James Shields Isn’t The Answer And The Padres Are In Trouble

By Bobby DeMuro
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Updated: February 19, 2015

Mike Petriello at FanGraphs wrote a great post about the Padres’ lack of infield production. It’s thorough and well done, and while it deals more with offensive output than defense, it got me thinking about the Padres, so read it and come back.

Ok.

James Shields is a very good pitcher. In 1,910.1 career innings he’s logged 7.7 K/9 IP against only 2.1 BB/9 IP, he finished third in American League Cy Young voting in 2011 (throwing a whopping eleven complete games!) and he’s 114-90 lifetime with a 3.72 ERA in 285 starts across 9 years.

There’s a reason why soon-to-be 34 year-old Jorge De La Rosa commanded a 2 year, $25-million deal from the Rockies; it’s very hard to find good starting pitching. It’s even harder to find pitchers with Shields’ numbers and durability. Pretty much any team in baseball (yes, even the stacked Nationals’ rotation) would salivate at the opportunity to throw Shields out on the mound every fifth day.

So it makes perfect sense that A.J. Preller and the Padres signed Shields last week, giving him $75 million over four years, plus a team option year that could bump the deal to nearly $90 million and keep Shields in San Diego through 2019.

And for Shields, it makes perfect sense to have waited out the market until nearly the beginning of Spring Training, inadvertently creating a buzz as the best starting pitcher still available, and signing with a rapidly-improving team – and one near where you make your offseason home, to boot!

Is James Shields worth up to $90 million? Maybe. Probably. Hell, if he makes 30+ starts each year for the Padres, as he has for eight straight seasons before now, and merely has an average year (which for him, is 14-11 with a 3.72 ERA and 1.22 WHIP across about 227 innings) then yes, he will absolutely be worth it in San Diego.

Shields found a better situation than he may have even realized going in to the offseason, and the Padres got their guy and secured a bona fide starting pitcher to go along with Tyson Ross, Andrew Cashner, Ian Kennedy, and possibly/maybe Josh Johnson.

So what’s the rub?

James Shields [Image via @theScore]

As Petriello notes, the Padres don’t hit. The infield didn’t hit last year. The outfield didn’t hit last year. Thankfully, the Padres addressed some of those concerns with Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and Wil Myers in the outfield, but they still haven’t addressed the anemic offense problems that plagued last years’ infield. From an offensive perspective, new infield acquisitions for 2015 are Will Middlebrooks (.191/.256/.265 in 234 plate appearances in 2014) and Clint Barmes (a 36-year old with a career .246/.295/.380 slash line in 3,943 plate appearances).

I know, Middlebrooks is still somewhat of a prospect, but after two-straight years of poor hitting (and three straight years of below-average defense!), it’s time for him to put up or shut up. Barmes, of course, will see time merely as a middle infield utility man, and is a lock down defender, but at what expense on offense in the Padres lineup?

Infield offensive production aside, James Shields had a very good year in 2014 for a team that unexpectedly made it to the World Series. And that team, the Royals, didn’t have a great offensive year themselves in 2014 and still nearly won the world championship. How?

Good defense.

Lorenzo Cain [Image via @mlbnewsss]

Defensive Wins Above Replacement isn’t a perfect statistic, but it gives good insight into how much better a defender (and, a whole defense) is than the league average. Jarrod Dyson (1.9 dWAR), Lorenzo Cain (2.7), and Alex Gordon (2.6) all enjoyed great defensive seasons in the outfield for the Royals in 2014.

In the infield, Eric Hosmer (-0.3), Omar Infante (0.7), Mike Moustakas (0.3), and Alcides Escobar (0.7) combined to make up a better than average unit for the Royals. Behind the plate, Salvador Perez put up a 2.1 dWAR while tossing out a better-than-league-average 30% of would-be base stealers in 2014.

All of these eight position players added together, Shields and the Royals pitching staff benefitted from a cumulative 10.7 dWAR just from the eight fielders who played the most at their respective positions in Kansas City in 2014. In fact, all players combined (including pitchers) gave the Royals a 5.8 team dWAR for the season, indicating a defense nearly six wins better than the league average and second highest in baseball that season only to the Baltimore Orioles.

In other words, Shields pitched in front of a very, very good defense in 2014. But how do those numbers compare to the presumptive starters for the 2015 San Diego Padres who will be playing behind James Shields?

Let’s presume the outfield will primarily be Upton (-0.9 dWAR in 2014), Kemp (-3.1), and Myers (-1.1). Barmes as a good utility defender aside, the infield should likely consist of Middlebrooks (-0.3), Alexi Amarista (1.5), Jedd Gyorko (-0.8), and Yonder Alonso (0.5), with Derek Norris (0.5) doing most of the catching.

The combined values of those eight presumed starters totals -3.7 dWAR. Remember, the eight Royals defenders who saw the bulk of playing time behind Shields last season totaled a whopping 10.7 dWAR. That’s a difference of 14 wins across a 162-game season, which is, to put it mildly, a huge swing.

Even if we drop the Padres’ worst infield defender (Gyorko) from presumed starters, and replace him with Barmes (0.5 dWAR in 2014), that still gives us a measly -2.4 dWAR out there behind Shields on any given day in 2015. And it’s still a 13-win difference from the guys who defended his 2014 starts.

Clint Barmes [Image via @MLBguyz]

Now, having thrown a thousand numbers at you in the last few paragraphs, a few notes before we continue:

First, dWAR is not the perfect defensive statistic and may not always account for range and other defensive factors like park adjustments. But, it’s a decent place to start when discussing defense, at least from a broad perspective.

Second, the above numbers are only based on 2014 dWAR values for each player. Yes, the Royals exceeded expectations by making the World Series, and yes, it’s possible all eight Royals listed were playing well above their defensive outputs and will regress in 2015. It’s also possible all eight Padres (or some significant portion) will have a much better defensive year in 2015, or that their 2014 was an aberration as well. Shields would stand to benefit from that. That is, after all, why they play the games instead of deciding them on paper.

Those two points stated, though, it’s clear that while most see Shields moving to pitcher-friendly Petco Park as a major boon to his already strong career, he may actually find it more difficult to replicate the success of the last few seasons in Kansas City. The Padres of 2015 will likely play significantly worse defense than the Royals did behind him in 2013 and 2014.

And with all of this being said, it underscores a bigger point for the Padres: Shields is not a savior. He’s a phenomenal pitcher, and a durable pitcher routinely throwing 200+ innings per year at a time in the game when other teams are bringing in oft-injured veterans who are lucky to break 100 innings in a season.

I have a little bit of sympathy for Shields (well… as much sympathy as you can have for a guy who just made at least $75 million), because waiting this long to sign with a team inadvertently triggered a media firestorm of sorts. From Shields’ perspective, it wasn’t necessarily about money, as he wasn’t asking for a historical Barry Zito-sized contract; he just wanted the best deal from the best team that was the best fit for him at this point in his career. Considering his offseason home and the contract he was given, he probably found that in San Diego.

But from the Padres perspective, it’s hard for fans not to think of Shields as the missing puzzle piece to a championship contending team. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but since he waited until February to sign, and was by far the best remaining free agent on the market when he did, somewhere along the way his status rose from “Shields is not a pure ace, but he is remarkably durable,” to “Shields is the rich icing on the delicious cake the Padres baked for you this offseason.”

I’m not saying Shields won’t succeed in San Diego (I think he will), but with a poor defense behind him and a group of guys across the infield that still may not hit at all, success might still be relative.

The Padres are a good team, and their season will be buoyed by the fact that the division is lined up in their favor. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies are truly awful, and the San Francisco Giants got worse by not doing much this winter. That leaves the Los Angeles Dodgers as their main competition in the NL West, and considering the rosters of the two teams, the Padres have a fighting chance, to be sure.

But James Shields is not the (only) answer, and the Padres may still be in trouble. If you don’t hit, and you don’t play defense, James Shields will only get you so far. What remains to be seen is exactly how far that will be.

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