Padres Rotation: Depth Chart Discussions
In the coming weeks, we’ll be covering each team’s potential depth charts in an effort to shine a spotlight on the interesting playing time battles that will be waged this spring. Obviously none of these depth charts are set in stone — rather they should function to focus your attention in the right places to find cheap fantasy value.
Today we head out to San Diego to check in on the Padres rotation, which could be legitimately labeled a mess at the moment. The good news is that there are some intriguing options, the bad news is for the forecasters (like me!) trying to project innings total for their potential starters. It’s not fun, let me tell you. I won’t pretend to really have a clue as to which five starters will open the season in the rotation, but I will do my best to analyze the options.
Early Depth Chart:
Clayton Richard
Edinson Volquez
Jason Marquis
Eric Stults
Freddy Garcia
Casey Kelly
Anthony Bass
Andrew Cashner
Tyson Ross
Cory Luebke
Phew. That’s nine starting pitchers who have a non-zero chance of opening the season in the rotation, with a tenth (Luebke) who will be almost certainly a part of it once he returns from Tommy John surgery rehab. What we do know at this point are that Richard and Volquez are 100% guaranteed members of the staff. I figured Marquis was as well, but oddly the Padres own depth chart has listed him seventh. Do they have some inside info? I cannot imagine they would sign him to a one-year deal for $3 million if they didn’t plan to hand him a rotation slot.
After Marquis, it becomes quite foggy. Eric Stults is listed third on the Padres.com site and fourth on MLB Depth Charts. The 34-year old (yes, I am as shocked as you that he’s that old!) has a whopping 256.0 Major League innings to his name, and has managed an ERA- barely worse than the league average. Surely, his 2.91 ERA last year over 99.0 innings will get him a much longer look than deserved. It’s all smoke and mirrors, though, as his strikeout rate stinks and he has been a fly ball pitcher throughout his short career. Only tiny BABIP and HR/FB marks saved him from an ERA well above 4.00 last season and a trip right back to Triple-A. It’s very possible he opens the year in the rotation, but I wouldn’t bet on that lasting very long.
We all know Freddy Garcia and the Padres picked him up on a minor league deal just a couple of weeks ago. He actually showed pretty decent skills last year with the Yankees, but an inflated HR/FB rate, which hurt his LOB%, wreaked havoc on his ERA. Moving back into the NL and with better luck, he might still have something left in the tank. Of course, fantasy owners should still ignore him as he hasn’t pitched more than 157.0 innings since 2006. But like Stults, he might very well open the year in the rotation, but poor performance or injury for the 36 year old could give a youngster a shot.
Speaking of youngsters, the next group includes Casey Kelly, Anthony Bass and Andrew Cashner. Formerly a shortstop and having focused solely on pitching only since 2010, Kelly’s skills have been underwhelming in the minors. However, he has shown a penchant for inducing ground balls and has good control, so maybe a future Tim Hudson? Hudson at his peak was a pretty good fantasy earner, but always more valuable in real baseball. The same might be said of Kelly’s future. But if he can push his strikeout rate above 7.0 on an annual basis, then he’ll be quite intriguing with the enviable skills trifecta we always search for. It’s also worth nothing that he missed time early last season with elbow soreness, so that’s a bit scary.
Anthony Bass opened 2012 is grand fashion, posting a 2.30 ERA in April, while striking out nearly a batter per inning. It all went downhill for them however, as his monthly ERA never dipped below 4.70. Then he went down with a shoulder injury, which cost him more than two months, and he made just one more start after returning in September. With the way his season went after April and the shoulder issues, he’s probably a longshot to win a rotation spot. He has some modest intrigue though with his ground ball tilt and above average strikeout ability.
Last of the youngins is Andrew Cashner. I might have what you call a man crush on him. Strikeout ability? Check plus. Quality stuff along with a blazing fastball? Yup. Acceptable control given strikeout rate? You bet. Wait, and a ground ball rate above 50%?! I think I’m in love. Of course, not everything is rainbows and unicorns. He underwent surgery on his thumb in early December and although the possibility exists, he is more likely to open the season on the disabled list. If nothing else, this should reduce his attractiveness on draft day and allow you, the intelligent, dashingly good looking fantasy owner reading this here article, to scoop him up on the cheap. I will be upset at myself if he doesn’t make it onto every single one of my teams this year.
Oh, and then there’s Tyson Ross. He’s really only listed above because Padres.com lists him fourth in the rotation. Really? I would be shocked if he wins a spot. And then we have Cory Luebke, who underwent Tommy John surgery last May, and is hoping to return by the All-Star Break. But, which Luebke is the real one? He posted a 9.9 strikeout rate as a starter in 2011, but that rate plummeted to just 6.7 last year, and SwStk% was in free fall as well. He should reclaim his rotation spot upon return, but aside from the performance risk we know about from TJ returnees (velocity down, control off), we’re still not sure what a normal, healthy Luebke should actually be expected to do. So, I probably wouldn’t bother with him in shallower leagues.
So the bottom line is that without a crystal ball, I really haven’t a clue who opens the season in the rotation past Marquis. However, of the possibilities fighting for a spot, I would rank them Cashner, [large gap], Kelly and then Bass for fantasy intrigue.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
on the bright side, we should be able to count on this rotation setting up houston street for about 24 saves this season.
It’s not a rotation looking to be much different than last year’s, and SD relievers tallied 43 saves (13th out of 30 ML teams) last year. They won 76 games last year and, fwiw, PECOTA has them down for 76 again. I’d expect the Padres to be right around league average for save chances again. (I believe it’s mostly due to the lower run-scoring environment at PETCO. Low scoring = more close games.)
Not to throw another name into this batch of bland, but does Erlin stand any chance? Seems like he would be a better option than a lot of guys on this list.
Erlin might make a mid-season appearance, along with a couple other minor leaguers who have outstanding starts. The Padres have a progression of promising starters 1-4 years away, and haven’t committed to multi-year contracts for established pitchers because of it.
They’re high on a number of them, higher than a lot of scouts and evaluators, and are committed to running them up to the show to see who sticks. It’s also a lot cheaper to bring them up than sign established pitchers, and that’s important for a low/mid revenue franchise with a lot of debt ($155 million for Petco alone, $115 million at 8.65%).
One guy left out is late signee Tim Stauffer, also recovering from surgery, who should be 100% by the season opener. He has to show something beforehand, but he probably has a better chance to win an opening day rotation spot than Garcia, who would probably be the first call-up once the season starts.
The opening day rotation will do well to remain intact by May, and could change monthly this year. Fantasy players would do well to avoid Padres pitchers entirely this year (even Street), and look for bargains among Padres regulars like Gyorko (he WILL be at 2B this year), Alonso, Quentin (who has slimmed down this year), Grandal (after his 50 game suspension), Hundley trying to come back from a horrible year, and perennial underachievers Venable and Maybin. The Padres could produce some big individual surprises this year, but if your a fantasy player, good luck guessing which ones!
I already have Cashner on all of my fantasy teams and think that if he can stay healthy for more than a month at a time he is the best pitcher the Padres have ,and pitching in Petco might be one of the better pitchers in the NL .
While it obviously doesn’t help to start the season, I think Luebke and Cashner have pretty solid potential to step in at #1 & #2. If they pan out, Volquez and Richard don’t make for a terrible #3 & #4 and SD could have a decent run here. If they didn’t play a bulk of their games against the defending champs and the west coast Yankees, I’d be excited for their season…
Eric Stults had an astronomically high LD% last year. By far the highest of any pitcher with some reasonable amount of innings pitched. When you consider that he still had a ‘tiny BABIP,’ I tend to trust him to repeat.
Also, His BABIP looks wrong on his player page. It lists his BABIP as .317 & .350 with CWS & SD, respectively. It then says he had a .264 BABIP for the year. I think his BABIP was actually higher and not ‘tiny.’
In fact, all his numbers look wrong on his player page. You might want to look into that.
This has either been fixed or you’re crazy: .286 BABIP with CWS, .262 with SD, .264 overall.
Just thought I’d pass along the news that Cashner is recovering faster than expected and should be pitching by March 1st. Go hog-wild y’all.
Padres do have an interesting quagmire of SP options.. Richard, Volquez, and Marquis should be penned in as the OD 1-3. Marquis I think gets a bit over-looked: after coming to SD, he posted at least a 17.7 K% and no higher than a 8.8% BB% in 93.2 innings. He was getting hit hard on the long-ball though, even with Petco.. about a 1.3-4 HR/9.
Ross probably makes the team unless he truly bombs in ST. He’s out of options at this point, perhaps that’s why the official website had him ranked so high.