Figure we have a fan-post each day to talk shop, smack talk, and nominate best/worst performances.

Dex mentioned we could have awards for team composed of different criteria.

Possibilities:

Best under $2 team.

Best team with $30+ left over

Best ugly team

Best Former Padres Team

Best Facial Hair Team.

Best DUI team.

And so on. We need 75, seventy-five, words for a fan shot. Which is hard on the first post, but we can have a recap of the day before, and then people can declare what types of 'teams" they are going for.

Dex is giving a prize (post he will write with all his passion his heart can summon), on any topic the winner chooses. Maybe in the future we can vote on the best performance of the night before?

Heading into the season, I thought we were probably a 84 win team based on talent that may be able to luck into some contention.  Now......

OMG! WE SUCK!.

Well not all the time, only when our players have a wooden implement in their hands.  I rather listen to Rebbecca Black's Friday on loop than watch us at the plate.   My liver can't take much more of this.

We can pitch, but I don't even get any joy out of that because I know we are either going to give up a run we can come back from, or lose in extra innings.

So what do we do?  Cut Cantu now?  Burn Hawpe at the stake?  Sell high on Harang, Mosely and Stauffer?  Trade Heath? 

I am not looking forward to tonights game when we loose 3-1.  I hate the fact I loathe the fact I am going to watch the game tonight....

Okay, we slip into our Hot-tub with our tasty Mojito after Sundays Win, and Boom its April 2, 2008!  Our Payroll MLB payroll is  $73M.  We talk to John Moores and tell him to skip the party in Vegas and instead him and his wife go to a nice trip to Palm Desert and rediscover why they fell in love with each other in the first playc.

So now we can play GM!.  Here are the rules:

1. Hindsight is only 20/30.  We can only make likely moves, in the Free Agent Market.  No signing Tommy Hanson or Jayson Heyward, or picking up Neslon Cruz.  We will debate the validity of any moves right here

2. Players are greedy.  Only discount you can get on a player is resigning him.  If you want to sign a Free Agent, you need to be 15% higher then the contract they signed or same per year value, but add an extra year.

3. Trades, will cost you prospects and money.  No rentals paid my a 3rd party (e.g Manny Ramirez being paid by the Boston Red Sox to play for the Dodgers).

4. Salaries will increase each year ,no discount.

5. Payroll budget will increase by 5% each year.

Lets see what our roster looks like at 2008, 2009 and 2010.  Here is what we are starting with.

Greg Maddux $10,000,000
Brian Giles 9,666,667
dl-Jim Edmonds 8,000,000
Trevor Hoffman 7,500,000
Jake Peavy 6,500,000
Randy Wolf 4,750,000
Khalil Greene 4,500,000
Tadahito Iguchi 3,850,000
Michael Barrett 3,500,000
Chris Young 2,625,000
Josh Bard 2,237,500
dl-Mark Prior 1,000,000
Tony Clark 900,000
Adrian Gonzalez 875,000
Glendon Rusch 850,000
Jody Gerut 700,000
Wilfredo Ledezma 620,000
Heath Bell 420,000
Cla Meredith 415,000
dl-Clay Hensley 410,000
Kevin Kouzmanoff 410,000
Scott Hairston 406,000
Justin Germano 404,500
dl-Justin Hampson 402,500
Joe Thatcher 393,000
Paul McAnulty 391,250
dl-Tim Stauffer 391,200
Callix Crabbe 390,000
Enrique Gonzalez 390,000
dl-Carlos Guevara 390,000
Justin Huber 390,000

GO GO GO!.

I guess no one else listens to ST games on Mondays.  But here we go again.  Clayton Richards go for us, with probably our lineup once Boston graces us by taking our AGon off our hands.

1. Everth (SS)

2. Eckstein (2b)

3. Venable (RF)

4. Blanks (LF)

5. Savior (3b)

6. Stairs (1b)

7. Terrible (C)

8.  Demoforia (CF)

9. Richards (P)

Jerry is not on today. I would put the D-bags lineup up, but I don't really care about them.  Anybody at the game today?

I guess no one else is posting one, and I am at work...so GO PADRES.   

Lineup:

1 Tony Gwynn, CF
2. David Eckstein 2B
3. Will Venable, RF
4. Chase Headley, 3b
5. Matt Stairs, DH
6, Dusty Ryan, C
7. Chris Denorfia, L
8. Chad Huffman, 1B
9, Everth Cabrera, SS

Everth Cabrera is  batting last and Will Venable already has a single and a SB. but no score

Kevin Correia is the SP, I hate doing these and trying to come up with 75 words.

Here it is on MLBtrade rumors:

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/12/giants-padres-discussing-kouzmanoff.html

I like Kouz, but don't think he fits into the long term plans, with Chase needing to be at 3B plus a number of good prospects that should be given there chance in the next 2 seasons.  Blanks and Veneable need to play everyday this season along with Chase.

While the market for 3b is saturated right now, I still think we can do better than Lewis an Frandensen.  I would rather us take a few flyers on some High-A or AA talent..  

So a few years back, I took my mom to an interleauge game between the Padres and Red Sox at Fenway.  I have been to fenway before, and knew that we shouldn't wear road team colors there, but being that we are an unknown entity on the east coast  I didn't think anyone would notice.

So my mom and I were walking around before the game checking out the stadium, when all of a sudden we see Hall of Famer Peter Gamons at a concession stand getting some pink cotton candy, a brat and a bottle of Zima.  I told my mom we should go up and say hi.

So we go up to Peter and I tell him how much I enjoy his work, yada yada yada.

After a few minutes he takes a look at my mom and me in our Padre's gear and go

PG: "What's that you are wearing"

Me: "It's my Padre's Jersey."

PG: "Oh, interesting"

Me: "Yeah I decided to take the trip and see them here tonight"

PG: "Oh, what type of band are they..I love music"

Me: "No, they are a baseball team...they are playing here tonight against the Red Sox."

Peter stares for a second, takes a long sip off of his Zima and then proclaims

'You mean that is the name of the visiting team tonight...the Padres...interesting"

All of sudden he hits me over the head with his Zima bottle, knocking me to the ground.  Then he embraces my mom, who only resists at first, and then give here a long passionate kiss, before droping her on the ground.  He then stands over me

'That's how we roll here at Fenway"  and walks away.

Continue reading this post »

For many reason's, I believe it is time to pull the plug on Ron Mexico, hopefully this can be used a sacrifice to help turn the Padre's season around.  I have used this alter-ego for almost four years now; winning Fantasy Baseball and Football championships, tormenting old bosses and confusing the hell out of Warrick Dunn when I email him from Ron Mexico's yahoo account.  There comes a time when you need to let go of things, I need to let Ron Mexico go into cyber abyss and the Padre's need to let go of their lossing attitudes and act like champions.

Ron was a good friend to me, always there (unless he had better things to do), and will be missed.

R.I.P
Ron Mexico
2003-2007

So I was in Vegas for the Padres-Dodger's series.  It was my friend's B-day celebration, and he organized the whole thing (and paid for the rooms, so I can't complain too much), but he did something absolutely vile, my assigned roommate was a Dodger's fan. What made it even worse was that the whole weekend, he wore his blue Dodger's hat everywhere.  While he seemed like a good guy, he was still was a dip s**t, didn't even grow up in LA, he just likes the Dodger's (That is like being a Duke fan for no reason, just speaks a lot of your lack of character).  He even tried to 'dead horse" me one night, but I was able to defend myself and pee in his hat.

While at the Hard Rock on Friday night, a bunch of Padre's fans got together to watch the last few innings of the game.  Well I guess we were making a lot of noise, because next thing I know, Luke Walton (of the LA. Lakers) was standing with us.  He is a huge Padre fans, and we B.S. with him for a while until he had to give some attentions to his "fan club".  The next day we ran in Luke again in the cab line, until Richard Jefferson started to yell at him that he got them a Limo. I think they should change the line to 'Party Like Luke Walton', because I want to roll like that.

Didn't know this, but it turns out in Vegas, they have these places where you can place wagers on sporting events.  What a novel idea.  They call them "sports books", and there are some people at these "sports books", who actually make a living off of these little wagers.  Somehow I accidently found myself in one of these sports books at the Mirage and talked baseball with one of these proffesionals.  He stated that the Padres are clearly the "class" of the NL, and that the proffessionals have been making a killing off of them because they don't get the respect they deserved and the line is always skewed. This weekend for the Dodgers series the Padres got a -105 line, which is Vegas's way of saying (we don't have any idea), the proffessionals loaded up on this bet on Friday night, but stayed away from it on Saturday.

Good to win another series, and overall I like the Bradely trade, worse case we get rid of him and pick a compensation pick in the draft.

So on Sunday, I was stuck listening to the game on XM radio and got the Cubs Radio team.  I am not sure if you listen to them everyday you would like them, but I found them to be truly entertaining and gave a good perspective on the game.  They are homers, but not nearly as bad as the Padres announcers.

Around the 7th inning they tried to take solence in the fact they were going to lose this game, series and season series to the Padres.  They said we have good but not great starting pitching (really?), a great bullpen and play outstanding defense especially that Kale kid at SS and the rising star at 1st base. They also said we have no good players on offensive, but due to the good pitching and defensive is how the Padres can beat an offesive superior team like the Cubbies.

Really? While I won't even get into the starting pitching comment (the cubs have better starting pitching than the Padres??), the superior offensive team is not the cubbies.  We may not have any "hosehold" names like all the overpaid whiners on the cubs, but we can hold our own on offense.  Playing in the band box that is Wrigley Field, the cubbies have scored 307 runs, the Padre playing in yellowstone park have scored 303 runs.  Now my math skills tell me that 307>303, but I don't think a 1.3% increase in runs equals "superior".

I am excited about the BoSox series, statistically it should be a matchup of the two best teams in the major.  We just need Jake and company to take care of the falling O's.

What a great game last night, Clay has been on fire since he came up when Wells went on the DL. Although I was a little nervous when he gave up that home run to Kent in the 8th, but having K-Cam come in and shut it down for Trevor in the ninth., (glad Bell is able to get 3 days off) I knew we would win.  After dropping that strange game in the openner against Baltimore (damn you BLUM!!!), we have been nothing but lights outs, sweeping San Fran, Boston (withoug Ortiz and Youk though), and the Dodgers.  

I thought M-Giles quote about the team being afraid Dex was going to send them down to portland being a motivator was interesting.

I think that jbox dumping the unicorns in favor of platypusses was unconventional, but seems to be working.

How come we have no starters in the All-Star game???

A lot of fans are down on the Padres after losing three close games to the Mariners this weekend.  While each loss was painful, it is not a time to panic.  This team is still one of the top two or even the best team in the NL.  We are in first place, even tough we have a 11-14 record in 1-run games.  Statistically we are underachieving by 3 games in the win column (the last three season are record was pretty close to our run differnetial, which right now is the BEST in the NL, and only behind the Red Sox).

Arizona is playing out of their ass, they have gotten every lucky break so far this year (at least statistically) and still are only in a virtual tie with us (17-8 in 1-run games).  I am of the belief that over 162 game season all the luck will even out and the Padres will have the best record in the NL.  When the Yankees won their last WS, they were swept by the last place tigers in a 3 game series and was outscored something like 32-5.

Keep the unicorns and rainbows ready for the postseason, enjoy our great city and our fun team.

Stay classy Gaslampballers.

The padres have taken a good step towards this year draft by signing an first round type pitcher in Matt latos.  He is a big kid, who throws a power fastball (describe as late cutting action) and a power slider.  Even though he is young power pitcher, his control is already at the major league level.  The padres philosophy is that all pitchers need to develop a changeup which will complement his other pitches nicely.  Right now he projects as a middle of the rotation guy in 2009.

One reason the padres got him in the mid rounds was there was concern over his "temper" during games.  After each bad pitch he has a tendency to yell at himself and continuously talk to himself on the mound.  One scout described him as overcomeptitive and need more maturity on the mound to be a MLB starter, but electrifying stuff and command makes him a good bet.

Those comments reminds me of another power pitcher the padres have......