Sometimes it pays to be esoteric. And sometimes, I suppose, it doesn't.

While I don't want to speak for Steve Adler, this little arrangement of ours (us and Steve) all came about because of our (me and Melvin) nonchalant usage of sabermetrics. If you've never read The Sacrifice Bunt, and by the way READ THE SACRIFICE BUNT, we basically cover the Padres in the nerdiest way possible. And not in any sort of succinct way like Myron or Geoff, but in long rambles. Inside these rambles, you'll find acronym after acronym. And if you're not up to date with the latest nerd speak, you'll probably feel left behind. Which is why Steve politely suggested we try giving our readers an idea of what we're talking about, a suggestion we politely declined. But then we continued talking and we realized that maybe Steve was on to something. Baseball is a tricky game, and Padres baseball might be even trickier. Knowledge is power and I'm all about power to the people, so here we are.

Over the next couple of indefinite time periods, Melvin and I will be bringing our special style of Padres coverage to the Friarhood. As a home warming gift (though I'm pretty sure you're supposed to give us presents), we're going to start you off with some basics.

(We're assuming that you're up to speed on OBP, SLG, and OPS, and we hope that's not presumptuous of us)

wOBA (Weight On-Base Average)

Succeeding OPS, wOBA has become the most complete and reliable offensive statistic freely available. While OPS just mashes OBP and SLG together, wOBA, which operates on a scale similar to OBP, assigns weighted value to everything a batter can do, from home runs to stolen bases to RBOE (reached base on error). One thing it doesn't do, however, is adjust the results for league and park factors. This is where wRC+ comes in. wRC+ operates on a similar scale as OPS+, which means that 100 is average and anything above is good and anything below is not good.

Will Venable, for example, had a wOBA .324 last season with a wRC+ of 110. Because Petco Park suppresses offense (read my article on park factors here), Will's wOBA is below-average. But because wRC+ adjusts for Will's home park, his wRC+ sits well above-average.

UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating)

While wOBA picks up where OPS left off, UZR is breaking new ground. Everything a batter does is documented, which is why I can tell you that Ted Williams had a career wOBA of .493 (he good). With defense, there's not a whole lot to count. Errors are a misleading statistic that tell you little about a fielder's talent. UZR attempts to solve this problem by breaking down fielders' defensive game by range, errors, ability to turn double plays (for infielders), and arm (for outfielders), and converting them into runs.

For range, UZR breaks the field down into different zones and determines the number of outs a fielder makes versus how many the average fielder would make. For double plays, UZR takes into consideration the difficulty of the grounder being fielded. For arm, UZR takes into consideration the difficulty of the ball being fielded and the effectiveness of the arm, both in punching runners out and discouraging runners from going in the first place. And I know I said errors tell us little about a fielder's talent, which is true, but they make a welcome addition to UZR alongside these other aspects.

One important caveat with UZR is that it's not as accurate as most batting stats are in measuring a player's true talent level. It takes a few complete seasons of UZR numbers to get an accurate picture of how good a defender is.

WAR (Wins Above Replacement)

Here we go. As of the writing of this article, WAR is the big behemoth of baseball statistics. By mashing wOBA and UZR together, Wins Above Replacement gives the most complete picture of a player's value out of all the tools we've got. Another convenient aspect of WAR is that when we use it, we know the exact context of a player's contribution to his team. Success isn't measured in batting average, ERA, or errors. It's measured in wins, and WAR makes it easy to compare different types of players on the same scale. No more arguments about whether a .300 batting average is better than 25 home runs. Every player is comparable.

With Adrian Gonzalez off to Boston, Chase Headley becomes the Padres reigning WAR champ. Despite a so-so season at the plate (104 wRC+), Headley's league-leading defense propelled him to a 4.6 WAR and a spot in the top 5 third baseman of 2010.

One final, possibly confusing note about WAR. There are two versions of WAR out there, one from Fangraphs.com and the other from Baseball-Reference.com. While Fangraph's version uses UZR to measure defense, Baseball Reference uses Total Zone, another defensive measurement. To make things easier, we'll be sticking with the Fangraphs version from here on out.

This is just a thin slice of the advanced statistics out there. As our time goes on here, we'll be sharing more with you. Until then, we think we've laid a solid groundwork for you to go out and explore that great scary world of sabermetrics. Now take what we've given you and find out why I'm so pissed that the Padres cut Tony Gwynn, Jr.