4:29pm: The agreement is for a one-year, $1MM, Major League deal, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets.
2:41pm: The Padres have agreed to sign Micah Owings to a minor league contract that includes an invitation to Spring Training, Dan Hayes of the North County Times tweets. Legacy Sports Group represents the 29-year-old right-hander.
Owings spent the 2011 season with the Diamondbacks, posting a 3.57 ERA with 6.3 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 and a 38% ground ball rate in 63 innings. A former starter with the Diamondbacks and Reds, Owings has pitched mostly out of the bullpen since 2010. At the plate, he has nine homers and an impressive .286/.313/.507 batting line in 217 career plate appearances. Kirk Gibson let Owings bat for himself regularly last year and asked him to pinch hit on one other occasion.
would have been the Pads best bat last year! LOL
Yeah with that offense they might want to consider slotting him in behind Carlos Quentin for protection.
821 OPS
World Series = Won
3-hole hitter? Clean-up?
awh.
good luck, micah. we’ll never forget that game against the braves where you hit two homers and drove in 6. i’m not looking forward to us facing your hitting. lol.
Not a “glam” signing, but one that should improve the team. Nice job Josh.
I remember his two homer game against the Braves and ever since have wanted to see him go all Rick Ankiel and try becoming a position player. I have no doubt that if he tried the transition three years ago he’d be a fantastic offensive player, but he always says he prefers pitching even though I think he could be a better hitter.
I’ve wondered if they could switch him to the OF for a batter to bring in a specialist..then return him to the mound so he could hit without using a pinch hitter. Of course…that burns the replaced OFer.
Actually, yes they can. Whitey Herzog used to do this all the time with lefty-righty-lefty matchups to not burn a lefty reliever.
I was thinking as I typed…..I can recall Whitey Herzog using that switch with John Tudor.
I was hoping the Padres would sign him, now we have a legit pinch-hitter w/power!
If Petco helps drop his HR/9 (as it should) he might eke out some decent value.
Plus, he’s supposedly a terrific clubhouse guy and as noted, is a good hitter.
Petco can only help Owings’s value. He had high value for the Dbacks and a tremendous work ethic.
The Ultimate NL player can be the long reliever/spot starter and has hit RHP to the tune of .315/.344/.582
Nooooooo0 Micah, why the hell the diamondbacks dindt resing him??
Umm… The Dbacks already have all 7 bullpen spots locked down with Shaw, Ziegler, Breslow, Paterson, Saito, Hernandez, and Putz, with Breslow being able to pitch 2-3 innings.
Micah should have been brought back, but alas, the Dbacks did not want to pay arbitration type salary. Once they traded for Breslow and signed Saito, not only did it seal Owings’s fate, but it kicked Shaw to the curb too.
Shaw isn’t kicked to the curb… see that he is included in the names above. Also, I liked Micah, he was a valuable portion of the bullpen, but more reliable pitchers were found.
I noticed that you had included Shaw. I simply disagree he will make the 25-man roster. Indications are teh Dbacks go with an 11 man pitching staff. If that is the case:
Kennedy/Hudson/Cahill/Saunders/ Collmenter make up the starting 5
Putz/Hernandez/Saito/Zeigler/Breslow/and then one of Paterson, Lorin, Shaw, or some other dark-horse filling the last slot. Currently, my money is on Paterson to lock down the last slot and for Lorin (Rule 5) to be returned.
Yes, but remember that the D’Backs’ bullpen is characterized because it is very prone to injury and is never to spare some help in the minors
Solid addition.
I wanna know the price of the deal!
The tweet said $1 million
good move to stash in AAA in case someone gets hurt. keeps them from having to bring up erlin, weiland, or kelly too soon.
Ok, I’m sure this question has been raised before, but why exactly is Owings still masquerading as a pitcher when he’s actually an above-average hitter?
Does he only pinch-hit in very favorable spots thus inflating his batting line?
Because he’s not actually that great a hitter? Don’t get me wrong, great hitter for a pitcher and probably could have been a bench bat if he had been a hitter all along. But his career numbers are propped up by his home numbers from ’08 and ’09. When you consider that he’s mostly played in favorable home parks and would be unable to play anything but first or DH defensively, his hitting isn’t actually any better than a lot of guys floating around Triple-A.
Owings has prodigous power. When with the Dbacks the first time around, he took BP with the first group. He pretty regularly launched them from the field and onto the concourse behind the bleachers. The Dbacks more than once tried convincing him to move to first base. He continues to resist that move, insisting that he can pitch.
Last season he pitched his way out of AAA on to the big league roster then pitched himself from the bullpen into the rotation. He has no real velocity, he just gets results.
He actually has above average pitch recognition as a batter, and if he played every day would have a BA to match. As he spends most of his time in the bullpen though, he rarely gets ABs, and if he does, it’s usually only one in a game.
good for micah owings the pitcher.
bad for micah owings the hitter.
He’ll have roughly the same batting average as batting average against. LOL
nice signing by the Padres, and I’m glad he’s staying in the NL.
fun fact: Owings has more career WAR as a hitter (3.0 bWAR) than as a pitcher (0.2 bWAR).
That is an awesome stat.
nice signing by the Padres, and I’m glad he’s staying in the NL.
fun fact: Owings has more career WAR as a hitter (3.0 bWAR) than as a pitcher (0.2 bWAR).
9 HRs in 217 plate appearance… he might be our best power hitter
Good signing he’ll stick with the big boys out of Spring Training
Yup. Eight wins last year!
Might have to put him in the 4th spot of our batting order.
His career translated OPS+ in road games is 81, and he has zero defensive value. So yes.
I think you’re overestimating park effects. Isn’t OPS+ adjusted for ball parks? If so why not look at his home OPS+ as well? Seems like you’re cherry picking. His batting stats in away games comes from a pretty tiny sample size. Also, any player that doesn’t bat everyday will have much lower stats traditionally unless they’re used in platoon situations. Add to that the fact that as a pitcher he doesn’t work on his batting nearly as much as a position player.
Sure, but his positive numbers are in a small sample, too, he’s shown a massive platoon split, and his OBPs have been in the 200s since 2008. Still a great hitting pitcher, but again, he has zero defensive value or value on the bases. So in order to think he could switch to full-time hitting in his late 20s and be more than a Quadruple-A hitter, you just have to assume that an equally cherry picked section of his past is the best reflection of what he is.
I do think it’s probably too late for him to transition now, but three years ago, when people were really talking about how good a hitter he was, I think he had some potential to be a good offensive player. The Dbacks even considered playing him at first when he wasn’t starting. He’s a great athlete, I think he could have picked up first without too much difficulty. It’s all speculation now though.