You know what a great time of year is? The offseason. You know why? Cause there's no games to get in the way of actually enjoying ourselves.
"So Dex, you and jbox write a baseball blog. Some would say it's one of the best baseball blogs out there. Who do you guys think will win the World Series?"
"F__k em. Who cares? Not us! It's the offseason, bitches!"
Oh and it allows us to go back over our predictions, see who was right and wrong. Keep an eye out for new Padres and Padres who will vaya con Dios. It also gives me a chance to say that Nick Canepa has the nuttiest analysis I've seen with his conclusion that the team overachieved.
What?
For one thing, I hate when somebody's labeled as an "overachiever". That means that the team performed better than expected. But the trouble with that is an overachiever never "expects" to do less than they actually do. They just find a way to do it. Before we get into it, let's just agree that Nick Canepa certifiably hates San Diego sports teams even though he's covered them for years and, along with Ted Leitner, is directly responsible for the fairweather fan mentality among San Diego sports "fans".
OK. Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe Canepa sees overachieving as a compliment. To me, the Padres missed the playoffs. They stayed in it till the end. But the goal was the postseason. The expectation was the postseason. I take nothing away from the Padres. They had to fight through a lot, but they missed expectations and almost by definition, they did not overachieve.
Canepa points to all of the things the Padres had to "overcome". Point by point:
- Geoff Blum taking over for Marcus Giles when Marcus started to suck. Marcus Giles has been on steady decline since 2003. Geoff Blum has been steadily adequate since the 90s. You could look at their numbers from the last 5 years and easily predict what they would do this year. Overachieved? NO.
- High strikeouts being un-Moneyballlike. The point of Moneyball is to take the data that is available to you and, before making decisions, decide on what data is relevant and what data is irrelevant. The decisions are only as good as the data that you use. Within the book, in that particular point in time, On-Base Percentage was found to be very relevant and strikeouts were found to be very irrelevant. Read the book, dude. Overachieving? No
- Brian Giles isn't a typical leadoff man and did a good job. OK. That might be true. Overachieving? Maybe Yes.
- Kouz sucked at first and then got good. I would distinctly say that Kouzmanoff underachieved in April, which is the opposite of course of overachieved. Overachieving? NO!
- Pitchers couldn't hold runners. This was discussed over and over. "Somehow", the Padres managed to not allow a lot of runs despite people stealing bases over and over. It was suggested by some Padres that this was even a conscious decision. Overachieving? No.