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Drbio · 12-13-2005, 10:05 AM

From Newberg....Greatness.....

THE NEWBERG REPORT

Pitcher A is 28 years old, has a lifetime record of 49-50, 3.73 in seven big league seasons, and twice won a career-best 12 games in a season. He was a blue-chip prospect in the late '90s, once keying a trade for a veteran starter.

Pitcher B is 28 years old, has a lifetime record of 51-51, 3.95 in seven big league seasons, and twice won a career-best 14 games in a season. He was a blue-chip prospect in the late '90s, once keying a trade for a veteran starter.

Pitcher A just signed a five-year contract worth a guaranteed $55 million.

Pitcher B, acquired by the Rangers yesterday for a player to be named later, stands to make something in the neighborhood of $4 million in 2006.

Now, this is far from an argument that Vicente Padilla belongs in the same conversation as A.J. Burnett, but it might suggest to you that the line is sometimes pretty fine. Two years ago, when Padilla was coming off 14-win seasons in each of his first two years as a major league starter, he was probably all but untouchable.

But a changing of the guard took place in Texas and in Philadelphia this winter, attachments vanished, and two GMs saw an opportunity. Jon Daniels has made it his personal mission to exploit the starting pitcher trade market however he can. Pat Gillick arrived in Philly with no reason to hang onto the key to predecessor Ed Wade's 2000 trade of Curt Schilling to Arizona.

The Phillies were reportedly prepared to non-tender Padilla by next Tuesday's deadline to offer contracts to their controlled arbitration-eligibles, and as a result Texas was able to acquire him for a player to be named later, expected to be Philadelphia's choice (according to T.R. Sullivan of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) of righthander Ricardo Rodriguez, who is out of the Rangers' immediate plans and, just as significantly, out of options, or 17-year-old Dominican infielder Julio Gonzalez, whom the Rangers signed this summer and didn't even bring stateside during the season. If that seems incongruous, consider the following.

Philadelphia hired Don Welke as a pro scout last month. Welke, an international cross-checker for the Rangers in 2005, spearheaded an effort (according to the Star-Telegram's Kathleen O'Brien), along with Rangers manager of professional and international scouting A.J. Preller and Latin American coordinator Manny Batista, to sign 18 Dominican teenagers in the summer, which included Gonzalez. Welke's possible influence with regard to that signing, and his current involvement in Philadelphia's player development effort, could mean that Gonzalez is a player he covets and convinced Gillick to target.

But of course, the Phillies' choice could be Rodriguez (though Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News writes that the player to be named will be a low-level minor leaguer not on the 40-man roster, which would obviously describe Gonzalez but not Rodriguez).

Interestingly, Rodriguez is just eight months younger than Padilla, but has managed to log only a fourth as many big league innings despite being every bit as much a blue-chip prospect once upon a time. Tucked inside his lifetime 10-15, 5.18 career mark was a remarkable stretch of five games in the summer of 2004, his first work with Texas, in which he went 3-1, 2.03 and looked to be on the verge of cementing a spot in the Ranger rotation, much as Chris Young would do a few months later and Kameron Loe would do the following season.

But on July 22, 2004, a line drive shot off the bat of Angels third baseman Robb Quinlan shattered Rodriguez's right elbow and, in retrospect, appears to have been a moment he never recovered from. Rodriguez missed the remainder of the 2004 season, and 2005 was a year in which he systematically pitched himself out of the Rangers' plans. A terrible spring training was followed by an excellent start to his AAA season, and he was 7-3, 2.91 for Oklahoma when the Rangers summoned him to replace Ryan Drese in the rotation.

Rodriguez posted a 3.65 Ranger ERA in June. It ballooned to 5.84 in July. It was a miserable 10.57 in two August starts, and he landed on the disabled list with a right shoulder contusion. A few weeks later he made just three pitches in a start for the RedHawks before pulling himself from the game with shoulder pain. His season, and likely his Ranger career (whether the Phillies select him or not), were done.

Never a strikeout pitcher, Rodriguez saw his big league strikeout rate drop to 3.8 per nine in 2005, and he appeared to be nibbling more than ever. At times he looked like he didn't want the ball. Whether the Quinlan shot factored in is anybody's guess. But it's hard to imagine he was going to get a significant look in camp, and since he's out of options he was probably headed for a designation for assignment and a likely loss on waivers.

The fact that Texas is able to get Padilla for Rodriguez or a teenaged middle infielder begs the question that I can't dispose of: Why couldn't Philadelphia get a better deal from Texas, or anyone else? Is it the right triceps tendinitis that drove him to the disabled list in 2004 and early in 2005? Is it whatever gave rise to the veiled references in today's papers to off-the-field issues? Is it the drop in performance the past two seasons?

True, Padilla went 9-12, 4.71 in 2005. But there's more to that story.

Before the All-Star Break, working back into shape after a bout of tendinitis delayed the start of his season by a few weeks, Padilla went 4-8, 6.27, allowing opponents to hit a robust .315/.407/.581. After the Break, he was 5-4, 3.63, holding batters to a remarkably weak line of .217/.308/.357.

Padilla's best stretch of the season actually began the day before the All-Star Break, and it was as quietly dominating a run as any pitcher had in 2005. The 6'2" righty fired nine consecutive quality starts, going 6-3, 1.94 in the process. With the arm issues apparently resolved, he was once again pitching like the guy whom the Phillies insisted on in the Schilling trade and who went 28-23, 3.45 over his first two seasons as a big league starter and was an All-Star in the first of those two campaigns.

Texas is apparently confident that the triceps problem is behind him, having put him through a physical yesterday.

Other encouraging things: Padilla's best pitch is a fastball with heavy sink, exactly what works best in Arlington. Padilla sports a solid lifetime groundball-to-flyball rate of 1.53, though that includes a 1.25 each of the past two seasons. He gives up a home run every 9.6 innings, but interestingly, he was stingy in 2005 with the longball away from Citizens Bank Park, giving up 17 bombs in 75.2 home innings and just five in 71.1 frames on the road. Opponents hit just .205 against him with runners in scoring position (sixth-best in baseball). And he's heading into his final year before free agency, which frequently results in good things.

The bad: Padilla was 1-3, 7.11 against the American League in 2005, and 5-6, 5.48 for his career. (It doesn't appear that he's ever pitched in Arlington.) His walk frequency jumped to an uncharacteristic 4.5 per nine innings in 2005 and resulted in the worst strikeout-to-walk ratio of his career. And while he's said to have an aggressive demeanor on the mound, there have been questions about his ability to get along with teammates and coaches in the past.

This deal sort of reminds me of the Rangers' July 1998 trade of Todd Van Poppel and Warren Morris for Esteban Loaiza, in a bunch of ways.

Buck Showalter and Mark Connor were with the Diamondbacks when Arizona signed Padilla out of Nicaragua in 1998, and when Padilla pitched for the big club in 1999 and 2000 (prior to the July 2000 trade that sent him, Travis Lee, Omar Daal, and Nelson Figueroa to the Phillies for Schilling).

Padilla earned $3.2 million last season and should see an increase of roughly $1 million for 2006. Should he put together a decent season, he could conceivably end up as a Type B free agent next year, which would net Texas a first- or second-round pick the following summer should the Rangers offer him arbitration but fail to keep him from taking a free agent deal from another club.

The money saved by Texas in the Alfonso Soriano deal is roughly equivalent to the payroll impact Padilla will have, so if you care to view this from a financial standpoint, you might say that Soriano and the player to be named later in this deal turned into Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge, Armando Galarraga, and Padilla.

Daniels told Sullivan and Grant that the Padilla acquisition doesn't take Texas out of the market for pitching, and that the club still seeks one more starting pitcher and at least one more reliever. Sullivan speculates that the Rangers' chances to sign Braden Looper might have been diminished by the Padilla trade from the standpoint that Philadelphia, also interested in Looper, now has more money to spend.

For now, Padilla joins Wilkerson, Mark Teixeira, Kevin Mench, Rod Barajas, Gary Matthews Jr., and Joaquin Benoit as Rangers who are arbitration-eligible this winter. The Rangers must tender contracts to each by a week from today or they become free agents. It's unlikely that any of them will be non-tendered.

Mark DeRosa and Brian Shouse were eligible as well but signed one-year contracts yesterday, for a reported $675,000 and $725,000, respectively, plus appearance incentives. As things stand right now, DeRosa could be Ian Kinsler's competition for the second base job.

Wilkerson's physical took place as planned yesterday. I assume it went without incident, or we would have heard otherwise.

With the Washington trade official, Texas (with Padilla's arrival) has a full 40-man roster. Of course, if Rodriguez ends up going to the Phillies, the roster will go back down to 39 players.

San Diego is guaranteeing Doug Brocail $1 million for 2006. Wow.

Tom Krasovic of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that while the Padres are withdrawing righthander Adam Eaton from trade talks, they are talking to the Rangers about a less significant deal that would send a pitcher to Texas for San Diego native Adrian Gonzalez.

USA Today's Bob Nightengale throws Atlanta into the mix of teams that might be interested in Mench.

12-13-2005, 10:05 AM	#25
Drbio Banned Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Nowhere Posts: 40,924	From Newberg....Greatness..... THE NEWBERG REPORT Pitcher A is 28 years old, has a lifetime record of 49-50, 3.73 in seven big league seasons, and twice won a career-best 12 games in a season. He was a blue-chip prospect in the late '90s, once keying a trade for a veteran starter. Pitcher B is 28 years old, has a lifetime record of 51-51, 3.95 in seven big league seasons, and twice won a career-best 14 games in a season. He was a blue-chip prospect in the late '90s, once keying a trade for a veteran starter. Pitcher A just signed a five-year contract worth a guaranteed $55 million. Pitcher B, acquired by the Rangers yesterday for a player to be named later, stands to make something in the neighborhood of $4 million in 2006. Now, this is far from an argument that Vicente Padilla belongs in the same conversation as A.J. Burnett, but it might suggest to you that the line is sometimes pretty fine. Two years ago, when Padilla was coming off 14-win seasons in each of his first two years as a major league starter, he was probably all but untouchable. But a changing of the guard took place in Texas and in Philadelphia this winter, attachments vanished, and two GMs saw an opportunity. Jon Daniels has made it his personal mission to exploit the starting pitcher trade market however he can. Pat Gillick arrived in Philly with no reason to hang onto the key to predecessor Ed Wade's 2000 trade of Curt Schilling to Arizona. The Phillies were reportedly prepared to non-tender Padilla by next Tuesday's deadline to offer contracts to their controlled arbitration-eligibles, and as a result Texas was able to acquire him for a player to be named later, expected to be Philadelphia's choice (according to T.R. Sullivan of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) of righthander Ricardo Rodriguez, who is out of the Rangers' immediate plans and, just as significantly, out of options, or 17-year-old Dominican infielder Julio Gonzalez, whom the Rangers signed this summer and didn't even bring stateside during the season. If that seems incongruous, consider the following. Philadelphia hired Don Welke as a pro scout last month. Welke, an international cross-checker for the Rangers in 2005, spearheaded an effort (according to the Star-Telegram's Kathleen O'Brien), along with Rangers manager of professional and international scouting A.J. Preller and Latin American coordinator Manny Batista, to sign 18 Dominican teenagers in the summer, which included Gonzalez. Welke's possible influence with regard to that signing, and his current involvement in Philadelphia's player development effort, could mean that Gonzalez is a player he covets and convinced Gillick to target. But of course, the Phillies' choice could be Rodriguez (though Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News writes that the player to be named will be a low-level minor leaguer not on the 40-man roster, which would obviously describe Gonzalez but not Rodriguez). Interestingly, Rodriguez is just eight months younger than Padilla, but has managed to log only a fourth as many big league innings despite being every bit as much a blue-chip prospect once upon a time. Tucked inside his lifetime 10-15, 5.18 career mark was a remarkable stretch of five games in the summer of 2004, his first work with Texas, in which he went 3-1, 2.03 and looked to be on the verge of cementing a spot in the Ranger rotation, much as Chris Young would do a few months later and Kameron Loe would do the following season. But on July 22, 2004, a line drive shot off the bat of Angels third baseman Robb Quinlan shattered Rodriguez's right elbow and, in retrospect, appears to have been a moment he never recovered from. Rodriguez missed the remainder of the 2004 season, and 2005 was a year in which he systematically pitched himself out of the Rangers' plans. A terrible spring training was followed by an excellent start to his AAA season, and he was 7-3, 2.91 for Oklahoma when the Rangers summoned him to replace Ryan Drese in the rotation. Rodriguez posted a 3.65 Ranger ERA in June. It ballooned to 5.84 in July. It was a miserable 10.57 in two August starts, and he landed on the disabled list with a right shoulder contusion. A few weeks later he made just three pitches in a start for the RedHawks before pulling himself from the game with shoulder pain. His season, and likely his Ranger career (whether the Phillies select him or not), were done. Never a strikeout pitcher, Rodriguez saw his big league strikeout rate drop to 3.8 per nine in 2005, and he appeared to be nibbling more than ever. At times he looked like he didn't want the ball. Whether the Quinlan shot factored in is anybody's guess. But it's hard to imagine he was going to get a significant look in camp, and since he's out of options he was probably headed for a designation for assignment and a likely loss on waivers. The fact that Texas is able to get Padilla for Rodriguez or a teenaged middle infielder begs the question that I can't dispose of: Why couldn't Philadelphia get a better deal from Texas, or anyone else? Is it the right triceps tendinitis that drove him to the disabled list in 2004 and early in 2005? Is it whatever gave rise to the veiled references in today's papers to off-the-field issues? Is it the drop in performance the past two seasons? True, Padilla went 9-12, 4.71 in 2005. But there's more to that story. Before the All-Star Break, working back into shape after a bout of tendinitis delayed the start of his season by a few weeks, Padilla went 4-8, 6.27, allowing opponents to hit a robust .315/.407/.581. After the Break, he was 5-4, 3.63, holding batters to a remarkably weak line of .217/.308/.357. Padilla's best stretch of the season actually began the day before the All-Star Break, and it was as quietly dominating a run as any pitcher had in 2005. The 6'2" righty fired nine consecutive quality starts, going 6-3, 1.94 in the process. With the arm issues apparently resolved, he was once again pitching like the guy whom the Phillies insisted on in the Schilling trade and who went 28-23, 3.45 over his first two seasons as a big league starter and was an All-Star in the first of those two campaigns. Texas is apparently confident that the triceps problem is behind him, having put him through a physical yesterday. Other encouraging things: Padilla's best pitch is a fastball with heavy sink, exactly what works best in Arlington. Padilla sports a solid lifetime groundball-to-flyball rate of 1.53, though that includes a 1.25 each of the past two seasons. He gives up a home run every 9.6 innings, but interestingly, he was stingy in 2005 with the longball away from Citizens Bank Park, giving up 17 bombs in 75.2 home innings and just five in 71.1 frames on the road. Opponents hit just .205 against him with runners in scoring position (sixth-best in baseball). And he's heading into his final year before free agency, which frequently results in good things. The bad: Padilla was 1-3, 7.11 against the American League in 2005, and 5-6, 5.48 for his career. (It doesn't appear that he's ever pitched in Arlington.) His walk frequency jumped to an uncharacteristic 4.5 per nine innings in 2005 and resulted in the worst strikeout-to-walk ratio of his career. And while he's said to have an aggressive demeanor on the mound, there have been questions about his ability to get along with teammates and coaches in the past. This deal sort of reminds me of the Rangers' July 1998 trade of Todd Van Poppel and Warren Morris for Esteban Loaiza, in a bunch of ways. Buck Showalter and Mark Connor were with the Diamondbacks when Arizona signed Padilla out of Nicaragua in 1998, and when Padilla pitched for the big club in 1999 and 2000 (prior to the July 2000 trade that sent him, Travis Lee, Omar Daal, and Nelson Figueroa to the Phillies for Schilling). Padilla earned $3.2 million last season and should see an increase of roughly $1 million for 2006. Should he put together a decent season, he could conceivably end up as a Type B free agent next year, which would net Texas a first- or second-round pick the following summer should the Rangers offer him arbitration but fail to keep him from taking a free agent deal from another club. The money saved by Texas in the Alfonso Soriano deal is roughly equivalent to the payroll impact Padilla will have, so if you care to view this from a financial standpoint, you might say that Soriano and the player to be named later in this deal turned into Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge, Armando Galarraga, and Padilla. Daniels told Sullivan and Grant that the Padilla acquisition doesn't take Texas out of the market for pitching, and that the club still seeks one more starting pitcher and at least one more reliever. Sullivan speculates that the Rangers' chances to sign Braden Looper might have been diminished by the Padilla trade from the standpoint that Philadelphia, also interested in Looper, now has more money to spend. For now, Padilla joins Wilkerson, Mark Teixeira, Kevin Mench, Rod Barajas, Gary Matthews Jr., and Joaquin Benoit as Rangers who are arbitration-eligible this winter. The Rangers must tender contracts to each by a week from today or they become free agents. It's unlikely that any of them will be non-tendered. Mark DeRosa and Brian Shouse were eligible as well but signed one-year contracts yesterday, for a reported $675,000 and $725,000, respectively, plus appearance incentives. As things stand right now, DeRosa could be Ian Kinsler's competition for the second base job. Wilkerson's physical took place as planned yesterday. I assume it went without incident, or we would have heard otherwise. With the Washington trade official, Texas (with Padilla's arrival) has a full 40-man roster. Of course, if Rodriguez ends up going to the Phillies, the roster will go back down to 39 players. San Diego is guaranteeing Doug Brocail $1 million for 2006. Wow. Tom Krasovic of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that while the Padres are withdrawing righthander Adam Eaton from trade talks, they are talking to the Rangers about a less significant deal that would send a pitcher to Texas for San Diego native Adrian Gonzalez. USA Today's Bob Nightengale throws Atlanta into the mix of teams that might be interested in Mench.