Padres Future

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So this under-achieving, disappointing, typical Padres baseball season is over.
 
They wind up with a strong second half finish (36-30), after a miserable first half showing, that nearly set records for ineptitude.
 
And this afternoon, they will begin “organizational meetings'” under new GM-AJ Preller and his new lead Scout Don Welke.  There’s not much to evaluate atop, and they’ve seen what is far down the road in the farm system.
 
Manager Bud Black and his staff coming back used the word ‘rebuild’ last night in his postgame press conference in the clubhouse in San Francisco.  Maybe another word to use will be ‘purge’, the type that leads to a houseclearning.
 
You wonder if they will start parking bodies out on the curb shortly for the sanitation department to start picking up.  The roster needs to be overhauled, a couple of middle of the order power bats must be imported.  They can no longer put this team of utility men out on the field everyday.
 
Carlos Quentin, the nearly crippled left fielder still has another 8M left on his contract with a half million buyout for 2015.  He’ll never get on the field to be what he used to be with the White Sox.  Bone on bone knee problems have pretty much eradicated his ability to play everyday, and there is no DH in the National League.  Do you eat the contract, release him, and clear a spot on the 40-man roster?
 
How much longer do you stay with Cameron Maybin, a year by year underachiever.  Will Venable may be classy, and plays with heart and good glove, but .220 batting average guys should not be regulars.
 
Seth Smith has a two year deal to stay in San Diego, but he did tail off much the second half of the season.  .260-hitters are .260 hitters regardless if they hit .333 for a month.
 
What do you do with the troubled Evreth Cabrera, drugs, PEDs and now possibly not trustworthy? 
 
Jed Gyorko is rock solid, and so is the multi position Alexi Amirista, coming off an amazing second half.  Yonder Alonso may be a better first baseman, from a wear and tear factor, than he is holding up at catcher.  And Rene Rivera turns out to the find of the season, and what a season he had, hitting nearly .300 the last 2-months, this from a .207 lifer.  What do you do with Yonder Alonso, who has played the outfield in the past, but has hand injury history problems?
 
That’s it.  That’s your roster.  Please don’t try to sell us, the public, you are going to be a true playoff team running out a lineup filled with names like Solarte, Almonte, Goebbert, Medica and other refugees from El Paso.
 
A sneak preview showed us the Liriano-Spangenberg potential.  But there is nothing left at AAA, and much of the future talent is way down the line.  San Antonio and Ft-Wayne are a long way from San Diego, in miles and players’ ability.
 
Let’s not hang our hat on a decent second half of the season.  We cannot forget stretches of time, where the core players were hitting (.118) for a month.  You cannot forget a team batting average (.211) the entire first half of the season.  Anybody ache at the all the good pitching San Diego wasted this season, when they were shutout 20-times, and scored 2-runs or less in 68-of-162 games?.
 
Some tough decisions are coming, maybe beginning tonight.  
 
“Play in October” was the theme this year at Petco Park.  The good teams will begin Tuesday, with wildcard games.  The Padres won’t be there again, for something like the 8th year in a row.
 
Team Utilityman and its roster has to change.  The leadership philosophy has to change.  The payroll has to change.   The results in San Diego have to change.  The fans and the media should demand that.
 
The words “Wait till next year” sure get old everytime this time of year.

Bad Football

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I tried to think of some of the bad NFL teams I have seen in this modern day NFL we have to cover and watch.
 
This goes against all the plans laid out by the former Commissioners Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue.  You know the rules, salary cap, the draft, free agency, evens out the playing field.  The theory that the big money Dallas Cowboys can lose to the small market Green Bay Packers.  Everybody has a chance to be competitive.
 
This defies all logic as to how the Jacksonville Jaguars could be so bad.
 
You have to have a lot of bad luck with injuries, a bunch of bad drafts, make mistakes on free agency, and have your team get really old all at once, so you get really young when you start to rebuild.  The Jags have all the bases covered.
 
History reminds us of the horrors of the Matt Millen-Detroit Lions era (0-16) and all that.  The record book shows us all those Tampa Bay losses in the early John McKay years in the popsicle orange jerseys and 26-losses in a row.
 
The Ryan Leaf era brought the Chargers a  (1-15) team.  Ditto for the blight of a (1-15) Patriots team, or a (1-15) Colts team that had Eric Dickerson on it.  There was a (2-14) Tom Flores led Seahawks squad too.
 
The best of the worst, and many forget this, was Jimmy Johnson’s (1-15) Cowboys team that debuted Troy Aikman,  who would soon be followed by Emmett Smith and Michael Irvin and you know the rest.
 
But this is bad, this bunch from Florida’s East Coast.  The Jaguars cannot compete, at least thru three weeks of the season.  All you need to know is that they are ranked 30th, 31st or 32nd in every important stat category on both offense and defense in the NFL. 
 
And now they are giving the football to lst round pick Blake Bortels at quarterback, with the hope he doesn’t get hurt, get ruined, get maimed, playing behind a line that has given up 17-sacks already.  All their receivers are gone, thru drug suspensions, alcohol issues or injuries.  The defense is either way too young, undersized, or just fringe in talent.  The hopes you could make something of a team anchored by WR-Justin Blackmon or RB-Maurice Jones-Drew are over.  Blackmon’s drug-alcohol issues seem to overwhelm him.  Injury and age caught up with Drew.  
 
You have to work real hard to screw up a roster, but the former GM-Gene Smith did, and the ex-head coach Jack Del Rio saw it slip and slide away.  Feel bad for a good coach, Gus Bradley, who came from the Seahawks, for this will be ugly, this will be bad, this may be record-setting awful by the end of the season.
 
The Chargers get a walk-over game.  The Jaguars get their brains beat in.  This goes against all the rules and regs of the NFL, where everybody should be 8-8 at worst…

Fair or Unfair

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You can watch the games virtually all the time now, in the ever-popular National Football League.
 
What used to be 10am and 1pm games on Sunday, has been expanded.  We now have wildly popular Sunday night matchups, to compliment the historically famous Monday Night Football Game of the Week.
 
And tonight, the latest venture, another Thursday night game, one each week for the entire 17-week season.
 
Tonight’s Redskins-Giants matchup promised to really be special when they devised the schedule.  Robert Griffin III, the Washington quarterback everyone loves to watch, vs Eli Manning, who owns two Super Bowl rings.
 
But it won’t happen, and it likely won’t be a good game.  Neither one of these teams is great, both are trying to resurrect themselves, and New York and Washington have been shredded by injuries, just three weeks into the season.
 
So instead of dazzle, we get fizzle.  We have a Giants coach trying to save his career, the icon Tom Coughlin.  We have Jay Gruden, the latest hand pick savant, as head coach of Washington, where coaching hiring’s and firings occur just like heat and humidity in the summer, and cold raw weather in the winter. 
 
Eli is trying to figure out a new offensive playbook, with a new coordinator, and alot of new teammates, after an off season roster purge.
 
Kirk Cousins starts in Washington, because RGIII is hurt again, dislocated ankle, running away from tackles, his third major injury in just two seasons.
 
The storyline will not only be how bad are these two teams, but how bad the injuries are?  Washington had 9-players hurt, knocked out of their last game on Sunday.  In a short work week, they had 17-players miss practice on Tuesday and Wednesday.  And now just 3-days after getting beaten and battered, they have to play again.
 
Does not seem fair, not to the players, and probably not to the fans who pay big ticket prices at places like the Meadowlands and Fed Ex Field.
 
But this is the NFL, and the games go on, the show must take place, and they must fill that Thursday night TV slot they are trying to grow. 
 
Worry about the product?  No.  Worry about the players longterm health?  Guess not.  Wonder what the TV ratings will be?  Surely.
 
In carving up the big TV money pie, the Mara’s and the Snyder’s, the owners, get their paydays, the players get hurt.  Seems like some tradeoff, huh?
 
I’m not sure what is worse, the likely product on the field, or the philosophy behind doing what the NFL, its owners, and the Union are doing.
 
Enjoy your Thursday night game, but realize who is suffering the aches and pains, as you enjoy NFL football on a short work week.

Goodbye Padres

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The Padres play their final home game of another disappointing season tonite, saying goodbye to the home fans, with another game against the dreadful Colorado Rockies.

The season is ending on an upbeat note, in that the dreadful first half of the season, when they were 14-games under .500, and a half game out of first place, has been replaced by a (34-27) record since the All Star break.

Maybe you give out Gold Stars to students for  finishing the term strong, but this is the major leagues, and if you are not playing in October, this doesn’t mean much.

If you force-fed all your young players, and they put up good numbers, maybe there would be momentum into next season, but that is not the case either.  This is a roster full of utilitymen, who anywhere else, would be on someone’s bench, not in a starting lineup.

Granted, a team that was on track to establish a possible all time worst team batting average, has hit better.  But a team .226 average isn’t anything to pin your hopes on, but it is better than the .211 mark this franchise had just prior to the All Star break.

The Padres head to San Francisco after tonight’s game, with more questions than answers about the future. Carlos Quentin is owed another 9.5M on a bad contract with a player with  bad knees. Yonder Alonso is coming off hand surgery, and has yet to exhibit he will ever be the .280 gap hitter they hoped for when he came in the Cincinnati-Mat Latos traded.

Mention Cam Maybin and the first thing that comes to mind are suspensions, the injuries, then under performances.  Ditto too for shortstop Ev Cabrera, with two discipline moves on his resume.

Do you have a 3rd baseman?  Is Alexi Amirista a true shortstop?.  Is there any power in this lineup to compete with the big boys in the division, Dodgers and Giants?  Are there any hitters comng from the farm system?

The foundation of the everyday lineup is Jed Gyorko, who fought thru the sophomore slump syndrome, Yasmani Grandal, Rene Rivera, and Seth Smith.  The rest are just guys, not stars.

It is sad.  The franchise wasted phenominal pitching, from the starters to the bullpen.  If they had any sliver of hitting, San Diego would be playing tonight for a wildcard spot, not playing out the string.  You have only so many bullets in those arms, and the staff you finish with this weekend, may not be the same quality staff next year.

Of the 157-games played so far, this team has been shutout  19-times, and 68-times has scored two runs or less in a game.  Here’s the ball Tyson Ross, Andrew Cashner, Ian Kennedy, go pitch a shutout and hope you can win.

They have arms, and hopefully some healthy ones returning from surgery, but they need a real infusion of everyday talent this off season.  Next Monday cannot come quick enough, then the free agent shopping season, and the winter meetings. .

The team will draw just a shade over 2.1M.  If this was a good team, it would draw 3M per year, and profit margin lines that lead to a much  bigger payroll, more internaitonal players, plus better drafts.

If they finish .500 it is an accomplishment for Bud Black, considering what a mess this was in July.  But in the big picture, another lost season, the 11th losing year in the last 15 in San Diego.

Good guys in the clubhouse to cover and work with, just not enough good players.  Don’t tell me about promotion nights, next year’s schedule, just tell me when you are getting me, and this city, better players.  Take a look at this lineup tonite.  I don’t think you’ll see a bunch of these guys back here next year.

Beat Up Bolts

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It should have been a ‘Victory Monday’ celebration at the Fortress, Chargers Park.  Instead it was glum, downcast, and a day full of cloudy emotions.
 
The Bolts beat Buffalo to move into a lst place tie with Denver, but at the cost of the very popular-very productive running back Danny Woodhead, placed on the season ending IR list with a fractured fibula-just above the shin, and ankle ligament damage.  Then last night came word linebacker Manti Te’o re-fractured his ailing foot, the third foot injury in 14-months for the starting inside backer.
 
The Chargers can survive the loss of the linebacker, but they have work to do to overcome the running back setbacks.
 
So Woodhead, the road runner outside catch and run back, is gone.  He goes down a week after Ryan Mathews, their heavy duty bulldozer of a back went down, leaving the Bolts in a real quandary, of who to add to the roster.
 
Donald Brown will remain the lead back, but he is not a 30-touch a game guy.  Behind him are the kids, Branden Oliver and Marion Grice, both rookies, with limited experience in preseason games, and for Oliver an odd carry or two on Sunday.
 
There are running backs out there, but none like Woodhead.  Who is like him, aside from Darren Sproles.
 
LaMichael James, who never really got much playing time with the 49ers, and talked his way off the team, is probably the closest clone to the departed #39.
 
Mikel Leshoure, ex-Detroit Lion, has the same traits, but has had issues off the field and injuries.
 
Of the young veterans out there, Evan Royster, a bit of power runner, had good games with the Redskins over a couple of years.  Bryce Brown showed promise run and catch with the Eagles, but then got hurt.  Ex-Cowboys speedster Felix Jones is out there, but he gets hurt and can never stay on the field.  The same too for former Arizona Cardinal high draft pick Ryan Williams.
 
Of the old veterans, ex-Raider-ex-Bear Michael Bush can do lots of things.  Power inside guy, good blocker, can catch it, can run it up inside.  Ex-Patriot and Bengal Ben Jarvis-Green-Ellis is available, but there may be an injury factor with him.  He hasn’t made any visits since cutdown day.
 
It’s a tough call for GM Tom Telesco.  They’d like explosiveness in that role, but they’d like toughness too, and they really need experience.
 
The schedule gives San Diego a break.  The awful Jacksonville Jaguars come in, then the rebuilding Jets, the hapless Raiders, and then Kansas City.  The Chargers have time to make a choice, because they do have Grice and Oliver, familiar with the system, but they need to make the right choice going forward, because they will need a trustworthy guy for 13-games.
 
I’d pick Bush or Green Ellis before anyone else.  Better safe with size and experience, than sorry with youth, mistakes and fumbles.