Padres Winning With Run Prevention, Not Stolen Bases

The Padres steal a lot of bases. You might as well get used to hearing that, because it’s about to become the way the Padres get talked about this summer. You see, it’s an iron law of the baseball media that any time a team is winning with pitching and defense, it is absolutely required to somehow credit their offense as a) a small ball offense even if it isn’t (like the 2005 White Sox) and b) the reason they’re winning. An info box with the Padres’ stolen base totals is headed towards a summer Sportscenter or Baseball Tonight faster than David Eckstein can run.

The Padres aren’t winning, by any stretch, because of their offense. They are winning in spite of it. If they actually had a good offense by any measure that matters, they’d be one of the best teams of the decade.

The Padres do run frequently, heading into Thursday’s games, the Padres had 49 stolen bases, easily the most in the National League. San Diego is also in first place in the NL West, so obviously there must be a connection. Tim Brown, to date, has penned the perfect, completely misleading article on the runnin’ Padres. Brown hits all the high points of the genre, including an inevitable reference to how this style of play will be back in vogue now that the steroid era of baseball is over, surely ushering in a new age of purity.

The Padres are 13th in the National League in runs per game. All those steals haven’t given the Padres even an average, functional offense. So how are the Padres winning? They are first in runs allowed. San Diego’s team ERA is an absurd 2.79. Read that again. Their team ERA is 2.79, which is exactly what Roy Halladay posted last season. In essence, their entire team (adjusting for park effects, of course) is 2009 Roy Halladay. For that reason, it’s actually amazing that they are only eight games over .500 The steals are novel and great for fantasy players, but almost entirely immaterial to what’s actually going on.