Intentional Blog on Balls

Sandy Alderson, as I imagine most of you know, does a weekly interview with XX Sports Radio’s Too Much Show.  This week’s can be found here.  For those who don’t feel like listening to the entire interview right now, I’ll summarize some of the key points.

Asked about Kevin Towers’ comments on Monday, Alderson said he by and large agreed with them and was pleased Towers made them.  He did try to clarify, though, that despite the team only having a handful of All-Star caliber players that this team has had recent success with many of the players currently on the roster and that collectively we are not that deficient in talent.

Asked if there was a need to reevaluate the way they evaluate players, Alderson basically said there was not.  He said that they must learn from both successes and failures, but that there was no reason to think their fundamental approach is flawed based on a month and a half of poor play.

The hosts then pointed to home runs being down and asked if this meant it was time to discount home runs when evaluating players.  Alderson made the rather obvious point that increased scarcity of home runs makes them more valuable if anything.

The hosts followed up by asking about strikeouts and wanted to know why they were up.  A greater emphasis on power and walks was suggested by Alderson as a possibility.  He also went off on a bit of a tangent saying that the Padres’ lineup has six guys with OBP below .300 and that you can’t score runs like that.

It was then asked why those players were on the team.  Alderson called that a good point, but reminded everyone that some of those players have historically had higher OBP or been productive despite low OBP.

This of course returned the conversation to Towers’ comments about wholesale changes, which Alderson seemed to acknowledge as likely if the current players don’t improve.

There was more, but I feel that was the meat of it.