Padres ready for PETCO adva

[yagsy]

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article_perspectives.jsp?ymd=20050313&content_id=966127&vkey=perspectives&fext=.jsp

03/14/2005 8:00 AM ET
Padres ready for PETCO advantage
With new leadoff hitter/center fielder, team built for park

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2005/03/13/sDI32qd6.jpg
New leadoff man Dave Roberts not only shores up center field, but allows the Padres to drop Jeff Burroughs to a more natural spot in the order. (Harry How/Getty)
MLB Headlines

In 2004, the Padres moved into their new house, a beautiful downtown ballpark called PETCO Park. It was a place that proved to be a wonderful venue to watch baseball, but not much of one to watch baseballs fly over the fences.
This year, the Padres need to make PETCO Park feel more like their home.

They can point to their unspectacular 42-39 home record as proof they could have done even better than they did in taking their postseason hopes down to the final week of the season.

As it was, 2004 was a remarkable turnaround season for the Padres, whose 87 victories marked a 23-game improvement over the previous season, the biggest positive swing in club history.

But it could have been better. And this team should be better the second time around at PETCO.

This offseason, the Padres addressed their need for speed by bringing leadoff hitter and center fielder Dave Roberts to his hometown team. That move not only gives them a base-stealing and run-scoring threat at the top, but it moves Sean Burroughs back down from a leadoff spot where he really wasn't comfortable.

With Roberts on board and two-time team MVP Mark Loretta in the No. 2 hole, there should be ample opportunity for 3-4-5 guys Brian Giles, Phil Nevin and Ryan Klesko to drive in runs, even if it won't be with a long ball quite as often as it might be in other parks.

That said, the Padres' power bats are probably in a better place mentally to handle the challenge PETCO presents now that they've been at home there for a full season.

"Obviously, it's going to take away from your power -- we've seen that," Giles said. "It's not a home-run hitting park. But if you look at 'Lo,' 'Nev,' 'Ryno,' myself, we've all hit .300. We've got to concern ourselves with getting on base and putting pressure on teams by just constantly being on base and executing our baserunning."

That's just looking at the offensive side of things. As Nevin points out, the park really benefits the club in other ways.

"We're going to be a much better team in that park the way it is than we would have at Qualcomm Stadium," Nevin says. "Our pitching and defense is what is going to win us games. With the center fielder we have now, with the pitching staff we have now, both the starters and the bullpen, this park is going to benefit us, big time."

Rookie sensation Khalil Greene and Loretta provide a very strong tandem up the middle, and Roberts will be able to chase down balls in an expansive center field. Add in Ramon Hernandez, who has established himself as one of the premier catchers in the game, and the Padres have a solid core to their defense. Burroughs is a top-tier third baseman and Nevin has improved his skills at first, while Giles and Klesko should be able to cover the outfield corners more than adequately.

Meanwhile, the pitching staff the Padres have is capable of taking hold of PETCO's advantages and doing the job on the road as well.

With reigning National League ERA champ Jake Peavy established as a force at age 23, the Padres have a threesome of pitchers in their 20s many organizations would love to have. Brian Lawrence, 28, has three consecutive 200-inning seasons under his belt and Adam Eaton, 27, is a talented right-hander making the adjustments necessary to bring his game to a higher level. Woody Williams steps into the veteran role vacated by David Wells' departure, bringing a much different yet potentially just as effective style to the mix.

And with Trevor Hoffman coming off his record sixth 40-save season, the bullpen might be even better this year than last. His cohorts for the seventh and eighth innings, Scott Linebrink and Akinori Otsuka, are back, and GM Kevin Towers made shoring up the rest of the bullpen a priority, adding veterans in left-handers Chris Hammond and Dennys Reyes and right-hander Rudy Seanez to the mix.

Add it all up, and the Padres don't have a glaring weakness.

Though the Giants have to be considered the NL West favorite as long as Barry Bonds is healthy and his improved supporting cast does its job, the Padres have all the tools to make a run at their first division title since their World Series year of 1998.

They actually did a pretty good job of making a run in the debut season at PETCO.

"Last year was one of those years going in where we knew we were a better ballclub," Towers said. "But I think we kind of surprised ourselves. We may have even come a little bit further than we thought. I think this year guys realize that if you win another five or six games, you are in the postseason."

Winning a few more home games in 2005 obviously wouldn't hurt.


John Schlegel is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

[yagsy]

03/14/2005 10:21 AM ET
Running game is coming back
More teams trading in power for speed
By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- It has been nearly 20 years since the last Major Leaguer stole 100 bases in a single season. Carve these names into a tree stump: Vince Coleman, Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock and Maury Wills. They're the only players to do it and the only ones who may ever do it.
During their peak base stealing years, all four were integral parts of teams that utilized what variously has been called "small ball," or "Billy ball" to challenge for pennants, the World Series and division championships. "Billy Ball" was dubbed for manager Billy Martin, whose Oakland teams of the early 1980s did whatever it took to win: take the extra base, bunt a runner over or have a young Henderson steal all those bases.

"It's a lost art to some extent," said shortstop Omar Vizquel, who was signed by the Giants this winter to add some pep to the top of their lineup. "Players nowadays underestimate how important it is to run the bases well. They just rely on the long ball now."

But like so many trends that cycle through life and baseball, the running game is coming back.

The Florida Marlins took advantage of having Juan Pierre in the leadoff spot two years ago, and utilized a combination of power and speed to defeat the Yankees in the World Series.

The San Diego Padres have added the speedy Dave Roberts, giving them a running component at the top of the lineup for the first time since the late Alan Wiggins set the club record with 70 steals during the 1984 season, the first time, not coincidentally, the Padres won the pennant.

"I think it's definitely coming back," said Roberts, who stole probably the most important base of last season to keep the Red Sox alive in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. "There was a period where home runs were increasing at an accelerated pace and that's definitely declined. With that said, it makes the guys at the top of the order, who can run, more of a commodity."

The Chicago White Sox have been recast this season in the image of their go-go manager Ozzie Guillen, a spry shortstop whose career was built on guile and speed.

"If I build the team the way I played, we're never going to win," Guillen told the Arizona Republic, his tongue stuffed firmly in cheek.

The White Sox traded power for speed, swapping power-hitting Carlos Lee and his 62 homers the last two seasons to the Brewers for Scott Podsednik, who led the Majors last year with 70 steals, eight less than Chicago stole as a team.

Pierre was traded from Colorado to Florida after the 2002 season in the wild deal that sent Preston Wilson from the Marlins to the Rockies and Mike Hampton to the Braves.

The deal helped remake the Marlins. Wilson hit 36 homers and knocked in 141 runs in 2003 for the Rockies, who finished fourth in the National League West. Pierre that season hit .305, stole 65 bases, was a vacuum in center field, and the table setter for a team that won the Wild Card, the pennant and the World Series in six games over the Yankees.

The secret to Florida's success was certainly the stolen bases, but it was also the willingness of the top two hitters to bunt runners over, said Larry Beinfest, the team's general manager. Pierre and No. 2 hitter Luis Castillo combined to steal 86 bases that season, but they also added 30 sacrifice bunts.

"I definitely see bunting as a weapon," Beinfest said. "If you can run and you know how to bunt, it's going to be a big asset for you. A bunt also puts the defense in a different alignment, and it's just another weapon to get on base."

The White Sox hit 242 homers last season, the most in club history, but they won only 83 games and finished second in the American League Central, nine games behind Minnesota. Out the door went the heavy-hitting Lee and Magglio Ordonez. In the door came new baserunning coach Tim Raines, who as a member of the Montreal Expos, led the NL in 1983 with 90 steals, the most in a single season of his career.

Guillen noted that there were moments when the 2004 White Sox "could score 14, 15 runs a game" and then spend "two, three days without even moving a guy over."

Raines, the seven-time All-Star, who stole 808 bases during his 23-year career and led the NL in steals four consecutive seasons from 1981-84, has been in the White Sox's Tucson camp this spring teaching the fine nuances of baserunning.

"We want all the players to know that everyone in the lineup has the chance to do something on the base paths," Raines said. "We want to get it in their minds that, if there's a base hit and you are at first, we are taking third. We want everyone to have that sort of mindset: just be aggressive on the base paths."

In Peoria, where the Padres are ramping up for the 2005 season, Roberts has added a new dimension, but Davey Lopes, Raines' counterpart, is also trying to convert the Padres into a different baserunning mode.

Last year, the Padres moved into the more spacious confines of PETCO Park with its large outfield and wide power alleys. The Padres hit only 57 homers at home and stole only 52 bases overall as a team.

Sluggers Ryan Klesko and Phil Nevin complained incessantly about how hard it was to hit the ball out. Manager Bruce Bochy noted that the Padres needed better line drive hitters, more base movement and a speedier component to close the gap and win the NL West for only the fourth time in their history.

Roberts, alone, stole 38 bases for Los Angeles and Boston last season.

Lopes, the second baseman who stole 550 bases in his 16-year career and was the speed demon on the great Dodgers teams of the 1970s that combined power and baserunning acumen, said that the Padres are only following the trend.

"If you've got speed, you might as well utilize it," Lopes said. "It's another weapon. Even a bunt's exciting when it's for a base hit. Stealing adds excitement to the game. I think there's a little trend of getting back to it."

But it'll probably never get back to those wild base stealing days of Coleman, Henderson, Brock and Wills.

"I just believe that a base stealer can control the game like no other player can," Lopes said. "Maybe there aren't that many base stealers around. I don't know. There were quite a few when I was coming up."

Barry M. Bloom is a national reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

[Timberwolf]

I think they will do well there this year. I thought it was disgusting last year how the Padres players went on and on about how Petco was a disadvantage to them last year.

[yagsy]

Nevin, Giles and Klesko did whine. The one I had a problem with as most Pads fans did was Nevin. The other two did shut up. Klesko I think whined more because his shoulder was hurting him, he wasn't seeing his normal power numbers and he reacted more out of frustration. Nevin has since learned his lesson and will be a better leader of this club after going through it. At least that is my hope. Giles didn't whine that much but he certainly did voice his opinion.

You can't have your # 3, 4 and 5 hitters complaining about the park. It sets a bad example. And I think that is why it got into so many of the players' heads last season. This year, I hope things will change.