Left-hander Johnny Podres, who pitched from 1953 to 1969 for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, Detroit Tigers, and San Diego Padres, died Sunday night at age 75. During his playing career, Podres won 148 games and was named to three All-Star teams. He also owned a sparkling 4-1 World Series record and won three championships with the Dodgers.
My thoughts go out to the family and friends of Mr. Podres.

The Texas Rangers have traded outfielder Freddy Guzman to Detroit for catcher/first baseman Chris Shelton.
Who are these guys? Glad you asked.
Guzman once was known as Pedro De Los Santos and played second base in the San Diego Padres organization. Then when the visa crackdowns came along, his name changed and he aged a few years. Guzman has decent on-base skills and is fast. His ceiling is a poor-man’s Juan Pierre, but really, he’s a fourth outfielder. Actually, so is Pierre, but I digress.
Shelton spent all of 2007 in the minors after batting .273/.340/.466 for the Tigers in ‘06. The guy …read more

I’ll have more to say on the trend of overpaying relievers in another venue, but for now it’s enough to know that 4 years for $19 million is an insane amount to give a guy like Scott Linebrink, which is what the Chicago White Sox will be paying for the right-hander’s services.
I happen to be a big fan of Linebrink. I saw his California League debut with San Jose back in ‘97, when he fanned 10 Stockton batters over 6 innings. I’ve followed him closely since then and was ecstatic when the Padres picked him up off waivers from Houston …read more

San Diego Padres right-hander Jake Peavy has won the 2007 National League Cy Young Award. As someone who has been watching him pitch since he wore #22 for the Lake Elsinore Storm, I couldn’t be happier. Congratulations!
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The regular season is done save for one final, originally unscheduled game in Denver on Monday afternoon (4:37 p.m. PT first pitch; TBS, XM 183). Thanks to the Colorado Rockies’ 13-1 finish, they’ll host the San Diego Padres in a one-game playoff to determine which team advances to the postseason as the NL wild card.
On paper, Jake Peavy vs Josh Fogg looks lopsided in favor of the Padres. The games, however, are not played on paper. With three studs in the lineup (Matt Holliday, Todd Helton, Brad Hawpe), a strong supporting cast, and a home crowd that hasn’t seen meaningful …read more

Jeff Angus at Management by Baseball has written a couple of informative articles on San Diego Padres CEO Sandy Alderson. The discussion centers around Alderson’s management techniques and includes interviews with the man himself.
I love this riff on Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (aff link):
The revelations in Moneyball actually helped the A’s competitiveness. That’s because when other team owners read the book, many leaned on their own front offices to emulate the deeds (managing walks) but not the intent (finding an undervalued approach and optimizing against it temporarily) of what Oakland had done. And managing walks lost its special value because so …read more

Seems ESPN baseball analyst John Kruk is a little confused about the history of #44 in San Diego. He thinks he’s the last Padres player to wear the number, but of course right-hander Jake Peavy currently wears it. For a more complete discussion of the Padres and #44, head over to Ducksnorts…

San Diego Padres closer Trevor Hoffman notched career save #500 on Wednesday night against the visiting Dodgers. You can read all the details pretty much anywhere, so I’ll just share some photos I took at the game:

More pix posted at Ducksnorts. Enjoy!

I almost forgot to tell you, I’ve got a new article up at The Hardball Times about San Diego Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. In a very short time, he’s become one of my favorite players to watch on a daily basis. He’s also better than a lot of folks might realize. Read the full article to find out why…

Jeff Sackmann has an article up at The Hardball Times (full disclosure: I am a contributor to THT) called “The New Inefficiency.” In it, Jeff identifies risk acceptance as the current market inefficiency. Identifying and exploiting such inefficiencies is a key strategy employed by “small-market” teams to help reduce the effect of budgetary imbalances between them and their richer counterparts.
For example, as chronicled in Moneyball, the Oakland A’s at one time were able to exploit teams’ lack of demand for players with high on-base percentage. Now that this is common knowledge, they are no longer able to use that particular …read more