National League West for most of the season.

But no team is perfect and with the trade deadline now just a month and a half away, the Dodgers may want to consider two minor issues.

 

Crowded Outfield

Heading into the season, the Dodgers’ starting outfield consisted of Yasiel Puig in right field, rookie Joc Pederson in center field and veteran Carl Crawford in left field.

The alignment quickly got shuffled when Puig went down with a hamstring injury in mid-April, and Crawford joined him on the shelf shortly thereafter with an oblique tear.

Veteran Andre Ethier, who had been essentially relegated to bench duties ever since Puig arrived in 2013, stepped in and has put together a nice bounce-back season so far. He is slashing .287/.366/.491, and his eight home runs have already doubled his 2014 total.

Manager Don Mattingly has also been trying to mix in the capable bats of outfielders Scott Van Slyke (currently rehabbing a back injury) and Alex Guerrero. With Puig and Crawford missing most of the first two months, the issue basically resolved itself. 

But Puig recently returned to the lineup, solidifying two of the three outfield spots alongside Pederson, an early front-runner for NL Rookie of the Year. The only position left up for grabs is left field, and there will be an obvious dilemma when Crawford and Van Slyke climb back into the fold to compete for playing time with Ethier and Guerrero.

The dilemma will be four outfielders for one spot. Even in a platoon strategy, that’s still two right-handed hitters (Guerrero/Van Slyke) and two lefties (Crawford/Ethier) competing against each other.

While the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman values depth, even he might realize the impending outfield surplus is probably untenable. 

So the questions then become who to trade and for what.

 

Starting Rotation Depth

If there’s one area in which Los Angeles could use some future help, it’s the back end of the starting rotation.

The Dodgers lost Hyun-jin Ryu and free-agent addition Brandon McCarthy to season-ending injuries, forcing fellow newcomer Brett Anderson to slide from the No. 5 spot in the rotation to No. 3 behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

Anderson has been satisfactory, posting a 3.57 ERA in 12 starts. But the southpaw’s lengthy injury history is a constant cause for concern. As Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times points out, Anderson’s 12 June innings are more than all of his June innings combined during the past five years.

The stopgap solutions that Mattingly has thrown into the fire—right-handers Mike Bolsinger and Carlos Frias—have performed admirably considering their lack of experience.

Bolsinger, acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the offseason, had thrown just 52 MLB innings prior to 2015. He began the season in Triple-A but has turned in a 4-1 record with a 2.25 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in 12 starts for the Dodgers since his promotion.

Frias entered this season even greener, with only 32 innings of prior MLB experience. But he, too, has held his own, compiling a 4-3 record and 3.86 ERA in eight starts.

Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi understand that Anderson’s next injury could be just around the corner. They also know full well that the surprising Bolsinger/Frias tandem might falter as the workload increases.

It’s why the Dodgers should consider adding a more proven arm to stabilize the back end of the rotation in case the aforementioned scenarios manifest themselves.

 

Trade Logistics

Los Angeles would probably like to trade away an outfielder in order to clear what will soon become a logjam. That’s easier said than done, however.

Although Ethier has re-established his trade value after two seasons with declining playing time and production, he is still owed $35.5 million through 2017—including a $17.5 million club option in 2018. Crawford and the $41.75 million he is due over the next two seasons will be nearly impossible to move, leaving Van Slyke and Guerrero as the two likeliest players to be flipped for some starting pitching.

Guerrero has become somewhat of a secret weapon for the Dodgers, slashing .282/.312/.615 with 10 home runs in limited action. While his statistics are surely attractive to other teams, the clause in his contract stipulating that he may become a free agent at the end of any season in which he is traded may hold up a potential deal.

Van Slyke possesses the cheapest contract of the bunch and is accustomed to coming off the bench. His career OPS of .805 indicates what kind of hitter the 28-year-old can be with regular playing time. Last year, he led Los Angeles in slugging percentage and OPS.

While pitchers on struggling teams like Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija will likely see their names cast into trade winds because of their contracts, the Dodgers might be interested in less-heralded hurlers come next month.

One realistic target could be Scott Kazmir of the Oakland Athletics, someone with whom the Los Angeles front office is quite familiar. Friedman worked with him in Tampa Bay, and Zaidi—formerly part of Billy Beane’s brain trust in Oakland—was instrumental in bringing him to the Bay Area.

The veteran left-hander has pitched well for the cellar-dwelling A’s, posting a 2.79 ERA in 12 starts. On the flip side, Oakland could use a player like Van Slyke to help bolster a regressing offense that currently ranks 17th in OPS. With the ability to play all three outfield positions, Van Slyke would also become an immediate offensive upgrade over current left fielder Sam Fuld.

Los Angeles will almost certainly need to include a collection of additional pitching prospects like Zach Lee, Ross Stripling or Zach Bird to facilitate this deal.

If Oakland wants Ethier—a player the A’s originally drafted—the Dodgers would need to eat a significant portion of his bloated contract, similar to the $32 million chunk they bit off this past offseason in the Matt Kemp trade.

 

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com unless otherwise linked/noted.

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Chris Heston’s No-Hitter Shines Light on Giants’ Latest Hidden Gem

You’re not going to win three World Series titles in five years without unearthing a few hidden gems here and there. Just ask the San Francisco Giants, who know a thing or two about that.

In fact, one of them just threw a no-hitter.

That would be Chris Heston. Making his 12th start of the year, the rookie right-hander blanked the New York Mets in the hit column to lead the Giants to a 5-0 victory at Citi Field on Tuesday. Heston did hit three batters in the process, but he also struck out 11.

After the game, Heston was understandably in a bit of a daze.

“I’m still not sure what just happened,” said the 27-year-old, via the Giants’ official Twitter account. “It’s awesome.”

Well, what happened was that Heston threw the Giants’ fourth no-hitter since 2012 and 17th in their history. It was also just the third Giants no-hitter by a rookie. The last of those was spun way back in 1912 by a fellow named Christy Mathewson.

So, just like that, Heston can now put himself in the same sentence as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. If anything can sum up the kind of year he’s having, it’s that.

When the year began, Heston was just some no-name from the minor leagues who made the Giants’ roster out of spring training because they had nobody else to fill in for the injured Matt Cain. At no point during his days in the minors was he a top prospect, nor was he likely to become one in his age-27 season.

But now look at him. Heston owns a rock-solid 3.77 ERA and 66-18 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 74.0 innings. Next to only the eternally awesome Madison Bumgarner, he’s arguably been the Giants’ second-best starting pitcher this season.

How did this happen, you ask?

Oh, you know. It’s your basic “guy goes from being not so good to quite good through hard work” story.

It’s not hard to see why Heston was never considered a top prospect during his days in the minors. He was only a 12th-round draft pick in 2009 and came into 2015 with a good-not-great 3.56 ERA in parts of six minor league seasons.

Heston also wasn’t showing off much that impressed the scouts. Here’s what Baseball America made of him coming into 2015:

Heston is direct to the plate with an 86-89 mph two-seam fastball with some armside run, a slow low-70s curveball and a fringe-average changeup. It’s unlikely Heston can find big league success by letting big league hitters put pitch after pitch into play, but he will serve as a reliable emergency starter option.

And this was Kiley McDaniel of FanGraphs two cents:

The 6’3/195 inventory starter got a big league look last summer and has fringy stuff: he sits 87-91 and hits 92 mph, mixing in a solid average curveball and average changeup. He’s a pitch-to-contact ground ball #5 starter with little margin for error.

So, Heston was your basic dime-a-dozen sinkerballer who didn’t have the goods to even compete with big league hitters, much less get them out on a regular basis.

Thing is, though, these scouting reports were actually dated by the time Heston showed up to spring training.

As FanGraphsEno Sarris noted, Heston spent the winter packing some weight onto his 6’3″ frame and benefited accordingly:

This wasn’t lost on Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti, who was taken aback when he saw Heston this spring.

“Oh gosh. You could tell, physically, he looked the part,” Righetti told Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I did a lot of talking, telling him, ‘It’s your time now.’”

Righetti didn’t just tell Heston it was his time. He challenged Heston to make it his time, making it clear to Heston that he was in a “range now where you’re done with the minors.” It was time to put up or shut up.

Heston certainly put up this spring, posting a 2.40 ERA in five appearances to put himself on the Giants’ radar. And ever since then, he’s been good more often than he’s been bad.

That has much to do with how Heston has held on to the extra velocity he showed off during the spring. Where he once sat in the 86-90-mph range, FanGraphs puts his average fastball this year at just shy of 90 miles per hour, and he can throw 91-92 mph when he’s feeling it.

That’s good velocity for a sinker, and Heston’s is quite good at getting ground balls.

Per Brooks Baseball, he went into Tuesday getting grounders on 53.6 percent of his sinkers that were put in play. His changeup and curveball also boasted strong grounder rates, hence his overall 54.0 ground-ball rate.

Of course, it’s not just stuff that makes Heston effective. He also locates well, consistently working at and around the bottom of the strike zone:

When Heston’s really on, his ability to locate his stuff results not just in ground balls but in whiffs as well. 

This was especially true of Heston’s performance on Tuesday night. Per ESPN.com, he balanced his 14 ground-ball outs with 11 swinging strikes. It was the sixth time he had racked up double-digit ground-ball outs and the fifth time he got into double digits in whiffs.

However, understand that Heston isn’t perfect.

When he takes the hill, Heston operates in one of two modes: really good or really bad. Tuesday night’s no-hitter was the seventh time he’s allowed no more than one earned run. In his other five starts, he’s allowed at least five earned runs.

So far, he has yet to show he can be good enough on nights when he doesn’t have it.

Still, this is easy to forgive when a guy’s been good more often than he’s been bad. And knowing that the Giants have gotten far more than they ever could have hoped to get from their former non-prospect, they’re not about to pick any nits with the season Heston is having.

Rather, they should place him among the unheralded players they’ve been glad to find in recent years. In 2010, it was guys like Andres Torres and Sergio Romo. In 2012, it was guys like Brandon Crawford and Gregor Blanco. Last year was the year of Joe Panik and, in the end, old friend Travis Ishikawa.

The Giants sure have a knack for finding them, all right. And in Heston, it looks like they’ve found a guy who could be remembered as fondly as any of them.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Heston Throws 1st-Ever No-Hitter Including 3 Hit Batsmen

San Francisco Giants pitcher Chris Heston threw an unusual no-hitter in Tuesday’s 5-0 win over the New York Mets, becoming the first player in major league history to hit three batters in a no-no, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports.

The 27-year-old right-hander turned in a truly remarkable performance, needing just 110 pitches to make it through the game even though he struck out 11 batters, including the last three he faced.

Despite what the three hit batsmen might suggest, Heston otherwise had surprisingly excellent control, allowing zero walks on the night.

Per ESPN Stats & Info, he’s the “first rookie to throw a no-hitter since Boston Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz in 2007.”

Of course, Giants fans are no strangers to the no-no, with their team having accounted for five of MLB‘s 25 such performances since the start of the 2009 season, while no other squad has produced more than two, per Stats LLC.

The feat has arguably lost some of its luster in a pitcher-dominated era, but you’d hardly know it from the reaction of Heston and his teammates.

A group that included star catcher Buster Posey mobbed the rookie around the mound, and while the game-ending ball was initially dropped to the ground, first baseman Brandon Belt made sure to pick it up for Heston, per Rich Herrera of MLB Network.

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Chris Heston Throws No-Hitter vs. Mets: Stats, Highlights and Reaction

San Francisco Giants pitcher Chris Heston threw a no-hitter against the New York Mets in Tuesday’s 5-0 victory at Citi Field.

Three hit batsmen prevented Heston from tossing a perfect game, but the 27-year-old rookie nevertheless strutted dazzling stuff on the road. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports praised Heston’s command of multiple complex pitches in his arsenal:

ESPN’s Adam Rubin added context to the Mets’ batting woes, while the Giants’ official Twitter account provided some franchise background to supplement what was the 17th no-hitter in their history:

Andrew Baggarly of Bay Area News Group noted how unprecedented it was for Heston to plunk multiple batters en route to a no-no:

Bob Nightengale of USA Today highlighted how Heston saved some of his very best stuff for the last inning, when the pressure to finish the job reached its peak:

SportsCenter showed footage of Heston’s final strikeout on Twitter:

Heston threw 110 pitches, 72 of which went for strikes, for a rather proficient outing that improved his record to 6-4 with a 3.77 ERA.

CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman noticed how San Francisco has had a tendency to completely shut down the opposition in recent seasons:

Fellow Giants pitcher George Kontos congratulated Heston afterward:

Jon Morosi of Fox Sports alluded to the unconventional road Heston traveled to get to such a magnificent achievement:

This has been quite a roller-coaster season for Heston, who has struggled to string together two strong starts since his first three. His no-hitter comes off of a loss to Pittsburgh, when he yielded five earned runs in 3.2 innings. Heston preceded that with 7.1 shutout innings against Atlanta.

There’s no denying Heston has the makeup to be a strong MLB starter. Given that he had only three appearances in the big leagues before 2015, Heston figures to go through more highs and lows, but nothing will quite match what he achieved Tuesday.

San Francisco has proven capable of playing rather well away from home, and improved to 17-12 on the road this season with Tuesday’s win.

With other starters such as Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum still capable of dominating and a veteran in Tim Hudson to serve in a mentor role, there’s reason to believe Heston can learn from his teammates and figure out a way to become more consistent.

And if the Giants can get the most out of their talented pitching rotation, they figure to be a major factor in the playoff picture in a bid to defend the World Series crown. 

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