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PADRES…GOOD OR BAD NEWS

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The Padres front office is coming home from Nashville.  The Winter Meetings have concluded.

The Juan Soto trade is in the process of being reviewed, as the Friars evaluate the medical records of those coming in.

To recap, Juan Soto, his booming bat and his OPS stats head to Yankees Stadium, along with Gold Glove centerfielder Trent Grisham.

Padresville has to be disappointed.  They traded for Soto for 3-pennant races.  They gave up after 1-really good 3-month span in 2022, and a summer of underachieving disappointments in 2023..

Soto himself wasted his 2022-season, doing virtually nothing.  He had the horrid start in 2023, but from June 1st on, played like the slugger we saw in Washington.

The Padres gave up on Grisham,much like the Brewers did.  Gold Glove, could go get anything-anywhere on the field with his glove.  Could not hit a lick.  An occasional home run was off set by sub .200-stretches of hitting and lots of strikeouts.

So the Padres created two holes in their outfield.  They delete a power bat in the middle of the order.  They clear approximately 38M-in budget space.  Please don’t show me the baseball cards of Jurickson Profar nor Jose Azucar.

Now your roster is missing 9-pitchers from last summer, virtually all their first basemen, and what’s missing in that outfield at Petco.

But the deal is much more than Soto to the House that Ruth built.

You have to add in what the Padres gave up to the Nationals to get Soto.  Look at the Nationals roster and you see bright young SS-CJ Abrams.  That is MacKenzie Gore at the front of the rotation.  Add in hot young minor leaguers James Wood-Robert Hassel, who have hit everywhere along the farm systems they have played in.  Still to be delivered is young pitcher Jarlin Susana, plus throw in DH-Luke Voit, who is now gone from Washington.

End result, the calculus shows you just traded Soto and Grisham, plus 6-other younger players and what you have will be a group of young pitchers from the Yankees plus a backup catcher.

It wound up being 8-for-4.  The Yankees pitchers coming this way are young, and some have had success, but Soto is elite and you don’t have anyone coming to San Diego equal to what he was, that you just dealt away.

The Yankees ledger shows pitching talent, but no dominance, not the type of dominance Soto would give you in San Diego brown and gold.

..P-Michael King (4-8)..(2.75-ERA)
..P-Drew Thorpe (14-2) in Class A-AA
..P-Jhonny Brito (9-7)..(4.28-ERA)
..P-Randy Vasquez (2-2) 2.87
..C-Kyle Higashioka (.236-10HRs)

A package of decent young arms, but none of those arms helped the Yankees into the postseason.

Not in the package, top pitcher Clark Schmidt or infielder Gleyber Torres, a multi position guy who can hit and has some power.  Two top tier players in the Yankees lineup, and the Rock-Star GM couldn’t pry either one from New York for an elite bat going to the Pinstripes.

Not getting what I wanted, and adding in what Preller gave to Washington, just does not make it like this was a ‘win-win’ deal for both teams.

Yes they have budget space to use.  Yes they may make a run at OF-Jung Hoo-Lee of Korea and Japanese pitcher Shoto Ignama, but those players don’t make them scary additions to the Padres roster.

Argue with me, yell at me, sales-pitch me, the Padres are a better team now than before the Winter Meetings?

Good deal or bad?  Can’t fully decide till we see what else they bring in. But this off season has not started like I wanted.  Star slugger gone.  Bunch of young arms, some unproven, coming.

How does that make the Padres a better team at this hour?

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“AZTECS-WELCOME REAL WORLD”

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Grand Canyon University, who, yes Grand Canyon ambushes San Diego State.

Wow-ut oh-You’re kidding me?

No, the Antelopes beat them.  Yes the tiny religious for-profit school in Phoenix beat SDSU hours after State was ranked 25th in the nation in this week’s AP poll.

Had to see this coming, well I did.  Maybe the fans didn’t.  The players had to know what they were getting into.

It’s a Quad 1-win for the Lopes, the former NAIA school from years ago, who have a sugar daddy backer to the program, the legendary NBA owner and Hall of Famer, Suns iconic philanthropist, Jerry Colangelo.

There will be lots of lessons learned in this (79-73) setback, a game that wasn’t all that close, a game that slipped away in the first half and then saw SDSU get put away early in the second half.

The Aztecs feel good run from last year’s NCAA Final Four run is now officially in the rear view mirror.  Understand this team here today is not that team from last year’s team that took U-Conn into the finals.

San Diego State has a ‘target on its back’ now every time they go into someone else’s arena.  That’s the way basketball is.

Jaedon LeDee might be the best big man on the West Coast, surely the best players in the Mountain West.  But he cannot do it all himself.

Playing in a raging arena where everyone wore Purple & White, LeDee played Superman for segments of the game.  But in the end even his (24-10 rebound) night could not carry a team.  He went to war inside getting double teams. He put it on the  floor and muscled his way to the hole for points.  He posted low and his short jumpers.  He went outside an hit step back jumpers.  He kept making plays till he ran out of gas, or they starting doubling him.

At the end SDSU could not withstand the wild runs the Lopes made, (9-3) in the first half and a (17-4) burst in the 2nd half.

LeDee didn’t get much help.  Micah Parrish hit 4-long jumpers but disappeared in the second half.  The guards all struggled against the Antelopes speed.

And GCU got a ton of points from their guards, 56-in all, from Ray Harrison, Ty Foster and Collin Moore.

And bashing the boards was again an issues as Grand Canyon had a (40-31) edge on the glass, led by Gabe McGlothan’s dirty work night of (15P-13R).

Work to do at San Diego State.  Still need to find more production off the bench, any point production.  Still need not to get smashed on the glass.

Only one loss, for sure, but looming out there in a non conference prove it game with Gonzaga and then conference play.

It was fun to watch, but it was not a win, and it exposed deficiencies that Brian Dutcher has to shore up going forward.

Grand Canyon, trying to be an NCAA team on an annual basis, now that it is pretty sold as a WAC contender, was (0-9)

against Top 25-teams in school history.  Not anymore.

And now the Aztecs know, ‘target on the back’ basketball is coming everytime they travel, even if they have ‘Superman’ on their roster.

 

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“PADRES–DECISION DAYS”

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He’s done some wild things while at the Winter Baseball meetings.

Here’s the question that must be answered right now about the 2024-Padres season, because this topic is what impacts every other move.

How can the Padres win if you trade your star slugger?
How can the Padres win you keep your star slugger?
He has his hands full.

He, being AJ Preller, the once famous Rock Star GM, who hasn’t done much in terms of getting this team deep into the playoffs, much less the World Series.

The GM who was given a blank check by the late Peter Seidler, then overspent it.  All the while stockpiling a ton of talent, like the Fab Four, handing out enormously long 11-12-14 year contracts.

The GM who stripped mined the farm system twice, to make significant blockbuster trades.

His club has had 2-epic collapses in pennant races and a gruesome season of underachievement last summer.

And now in Nashville, he is at a crossroads, with his team, and probably his career.

Fix an unbalanced roster.  Solve a financial issue with the payroll.  Fix a suddenly wafer-thin pitching staff, where free agent defections, opt out clauses, and injuries, have left them with a very weak pitching staff.

And then there is the Juan Soto contract situation.  They pulled off a (6-for-2) trade to get him from Washington.  The theory is they would have him for 3-pennant races.  He staggered his first season in San Diego.  The team foundered badly last year.  And now facing a ‘walk year’ before he enters free agency, Preller has an enormous decision ahead of him.

People forget, in trading for Soto, they also traded for his agent, Scott Boras, who takes all his clients to free agency at a rich price tag.

So many crossroad questions at this hour.

Keep Soto for the 2024 season and hope he leads a star studded batting order to get the Padres to play deep into October.

Keep Soto till the trade deadline, and if not in the race, deal him away for the final two months of the season and hope you can reclaim some talent from the team that rents him.

Trade him now, play the price is right, with the bidders reportedly the Yankees, Mets, Cubs, Blue Jays and make the deal this week in Nashville.

To maximize the haul you could get in a deal, give the Yankees permission to talk to agent Scott Boras about a contract extension if Soto was dealt to New York, so the Yankees would have cost certainty, and might be willing to include the kind of instant talent haul Preller is asking for in a swap.

But this week at Opryland is so much more than just solving the Soto equation.

It’s finding starters 3-4-5 in a rotation that has holes everywhere.

It’s solving the mystery of the Trent Grisham situation in centerfield.  If not him, who, or why can’t he hit.

It’s filling a hole at 1st base, and solving two substandard seasons of Jake Cronenworth.

It’s also configuring who is to be a potent DH guy.

And of course there is the hope he does not revisit what he did twice, shipping out the bluechip players in the farm system, not once, but twice, in his long tenure as GM.

Everytime I turned on a playoff game, there was a hot ex-Padre doing something for another team, from Max Fried to Zach Eflin to Trea Turner and many more.

Having to reduce payroll from 254M to about 200M is a challenge.  As of Monday, with Soto on the roster, Preller had just 18M budget breathing room.

How do you fill your holes with that limited money?

Trade Soto and that gives you another 33M in money to go get players?

If you try to trade for the 1-year rentals, can you do that without shedding top minor league talent.  Corbin Burnes (Brewers)..Shane Bieber (Cleveland) head that list.

Do you risk going after a pitcher with troubled spots on their resumes, the ex-Dodgers, Trevor Bauer-Julio Urias?

Do you rent pitchers who have a history of injuries, like Alex Wood, Brandon Woodruff and the likes?

Can he go to Japan and access a starter like Shoto Iganama?  Is there another Nick Martinez-Robert Suarez-Luis Garcia find of a resurrected pitcher over there?

Will he deal for arms in the Rule 5-draft, guys who did not make it and have been left exposed-unprotected?

The GM who won the Winter Meetings with a 2am deal for Matt Kemp years ago, needs every hour of the day and night in Nashville, to fix this mess.

And make no mistake about it, he created this mess, with past deals, the contracts given out, and the trades made.

The excitement created a year ago this time, is gone, replaced by a roster full of issues, a limited checking account, and the knowledge this might be his final Winter Baseball Meetings, if he cannot to fill the potholes he has created.

Decision days are coming. Problems every place.  Solutions needed

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“COLLEGE FOOTBALL..CONTROVERSY & THE CHAOS”
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It has been a spectacular year in college football and now it is engulfed in controversy as they  head towards the Bowl season.

In a wild finish to the season, we wound up with 8-quality teams fighting for 4-playoff spots.

A year from today, the post season would be a 12-team tournament, but that won’t help out this year.

There are firsts that spun out of control as the Committee got ready for the Sunday selections.

They decided a conference champion, who was unbeaten, would not be chosen.  They have not stopped screaming across the Florida panhandle.  Fans in Tallahassee are saying ‘shove it’ after their Seminoles were not chosen despite the (13-0) season they had.

Georgia which has owned the SEC the last two years, fell out of the race by virtue of their loss to Alabama, and the rage was palpable too in Athens over a team that had a 29-game winning streak snapped in the final seconds by the much hated Alabama Crimson Tide.

Falling by the wayside too was Ohio State, which lost to Michigan two weeks ago, the only blemish on an otherwise great season.  Oregon ran roughshod over everyone, not named Washington, and they tailed off too.

Michigan and the arrogant Jim Harbaugh, red hot Washington, with its game changing QB-Michael Penix is in, as is all things Nick Saban-Alabama and the explosive Steve Sarkasian-Texas led Longhorns and QB-Quinn Ewers.

The columnists across the country are going crazy, writing analysis of what just happened.  Talk show radio should be crackling this week with opinions.

The committee was really strong in its stance of why all this happened.

They are ticketed with putting the four best teams in those bowl games, not teams with wins alone, or teams with historical tradition,  but teams who won against great schedules, teams that were healthy.

And that’s the issue.  Florida State had 2-QBs go down and were not very competitive the last two Saturday’s.  It became a big issue.

FSU is furious, calling it an outrage.

Georgia is steamed because no one respected their full body of work over a (29-1) splurge over two years.

Alabama said they earned this trip.
Michigan’s coach was suspended twice and yet his team kept winning
Texas’ win in Tuscaloosa carried alot of clout
Washington steamrolled everyone they played in a very tough Pac 12.

The bowl matchups will be fun, especially with the Orange Bowl clash of the shunned Seminoles vs the Georgia Bulldogs.

The weird matchup, because of the Group of 5-rule including one team, has a Fiesta Bowl game, Oregon vs tiny Liberty (13-0).

If there ever was a year when you wished for a 12-team playoff, this would have been it, considering not just who got in, but who was right on the outer edge.

Next year we won’t have a Pac 12.  Alot of teams will have new mailing addresses.  The bowl setup will look very different.

A year of chaos, surrounded by great QB play nationwide.  The playoff games should be electric, worth watching, considering how the end of the season became so chaotic.

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“NFL PREVIEW”
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6-games left for the teams the NFL playoff race, so crunch time is right infront of us.

A quick look at this weekend’s games and a candid comment you shoulder think about.

CHARGERS-PATRIOTS…The coaches are on the clock, Brandon Staley in jeopardy of another non playoff season, and Bill Belichick, his quarterback problems, his bad drafts, his failures in free agency.  QB-Justin Herbert continues to shine (20TD-6Int)…Keenan Alle does likewise (97R-1,117Y) but no one else is doing much.  Khalil Mack is earning his salary with his 11-sacks and his play in the quarterback’s face, but there’s not much else around him with that 30th ranked defense.  Belichick’s problems are far ranging.  The erosion in the play of now benched QB-Mac Jones.  The lack of any playmakers on the offense.  The lack of big time players via the draft.  The decision to shun free agency.  It’s like Belichick is using a 1980s game plan to get players.  All you need to know is that Mac Joes has been benched now 4-times in 2-seasons and his offense is averaging (219YPG).  The Pats are (2-9) and just (1-5) at home.  Who gets terminated first, the Bolts or Pats coach?

COWBOYS-SEATTLE…Dak Prescott”s (104QBR) has rallied back Dallas into relevance.  Geno Smith’s (88QBR) has led to a disappointing Seahawks season.  That’s all you need to know.

COLTS-TITANS..Not sure anyone can believe Indy is (6-5) with a volatile turnover plagued QB-Gardner Minshew.  The Titans look to be on the brink of a major tear-down rebuild.

LIONS-SAINTS…Is the season getting away from QB-Jared Goff, who managed games so well last year and into this hot start, but is now taking sacks, turning the ball over.  New Orleans has Derek Carr, but because of injuries around him, his (88QBR) means they are struggling

FALCONS-JETS…..Misery loves company.  Desmond Ridder is back in the starting lineup, but he has a bad ratio (7TD-14 Tovers) on his resume.  The Jets, where do you begin with this mess?  Four losses in a row, a (260Y) per game offense and all their QBs with a (71-QBR)

STEELERS-ARIZONA….Somehow Pittsburgh is (7-4) despite Kenny Pickett’s poor season (81R)..an erratic run game and a hot-cold receiving group.  The Cardinals are (1-9), the wideouts are averaging (9.4YPC) and the defense has allowed (358YPG).

MIAMI-WASHINGTON…Tua-Tyreek-Waddle keep doing it-Sunday by Sunday.  They are averaging (430YPG)-continue to reel off big plays.  Washington cannot protect QB-Sam Howell (55-sacks), have lost 5-of-6, and Ron Rivera appears headed towards a firing.

DENVER-HOUSTON…Fun game to watch.  Who could imagine Russell Wilson’s team would have a 5-game winning streak and a (103QBR) ?  Houston is an even bigger surprise, with CJ Stroud’s impressive season (3,266P-19TD-5 Int-100 QBR).

CAROLINA-TAMPA…Frank Reich is gone, so how much time does Todd Bowles have left with the Bucs?  Tough year for the (1-10) Panthers, averaging just (265YPG).  The Bucs have lost 6-of-7 and are giving up (363YPG), so this is not just a Baker Mayfield problem.

RAMS-BROWNS…Matthew Stafford meet Jim Schwartz’s Cleveland defense.  The Browns are giving up just (264YPG) and have 37-sacks, but they are on their fourth different starting QB this year, with Joe Flacco coming off the street corner, having to start.

49ers-EAGLES…Another heavyweight fight coming, Jalen Hurts (3,107 APY)-vs the Niners defense (33 QB-sacks-21-takeaways).  Lost in the conversation is the fact SF is ‘stormtrooping’ everyone on offense (386YPG), teaming Brock Purdy with RB-Christian McCaffrey (1,320APY), and a receiving group that averages (13YPC)

CHIEFS-PACKERS…Green Bay has won 3-of-4 with the kid Jordan Love and his young receives back in sync.  KC has Patrick Mahomes, but what is around Mahomes is not what it used to.  Yes they are averaging (364YPG) but it’s not the terrifying offense it used to be.

BENGALS-JAGUARS…The season is over with the Joe Burrow injury, this 3-game losing streak around their neck in Cincinnati.  The Jags are methodical, keep making plays, have not had bad injuries, and have won 7-of-8 games with a very diversified offense.

Enjoy it-we will review it on Monday.

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