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“Lousy Ending to Last Place Season”

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The misery over Padres baseball just will not go away.

In a stunner, Mike Dee was ousted as President and CEO, despite a track record of business success with the club.

There were positives, but the negatives outweighed what he accomplished.

Dee made Petco Park a destination point for families and fun. The constant renovations and upgrades made the place more than just a baseball stadium.

His business accumen led to the Padres making 20M plus per year from non-baseball events, a huge revenue stream the franchise needs.

His creative genius to bring back Padres history, with displays, and the newly opened Hall of Fame was special.

But there were negatives, lots of them.

Peter Seidler and the O’Malley family funded the purchase of the team from John Moores. The O’Malley’s were gone within a year, in part because of Dee’s way of doing business.

There was the handling-mishandling of the salute to Commissioner Bud Selig, and what happened at Palm Court, with the plaque ceremony, and what happened afterwards, when they took it down, to make room for the Hall of Fame building.

There was an undercurrent of unhappiness about the fact baseball ops, led by GM AJ Preller, a Dee hire, blew thru budgets without consideration to money coming in to money going out.

And then there was Preller himself, a rogue exec, hired by Dee despite a suspension in Texas, who then promptly incurred the wrath of the Commissioners office twice within a year with violations.

Dee orchestrated the firing of popular manager Bud Black, putting the club into a free-fall from which it has not recovered yet.

And Dee signed off on the the acquisitions of high priced stars, then the trade off of those stars with Padres money going out the door for prospects.

There were reports too of fou lups during the All Star festitivities, that upset MLB so much, their people had to come in to take over operation of some events.

Where do they go next?.

Ron Fowler must decide whether he wants a Business CEO only, or whether he needs a CEO with baseball experience to ride herd on Preller, once he comes off suspension.

Names mentioned include Orioles President-GM Dan Duquette. Joe Garagiola Senior was President of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and now works in the Commissioner’s office. Jerry Colangelo, the legendary NBA exec and founder of the Diamondbacks, has enormous business acumen. Jim Steeg, the longtime Chargers and NFL exec, is held in high regard in San Diego.

Preller has survived so far. Whether he does going forward remains to be seen, though the club spent 89M in resources to buy his blueprint and rebuild the farm system. Firing him would be a questionable decision for sure, since it will take time and patience to fix this franchise.

Dee was a protege of Larry Lucchino, who was the creative genius that got Petco Park built. Dee was also a bully on the business side, and fashioned himself as a key baseball talent exec too.

The Padres are better now as an organization because he was here. But the damage done in relationships around MLB was serious.

Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler are people of integrity. They could not have been happy with all the issues the Dee-Preller team created.

An MLB executive told me Fowler was under intense heat to to clean house. Dee’s guy, the GM, tried to screw two of the most influential people in baseball, John Henry and Jerry Reinsdorf.

In the end, Padres ownership was made to look bad, and the Commissioner’s office was not going to allow the decision makers to continue to operate that way.

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“Hockey Nite Here”

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It’s opening night in the National Hockey League tonight, and two nights later, hockey is back on the ice in San Diego, as the Gulls start their 2nd season in the American Hockey League.

As they drop the puck tonite, a close up look at storylines worth following.

The LA Kings, once a Stanley Cup winner, are no longer the same franchise.

They are saddled with some ugly contracts. It’s almost as if everyone on the team makes 8M a year. GM-Dean Lombardi spent lavishly a couple of years back, but now has mega money deals with aging players, hanging around his neck.

Anzi Kopitar is a star, but Dustin Brown is not any longer. And Brown is making north of 7M a season, and not scoring. A griffy leader, it’s as if he woke up one morning an older player with eroding skills.

It will be a season to start without Marian Gaborik, and his hefty contract. Out with a broken foot suffered in the World Cup tournament. And fiesty Milan Lucic wears Edmonton Oilers colors tonite, having jumped for bigger money than LA was willing to give.

The Anaheim Ducks bring back Randy Carlyle as head coach, the guy who led them to a Stanley Cup, only to get fired a couple of years later. He replaces Bruce Boudreau, whose Ducks teams failed to win the 7th and deciding games of playoff series at home, four, yes four years in a row.

The Ducks have big money aging players, but still productive guys like Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. They think they have a star on the horizon in Nick Ritchie, and have a sensational first round pick in 19-year old defenseman Jacob Larsson.

But Anaheim has issues. Two of their better young players remain restricted free agent holdouts. Hampus Lindholm and Rikard Rakell are still in Sweden. A headstrong GM-Bob Murray refusing to give them 6M a year contracts, the going rate for top young stars who merit extensions.

The Ducks need to shed the label as being cheap, and get them back from Scandanavia. They say ‘cost conscious’. No one I know agrees with that description.

Lots of the NHL attention will be on what’s going on in the Eastern Conference, where the top teenage draft pick in the NHL, Austin Matthews debuts with the Maple Leafs.

The spotlight will glare on Pittsburgh because of the revelation of more concussion problems for superstar Sidney Crosby.

The Western Conference is loaded with firepower and talent, and year two, hopefully a full year for Edmonton Oilers sensation Connor McDavid, could bring big time stats. He set an NHL record, being named captain of the Oilers at just age 19 this week.

Add in the excitement in Las Vegas, where they have sold over 16,000-season tickets for an expansion team that plays a year from tonite.

And off ice, the on-going debate, will the NHL allow its players to take part in the next Olympics? What happens with the ugly Concussion lawsuit that now involves the NHL? And what will the league do about the equipment changes they want to invoke at mid-season on goaltenders?

So they drop the puck with some fun storylines to follow, if you like hockey.

In LA and in Anaheim, they sellout games, and the fans love the action.

And San Diego can get its fill of puck because the Kings are on Time Warner Cable…and Ducks games are piped in here thru Fox Sports San Diego.

And San Diego is a melting pot of fans for sure. Just think, the San Diego Gulls, in the AHL, were second highest in attendance last year in an aging Sports Arena. Fans showing up wearing all types of jerseys from the teams they rooted for back home , before moving here.

Hockey Nite is Here. And it’s great..

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“Failing in the Fall”

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Baseball is such a grind.

You play 162 games hoping to get to post season, and this year, unlike other, teams are one and done so quickly.

The Pirates had gone 22-years without making the playoffs. They got there three straight seasons, a wildcard spot, and were taken out in the play-in game, 3-years in a row. Didn’t even get back this year when Andrew McCutchen stopped hitting and the pitching staff broke down.

The short run of success in Kansas City seems over. All those horror show seasons, then the kids arrived, and they got good, and now they’re gone. Mike Moustakas had two major injuries in a 6-weeks span, and never came back. Eric Hosmer spent a chunk of mid season hurt. Lorenzo Cain got hurt late in the year and was done. The pitching fell apart.

The Mets got there, but were out in one game, though you must credit last year’s World Series team. Think about Terry Collins getting them to post season, but having to do it without David Wright, Luca Duda, Neil Walker, cornerstone guys in the lineup. And then 3-of the young gun arms in the rotation all wound up having surgery, Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Steve Matz.

The Orioles spent all year slugging it out with the enemy in the Ameican League East, and earned their way in with a September smashing of the Red Sox-Blue Jays and Yankees in games they had to win. But they stopped hitting homers the final weeks of the season, and the bats were nowhere to be found as the wildcard game arrived.

Houston was the sensation a year ago. But like the others, pitching killed them. Subpar seasons from Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers, with arm ailments, and the strikeouts and less than power seasons meant they were a different team this time around.

I don’t know if there is an explanation for the Red Sox and the Rangers. Boston looked as if it had every ingredient you’d want, bats and arms, but got swept by the Indians. And Texas, with the best record in the American League, got taken out 3-straight by the Blue Jays, a real shocker.

The Giants blew an 8-and-a half game lead at the All Star break, got to post-season and the chance to get battered by the Cubs. Not much hitting and little pitching aside from Madison Bumgarner.

The Dodgers were flawed against lefthanded pitching, and seemed to run out of pitching too. Credit though, they won the division with Clayton Kershaw being out months and months, and guys like Ryu, McCarthy, Anderson spending much of the season on DL.

It’s tough to survive and advance on. Playing in October is what it is all about. Failing in the Fall is part of job description too.

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“What does (1-4) Mean-Chargers?”

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Sunday’s Chargers loss in Oakland means lots of things to lots of people.

Across the board, it is the end of their playoff hopes, maybe the earliest the Chargers have been eliminated from the playoff race in years upon years.

To the fans, it probably means this should be the end of Mike McCoy’s head coaching career.

To the ownership, it probably means the end to their hopes to get the Stadium Measure C passed a month from now.

For the coach, it just turns up the heat on his coaching career.

But what should (1-4) really mean for the last place Chargers?

It should lead to a face to face meeting with ownership, to tell Coach Mike McCoy, the mandate is simple. You coach this team, and you coach these young players, to improve them week to week.

It should mean you hold these players accountable, in public, not behind closed doors.

It might mean, you are coaching them for next season, when all the adversity, the learning curve mistakes, will be in the rear-view mirror.

You saw two things in the Black Hole yesterday.

You saw the dynamics of all the young skill people, playing, learning, making mistakes around quarterback Philip Rivers.

You saw the disastrous results, when you are forced to play all those rookies and inexperienced players on defense because of key injuries.

The young kids on offense are making plays. The young kids on defense are getting taken advantage of.

Travis Benjamin, Hunter Henry, Tyrell Williams and Gordon made lots of big plays, run and pass. So did Joey Bosa’s high energy debut.

It’s tough when some of your best players let you down.

Melvin Gordon’s fumble. Dropped passes. Antonio Gates stripped of the ball. Before that is was a bad outing from Jason Verrett before the injury. and the stage fright of punter Drew Kazor.

I am the lone wolf here.

I would not fire Mike McCoy. Ken Whisenhunt is not head coaching material, his (3-19) record in Tennessee should chase everyone away from that thought. There is no one else on that staff who is head coaching timbre.

McCoy’s task is to get tougher on these players, make them learn, get them ready for the 2017 season.

If you get to November, and there are no improvements, then you remove McCoy, and have your ready list of replacements to bring in immediately to observe what’s left in the schedule.

The only two successful coaches in the Chargers-Spanos era, were tough guy proven leaders, Marty Schottenheimer and before than Bobby Ross.

Team Spanos, if they hit the eject button, will need to pay big time money to end all this losing. That might mean Tom Coughlin or Mike Holmgren. It might mean David Shaw or Jim Harbaugh from the college ranks.

McCoy is the 29th ranked paid head coach in the league. You get what you pay for. You cannot be satisfied with what is on the field, and you need to self-critique yourself also.

Next year should begin with the next practice on the field Tuesday, as the Denver Broncos come to town.

T’is a losing season, but all is not lost. A chunk of the foundation is still there. There needs to be a mandate this coaching staff will ramp it up, from a leadership standpoint.

If the Raiders can climb out of the basement after nearly a decade of losing, the Chargers should be able to climb out of the Black Hole of last place they are in too.

We find out if the coach can be a winner, or if he is a loser. That needs to be said today in a meeting with owners.

(1-4) means this season is over. (1-4) means you starting coaching for next year.

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