Padres Press Clips Tuesday, November 17, 2015

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Zinter expected to be Padres hitting UT San Diego Lin 2

What to know: Padres new hitting coach UT San Diego Sanders 3

Source: Zinter named Padres’ hitting coach MLB.com Brock 5

If you’re going to trade prospects for a firefighter… FoxSports.com Neyer 6

NL West: ‘Wait and see’ what Padres truly up to UT San Diego Sanders 8

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Zinter expected to be Padres hitting coach Zinter was Astros’ assistant hitting coach By Dennis Lin | 3:21 p.m. Nov. 16, 2015 Alan Zinter, the ’ assistant hitting coach last season, will be the Padres’ new hitting coach, a source confirmed.

While replacing , who last week was named the ’ bench coach, Zinter reunites with new Padres . The two were teammates on the in 2004.

Zinter, 47, was the ’ minor league hitting coordinator from 2012-14 before coaching for the Astros. He was a hitting coach in the D-backs’ minor league system from 2008-11, originally hired by current Astros manager and former Padres assistant general manager A.J. Hinch.

Zinter’s playing career was an illustration of both perseverance and passion for the game. The and spent 19 seasons in the minors and parts of two in the majors.

A native of El Paso, Texas, as well as an All-American at the University of Arizona, Zinter was the 24th overall draft pick by the in 1989. He would wait 13 years before he made his major league debut on June 18, 2002, at Milwaukee.

Zinter played a total of 67 games in the majors, hitting .167 with three home runs. He played 1,728 games in the minors, hitting .258 with 250 home runs. Like Green, he had a brief stint in Japan.

Zinter’s predecessors haven’t had much luck holding onto the job. He will be the Padres’ eighth hitting coach since Petco Park opened in 2004.

The Padres are still deciding on an assistant hitting coach. recently completed his fourth season in that role.

Green’s staff will include at least two returnees, pitching coach Darren Balsley and third-base coach Glenn Hoffman. The known newcomers are Zinter and coach (and former Padres reliever) Doug Bochtler. That leaves bench coach and first-base coach to be determined.

The entire staff could be finalized later this week or next.

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What to know: Padres new hitting coach Reports say Astros assistant hitting coach Alan Zinter getting job in San Diego By Jeff Sanders | 3:54 p.m. Nov. 16, 2015 Mark Kotsay’s move to the Bay Area toserve as the Athletics’ bench coachopened up another vacancy on Padres manager Andy Green’s staff. Houston Assistant hitting coach Alan Zinter,according to early reports, will fill that hole, taking on the lead hitting job in San Diego.

THE ALAN ZINTER FILE Age: 47 Born: May 19, 1968, in El Paso, Texas High school: Hanks High School (El Paso) College: University of Arizona Drafted: 1st round by the Mets (24th overall) in 1989 MLB stats: .167 batting average, .214 on-base percentage, .333 slugging percentage in 84 plate appearances (67 games in 2002 and 2004). Three homers, nine RBIs, 34 , five walks.

Pitching coach Darren Balsley and third base coach Glenn Hoffman are returning and Green has hired Doug Bochter as his bullpen coach, leaving bench coach and first base coach as the lone vacancies on his staff.

Working under Hinch and hitting coach Dave Hudgens, Zinter joined the Houston staff in November 2014 after spending the three previous seasons as Cleveland’s minor league hitting coordinator. Buoyed by the further development of several prospects – from to – the Astros’ offense in the majors in 2015 graded out as follows:

 Runs – 6th (729)  Homers – 2nd (230)  RBIs – 6th (691)  Batting average – T-19th (.250)  On-base – T-15th (.315) 3

 Slugging – 2nd (.437)  K% – 29th (22.9)  BB% – T-9th In San Diego, Zinter inherits an offense that ranked in the bottom five in the NL in batting average (15th, .243), OBP (15th, .300), SLG (12th, .385) and strikeouts (t-14th, 22 percent).

Quick hits

 Zinter also serve as a hitting coach in minor league’s system from 2008 to 2011 after spending 28 games with the Diamondbacks in 2004. There, the then-36- year-old Zinter would have crossed paths with Green, who was 26 while playing 46 games in the majors with Arizona. Both also played for the Diamondbacks’ -A affiliate that year in Tucson.  Spent parts of 18 seasons in the minors and didn’t make his MLB debut until 13 years into his playing career. His first was a home off Scott Williams while with the Astros in 2002.  He played 61 games in 1999 for Seibu in Japan, fashioning a .202/.338/.387 batting line to go with eight homers and 28 RBIs.  Owns a career .258/.355/.461 batting line and hit 250 homers over 6,461 minor league at-bats. He played first base, outfield and catcher.  Was an All-American at the University of Arizona and a member of Team USA in 1988.  Makes Gilbert, Ariz., his offseason home with wife Yvonne, son Michael and daughter Franklynn.

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Source: Zinter named Padres' hitting coach By Corey Brock / MLB.com | @FollowThePadres | November 16th, 2015

SAN DIEGO -- New Padres manager Andy Green continues to make progress with his coaching staff, as the team has hired Alan Zinter as its new hitting coach, a source said on Monday.

The team hasn't officially announced the hire.

Zinter spent last season as the assistant hitting coach of the Astros. He and Green played together for the D-backs in 2004, and Zinter was a hitting coach from 2008-11 with Arizona.

Zinter takes over for Mark Kotsay, who last week joined the A's as bench coach.

Zinter, 47, spent three seasons (2012-14) as the Indians' Minor League hitting coordinator after his stint in Arizona.

He comes to the Padres with a reputation as having a good rapport with players and someone who doesn't overcomplicate things in terms of hitting or preparation. He thinks more approach than mechanics, and preaches discipline of the strike zone.

If nothing else, Zinter certainly understands the value of perseverance.

Zinter was the 24th overall Draft pick of the Mets in 1989 out of the University of Arizona. He spent 18 seasons in the Minor Leagues and played in Japan in 1999.

He made headlines in 2002 when he got his first big league at-bat with the Astros after spending 14 years in the Minor Leagues. He later hit his first big league in his 4,706th professional at-bat.

To date, though the Padres haven't made any announcements, the team has kept longtime pitching coach Darren Balsley and third-base coach Glenn Hoffman. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported over the weekend that former Padres Doug Bochtler will be the new bullpen coach.

The team has yet to hire a bench coach or a first-base coach. It's assumed Zinter will hire an assistant hitting coach, but nothing has developed on that front as of yet.

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IF YOU'RE GOING TO TRADE PROSPECTS FOR A FIREFIGHTER...

Rob Neyer

Friday, the Mariners traded for a pretty good . Saturday, the Red Sox traded for a pretty great relief pitcher. Monday, the Rangers traded for a pretty good relief pitcher.

You might have noticed one different word in there. Or if you're a big HBO consumer, one of those things is not like the other. Which should be at least a small part of this conversation, I think...

Joe Sheehan@joe_sheehan Turns out you can get 65 innings of good relief pitching without trading four prospects, two of them great.

Now, Joe did follow up with a note about Kimbrel's apparent decline; he was better in 2011 and '12 than he's been since.

Which is fair to mention!

It's also fair to mention that Kimbrel was somewhat unlucky this year. He gave up six home runs, after averaging only three in the previous four seasons. There's just no reason to think those three "extra" big flies say something big about Kimbrel's abilities. So let's just look at xFIP -- fielding-independent pitching statistics, including a modifier for typical HR/FB ratio -- over the last two years and see where Kimbrel shows up...

Even looking at just the last two seasons, when he seems to have slipped some, Kimbrel ranks seventh among all MLB relievers with at least 100 innings.

He's also basically tied for fifth in fWAR, behind only Dellin "Ton o' Innings" Betances, Aroldis Chapman, Wade Davis, and Andrew Miller. Then you get a group that includes Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, Cody Allen, Jake McGee, and a few others.

Roughly speaking, we're talking about Kimbrel as one of the 10 most effective relief in the majors over the last two seasons.

Is that worth all those prospects the Red Sox gave up to get him? Well, that sorta depends. It depends on how much you trust fWAR -- which suggests that even most Top 10 Firemen aren't worth a bushel of prospects.

The good news is that Kimbrel's worth his salary. While his projected fWAR of roughly 2 per season isn't nearly Cy Young-worthy, 2 WAR is worth around $15 million, and Kimbrel's going to earn only $25.5

6 million over the next two seasons. And we're probably undervaluing WAR, considering the usual salary inflation.

Of course that's treating all the figures in a vacuum. Maybe such WAR/$$ equations don't really work for relief pitchers, since so many good relief pitchers can be found for relatively little money, either in trade or in your own farm system. These days, you can shake a tree and hard-throwing relief pitcher will fall out. For cheap.

Again, though, few of those hard-throwing relief pitchers would be quite as good as Craig Kimbrel. Does WAR miss something? A lot of baseball people would say it misses a lot! Monday, Jeff Sullivan came up with an interesting way of measuring what WAR misses with elite closers, and his conclusion was dramatic: An elite relief pitcher is worth an extra win-and-a-half, above what you'll see in the usual measures of value.

If true, things start to look quite a bit different. Now you're talking about Craig Kimbrel being a bargain for his salary over the next couple of years.

Worth four prospects, though?

Well, this is one of those times when I will guess that if Dave Dombrowski could have gotten more for those four prospects -- only one of whom's a blue-chipper, by the way -- he would have. Not that Dombrowski's perfect. But most Directors of Baseball Things have a pretty good idea about value, and if he could have gotten a really good starting pitcher for the prospects, he probably would have.

No question, this was a fine move for the Padres. I didn't really understand the Kimbrel trade when A.J. Preller made it, but now it's looking perfectly fine. It will be a fine move for the Red Sox if Kimbrel arrests his (slight) decline and the blue-chipper, Manny Margot, doesn't turn into a big star soon. In that case, it would look like the Red Sox missed some things.

But we can't assume yet that anybody's missed anything. This looks to me like a couple of rational actors making reasonable choices in their particular circumstances.

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NL West: ‘Wait and see’ what Padres truly up to Front office both listening to calls on Tyson Ross and considering extension By Jeff Sanders | 10 a.m. Nov. 17, 2015

First, A.J. Preller shaved nearly $19 million off next year’s payroll. Now, they’re reportedly shopping Matt Kemp and Tyson Ross, quite possibly in the same package? Time to cool off talk of a fire sale.

Because that’s precisely where a faction of Padres fans’ thoughts went when a Fox Sports report indicated both were available just days after Craig Kimbrel and Joaquin Benoit were shipped out of town.

Rest easy: Shades of Gary Sheffield this is not (though that worked out OK in the end, didn’t it?). In fact, the message to the masses from within the organization is “wait and see.”

With a handful of general managers in their first year with teams – Preller traded with two of them last week alone – many are expecting an extra-active hot stove season and the Padres have struck early and often already, agreeing to three deals in three days to restock the organization with up-the-middle players.

Expect even more activity now that the Padres have an extra $19 million to play with.

With a deep free agent class dwarfing next year’s crop in both quality and quantity, the 2015- 2016 offseason is the time to really remake this team in Preller’s mode. Whether or not the Padres are seriously considering moving Kemp (unload the $73 million you owe him while you can, right?) or Ross (only way I’d consider Kemp is if I’m getting Ross, too), last year’s spending spree ought to at least serve as a down payment on good faith.

These aren’t your father’s Padres owners.

Finally fully immersed in the business of baseball, they have, by all accounts, invested emotionally and monetarily in this organization. The moves that follow – until we have reason to believe otherwise – should be dissected on a clean slate.

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Shedding $19 million off next year’s salary? The Padres’ flawed roster has too long a list of holes to justify spending some 17 percent on a pair of one-inning pitchers.

Kemp on the block? Why wouldn’t you want to unload a bad contract that will only get worse as a 0.4-WAR player heads toward his mid-30s.

That Ross trade talk? Know that a contract extension is part of the discussion in the front office, as is listening when teams call on a 28-year-old right-hander with two more years of control.

Because, of course, they’re gonna call.

And the Padres are making their calls.

They considered a deal for defensive wiz Andrelton Simmons. They’ve shown interest in Ian Desmond. They’re even tied to Elvis Andrus and his sizeable contract in their search for an immediate upgrade at . And it’s only Nov. 17.

Indeed, Year 2 or the Preller Era is shaping up to be as busy as the first.

Around the NL West

 In accepting the Dodgers’ qualifying offer, left-hander Brett Anderson turned down a number of multi-year deals. In essence, he told the Los Angeles Times, he is betting on himself despite throwing more than 100 innings for the first time since 2010.  Cast aside in Washington, Matt Williams is returning to a familiar place as the Diamondbacks’ third base coach.  This probably ain’t bad news in Colorado: Nolan Arenado no longer employs uber agent Scott Boras.  The Giants are closing in on a minor league deal with former Padres first baseman/ Kyle Blanks.

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