Monday, June 20, 2011

Rizzo vs Headley - first 10 games

Three brutal losses this weekend.  Five unearned runs enroute to a 6-5 loss, shutout for the 12th time this season, then losing a game they led 3-1 in the sixth.  Now we go to Boston to play the other hot AL team.

"Nice to see you, Adrian.  Can you sit these 3 games out so we have a 10% chance of winning?"

Speaking of Adrian, how's his replacement holding up?  After a double, triple, and HR in his first four games, he's struggled a bit:  .148/.361/.370 in 36 PA.  The best think we can say about Anthony Rizzo is the slow start on balls in play has not affected his batters eye.  His OPS+ still sits at 112, which on this Padre team is 4th best.

Here's something interesting - how does Rizzo's first 10 games compare with Chase Headley's?  Rizzo's line is above.  Here's Headley's: .250/.250/.525 (40 PA).  Headley hit 3 HR in his first 10 games with the Padres (hence the high SLG), but had not walked in 40 PA (and had struck out 15 times) which drove his OBP down.  Padres were 1-9 in Headley's first 10 games, 2-8 so far in Rizzos (appropos of nothing).

People soured pretty quickly on Headley, which I at the time thought was inherently unfair.  He did not lift a bad team out of being bad by himself, and it was unrealistic to expect he would.  People's expectations of Rizzo seem much more reasonable; this is also a bad team, Rizzo is not going to lift them out of being bad by himself.

It might also be helping to manage Rizzo expectations that he's only played 4 of his first 10 games at home.  Headley played 7 of his first 10 at Petco.

I thought that'd be more interesting than rehashing this weekend's series.  Ugh.

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