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Chase Headley is finally living up to that Savior nickname

By Dex
"Come <em>forth</em>, Creature of the Night. Have no fear. Your death will be quick... My magical bat, Valedictorian, will see to that." "HSSSSSSSSS!!!"
"Come forth, Creature of the Night. Have no fear. Your death will be quick... My magical bat, Valedictorian, will see to that." "HSSSSSSSSS!!!"

Now, far be it from me to call Jeff Sullivan of Lookout Landing (the SB Nation blog for our hated rivals) a "nerd", but I do enjoy the way he starts out his latest Fangraphs piece on Chase Headley.

I don’t intend to mean-spiritedly pick on the fine folks over at Baseball Prospectus, but in this instance I can’t not make a little fun. A couple excerpts from paragraphs found on Chase Headley‘s player page:

I don’t think Headley is going to have more than .150 Isolated Power. Partially due to Petco, partially because he’s not that kind of hitter. (5/5/2010)

That was on Chase Headley’s power potential, not on Headley just in 2010. Another:

Yes, PETCO suppresses some of his power, but even in Citizen’s Bank Park, Headley wouldn’t hit more than 24 HR. (12/20/2010)

Yes, it's true. Baseball Prospectus has never hated Chase Headley, but they pretty much hated Chase Headley. In the 2012 Prospectus, PECOTA (the BP predictive algorithm) gave Headley a 1% chance at a breakout this season and the writeup said that the best to hope for this season was a repeat of 2011's "success" (4 HR, .289/.374/399).

And I'm generally one to believe what PECOTA has to say, so I figured too that we wouldn't see much in the way of Chase Headley this season. Couple that with the stuff I'd heard from people in the know led me to believe that we'd be in full on Jedd Gyorko mode at this point of the season, instead of disappointingly pointing out that if the Padres were above .500 right now, Chase Headley would have won the MVP.

Hands down.

Nevertheless, it's never too early to eat crow, and though I've jumped on board the Chase Headley bandwagon as hard as the rest of you, I will say that I wish I had been a bigger believer earlier on.

At least I'll be able to say that I was here before the rush to jump on the 2013 bandwagon.

Also, I get how Dick is wanting to press the whole Valedictorian nickname, but I'm gonna stick with Savior for now. Valedictorian is a much better name for a mythical bat. Am I right?

Go Padres

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