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“1st Class Guy-2nd Rate Situtation”

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What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”. Never better said than in the Padres baseball clubhouse, or at least what is left for the 2016 season, the aftermath of this year’s firesale.

Actually what the Padres did was not a fire sale, just a buyout of outdated merchandise, and the purchase of a lot of new toys, players in Class A-ball, to restock the shelves.

On Friday, heading into the trading deadline, it was somber-sullen. This after the departure o Matt Kemp, Andrew Cashner and Melvin Upton. Last night the clubhouse was resigned to accept the fate of the team.

Send out the kids, hope they learn something, don’t get slaughtered.

GM-AJ Preller remade the club and farm sytem, but dealing away 6-veeteran players, spending 69M to have clubs except bad contracts. He wound up with 6-blue chip minor leaguers, most all in Class A.

His manager now will run the gauntlet of the rest of season schedule with a roster thati ncludes 13-of-25 players, who are either young prospects forced to the big show, 4A players, who have never been good enough to stay up, or waiver wire acqusitions.

All the Padres staffers got the Email that included words like ‘opportunity’, grow, ’embrace the process’. Fine and dandy, but they are on a downhill track to lose 100-tgames this year, and maybe next year.

Manager Andy Green was jovial, optimistic, and put on a good face before thegame with Milwaukee. Guess it beats crying over what his GM did.

The quotes were everywhere to read, and read between the lines.

“The trade deadline is a distraction to everyone. If you’re in the pennant race, everyone wonders who will be brought in to bolster your team. If you’re out ofit, everyone wonders, who will be the next to go.”

He painted everything with a wide whitewash brush. “We have a future here, we have opportunities”

Neither Green nor Preller talked to the players in the room about what was happening. Empty locker stalls where Andrew Cashner was, where Matt Kemp used to sit, amongst others.

The 34-deals wrapped around the trade deadline seemed high, possibly brought on by the 2nd wildcard teams added for postseason. Alot more clubs are in the running, so why not make a deal and see if it makes a difference.

But not in places like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Oakland, Piottsburgh and of course Petco Park.

Preller had to meet with the media to discuss thebotched Miami deal, that saw the Marlins call and intimate they wanted to send injured pitcher Colin Rea back here, and they wantedyoung phenom Luis Castillo returned to them .

Nobody mentioned the word ‘damaged goods’, but you can read between the lines on what was said on that conference call.

So not only are we discussing deals made, the money spent, now the ethics involved about who knew what about Rea and his healthy. Now he comes back to San Diego days after which they sent him away.

Petco Park was almost empty a half hour before the game. So while all the VPs of the club will continue to run around extolling the ballpark experience, the ballpark sure has a differnt look now that they have traded away virtually the entire team.

This will be a process. I remember poor Bo Porter, a bright light up and comer, hired by the Houston Astros. After he got there, management went on its scorched earth mission to deal everyone, cut payroll, stockpile draft picks.

In the process, the Astros lost 311-games in 3-years, and Porter got fired.

Andy Green is a good man. He has driven his players to play hard every night. He has had to make do in a badly made situation.

He deserves alot of credit for holding this mess together. I hope this experience doesn’t kill his managerial career..

I didn’t want to ask him if he knew Bo Porter.

Green, 1st class guy, in a last place situation, what Padres baseball has become.

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