I Think I Might Like Padres POV

Watching this evening's affair in Seattle, I began thinking about how I might enjoy Padres POV. It appears to be a show where Fox Sports San Diego cameras follow a player through their day at the ballpark, coupled with candid interviews. It looks like One on One with Jane Mitchell for those of us who aren't Madres...but I wouldn't know, because I can't see it.

Unless you live in a specific part of San Diego County and are a Cox Communications subscriber, you're likely in the same boat that I am. Some of you fall into the "completely blacked out" category, while others find themselves in the situation where they can only watch the games and Padres Live on Fox Sports San Diego. As DirecTV customers, we fall into the latter category. The trouble is, the Padres and Fox Sports San Diego are telling you to switch to DirecTV if you live in Time-Warner territory, when there's only a partial product to offer.

Fox Sports SD 19 hrs of the day on DirecTV. Riveting.

It seems wrong for the acting CEO of the Padres to shill on behalf of any company, but especially for one that isn't even offering the Padres' channel all of the time. Via Twitter, I've asked Fox Sports San Diego when they plan to be available full-time on DirecTV, and their answer was that I should call up DirecTV and let them know I want FSSD as a full-time channel. This isn't much different than Time-Warner customers being asked to either switch providers (which isn't an option for people in rentals or on property where a where dishes may be obscured for one reason or another) or to call up TW and harass their customer service reps. Reps who also don't deserve to be put in the middle of this nonsense. Overall, the mentality of the Padres and Fox Sports San Diego seems to be this; we got the channel up and running, you do the rest.

This afternoon, I heard another Fox Sports San Diego ad on the radio. We're 62 games, 8.5 innings into  the season and instead of hearing about Padres baseball being available for fans across the county, the PR engine is revving back up. Switch to DirecTV, where we're still just half-assing it. Just stop it, Padres and Fox. We don't care. We just want to watch the Padres, and you're lucky that we're still interested. Stop taking fans for granted, stop putting fans in the middle of your squabble, and stop asking us to do your job for you.

We'd all like to have A Cup Of Coffee With Dick Enberg. At least, we think we might.



******* Update for 6-14-2012


A bit earlier, Fox Sports San Diego sent this picture out through Facebook and Twitter.

Cool, dudes! You're showing everyone what's up here, bro. Totally sticking it to Time Warner by hiring those trucks to block a fire lane! Feuding in public like a couple of multi-billion dollar babies (slight Alice Cooper reference unintentional), as if we should care.

This is extremely disappointing.

Chase Headley Is Very Good At Baseball

As a semi-superstitious person (generally only when it comes to sports), this is going to be hard to write. A piece like this could put Chase Headley in the hospital. If nothing else, he’ll likely go 0-17 over the next week. He’ll still walk 10 times though. You can’t jinx that.

Anyway, it’s time for everyone to admit that Chase Headley is good. Has been for quite some time. Well before you think. Not only is he good, but if he is the Padres’ lone representative at the All-Star Game this year in Kansas City (wait, KC is getting one and San Diego still hasn’t had one since Petco opened?),  he will deserve to be there. Yes, Hanley Ramirez has more power. Yes, David Freese has better name recognition. Yes, Chipper Jones is still putting up positive numbers in his final season. But the only NL 3^rd baseman whose combination of offense and defense actually eclipses Headley’s is David Wright. The only AL 3^rd baseman who is having a better season than Chase is Mike Moustakas. You heard that right: Chase Headley is one of the top 3 third basemen in the league so far this year. He should be an All-Star. You should appreciate that.

Like I said, this isn’t new. Chase has been good for some time. He was good in 2010. He was average on offense, but he was a gold glove-caliber defender. In 2011, the defense took a step back but he figured out how to hit right-handed and became a plus hitter. This year, he’s putting the whole package together. He’s even hitting for some power, on pace for close to 20 home runs, currently leading the team in that category (Carlos Quentin might have something to say about that soon). If he stays healthy (and gets a few days off every now and then), he could be a 6 WAR player this year.

I know that he can be frustrating at times. Almost every player is for some reason. The Diamondbacks have benched Justin Upton this week. Justin Upton is an All-Star with superstar potential. He’s struggling right now and it’s frustrating to his fans and his coaches. He’s going to be fine. Adrian Gonzalez was frustrating at times too. Remember that? The Red Sox are dealing with that right now, and they’re paying him tons of money. The Padres were paying him less than 25% of what he’s making now. Those two are great players. Chase Headley is very good. Of course he’s going to ground out with RISP sometimes, or take a walk when the team really needs a hit. He’s also going to consistently get on base, hit a bunch of doubles, knock one out from time to time, and play excellent defense.

So admit it. He’s good. He’s not a bust. Sorry. The team sucks. The ownership situation sucks. There’s not a lot of good going on out there. Carlos Quentin’s been good for a week and it’s been exciting, but Chase Headley has been good all year. Let’s appreciate that, and hope our lame-duck GM doesn’t trade him to the Cubs for a reliever (starter? Future patient of Dr. Andrews?) this summer.

Fried Appels Aren’t Carnival Food, and Other Nerdy Mumbo Jumbo

It’s late on a Tuesday night. I’m drinking Sierra Nevada Hoptimum. Carlos Quentin hit 2 home runs tonight, and then Logan Forsythe and his glorious beard hit a walk off home run in the bottom of the 9^th. At Petco Park. Impressive. I’ve got tomorrow off work and I can't stop thinking about how the new CBA made the Padres select Max Fried over Mark Appel in the first round of the MLB draft. I’m that nerd.

In case you missed it, the 2012 MLB rule 4 draft began with the 1^st round on Monday evening, continued with rounds 2-15 today, and will conclude tomorrow with rounds 16-40. All told, roughly 1200 men I’d never heard of before and 30 I learned about just recently will get selected over these 3 days. This is a huge undertaking, and in their new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the owners and players have totally screwed things up. Why? Because the owners want to save money, and players who are already in the league don’t care about the players who aren’t.

Because you almost certainly missed it, here’s the difference between this year's draft and previous years: teams now have a cap on how much they can spend on draft picks. Also, the draft was cut from 50 to 40 rounds, but that’s not important, the cap is what matters. Each pick from 1^st overall to the last pick of the 10^th round is given a slot value, and the total amount of slotted money for a team’s picks in the top 10 rounds is added up to equal their cap. For example, the Padres had 14 picks in the first 10 rounds, and a total of roughly $9.9 million to spend.

Not only have they set a cap, they’ve decided to enforce it. For every dollar you spend above your cap up to 5%, you are fined 75 cents. If the Padres spend 5% above their $9.9 million cap, they will be fined approximately $371,000. If they spend more than that, but less than 10% above their cap, they continue to be fined and lose their 1^st round pick in the next draft. If they spent more than 10% above their cap, there are the fines and also the loss of their 1^st and 2^nd round picks. These are steep penalties, and teams will be very reluctant to reach that 5% limit. Oh, two more things: if you fail to sign a player in the top 10 rounds, the slotted value of that pick is removed from your bonus pool. Also, any player drafted after the 10^th round that gets a bonus over $100,000 counts towards your cap, so you can’t let a player with high demands slip through the cracks, draft him after the 10^th round, and then pay him big bucks to sign.

For the Padres, the new CBA and its rules came into play immediately. After their dream pick, 18 year old Puerto Rican SS Carlos Correa, was taken 1^st overall, the player many had projected to be 1^st overall, Stanford RHP Mark Appel, fell down to the Padres selection, the 7^th overall pick. The rumor was out that Appel, as a college junior with the option to return to Stanford for a senior season, was asking for a ton of money to sign. Lame duck GM Josh Byrnes and his well-qualified team passed on Appel, opting for top high school pitcher Max Fried. Normally, if the Padres don’t take the best player available because he’s deemed too expensive, they’re considered cheap. Appel was reportedly ranked just ahead of Fried on the Padres’ draft board. Should they have taken the best player available? Has this notoriously cheap franchise gone cheap again?

No. Here’s why. The Pirates took Appel with the 8^th overall pick. They have a $6.6 million cap. The 8^th pick in the draft has a $2.9 million slot value ($100,000 less than the Padres at 7). If Appel demands $4 million to sign, that’s $1.1 million that Pittsburgh is either going to have to cut from their later picks (by taking college seniors with limited ability who will sign for well under their slot values), or they’re going to have to be willing to pay steep fines and lose their picks next year. If Appel demands $5 million, even worse. If Appel demands $6 million, a number that was reported but not confirmed, that’s almost the Pirates’ entire bonus pool.

Chances are Mark Appel is going back to school to hope for better next year. The Padres took the 2^nd best player available, who will likely accept slot money or perhaps slightly less ($3 million is good money for most), and maintained their ability to be aggressive with their remaining 13 capped picks, including taking 2 more high school pitchers in the compensation round who may have dropped out of the 1^st round due to signability concerns.

In my opinion, this new system flat out sucks. You’re going to see a lot of talented high school players fall out of the top 10 rounds, maybe not even drafted at all, because they have strong college commitments or high salary demands (the two often come hand in hand). One of the advantages the Padres had was an ability to be hyper-aggressive in the draft because draft picks are generally inexpensive. Even if you spend $15 million on bonuses in a draft, it’s worth it if you can get 6 pre-free agency years of an all-star caliber player.

Last year, the Padres went for broke on 2 high schoolers with strong college commitments, drafting RHP Joe Ross 25th and C Austin Hedges 82nd, spending close to $6 million combined to keep them. This year, those two picks would have had a combined slot value of less than $2.5 million. If the new rules had been in effect last year, Ross and Hedges would be playing for UCLA right now, and the Padres farm system would be significantly worse.

College seniors are generally seen as easy signs. They’re older (bad), if they’d have been worth anything significant they would have been drafted and signed as juniors (bad), and because they don’t have the option of going back to school for another year they don’t have a lot of leverage. Usually these guys can wait until the later rounds. This year, so many seniors were being picked in the top 10 rounds due to signability that Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein tweeted “the new system was supposed to line up talent with draft slot. With all the senior sign crap from rounds 4-10, it's a complete failure.”

The owners might disagree. The actual purpose of the new system was to limit draft expenditures, not to line up the talent. The owners don’t care if a kid refuses to sign and goes to college. Their goal was to eliminate agent leverage. In that way, the new system will prove to be a huge success. Teams scrambled to pick signable players who will take under slot deals in order to free up a couple hundred thousand for their high-ceilinged high school draftees. Everybody is trying to stay within their cap, working within the confines of the new system. The owners won, baseball lost, and the Padres took Max Fried instead of Mark Appel for good reason.

In conclusion: Bring Back the Brown. And the old draft system. I'm buzzed. Hoptimum is good stuff.

The Suggestion Box

Word has come out that the Padres may be sold sooner rather than later (according to hints dropped by local media types, we're talking this week or perhaps next week), which is more than likely good news after the Moorad debacle. Looking at the groups who have been reported as being "finalists" in the bidding process, I can't say that I have a real problem with any of them. On paper, I see positives with every group, and very few negatives. That said, we've been burned badly, and I have some suggestions/demands for the incoming ownership group.

A Major League team requires a Major League payroll: $43M, $37M, $45M, $55M. Those are the payrolls for the last four seasons of Padres baseball. Considering the Padres (and other "small-market" clubs) were reportedly receiving $35-40M annually from revenue sharing, these numbers are absurd at best. Really, they're flat-out infuriating and insulting to the fanbase. Instead of supporting a Major League payroll, Jeff Moorad implied that attendance needed to improve to see spending increase. With the new television contract, there's not excuse not to field an $80M+ baseball club.

The burden of proof is on you, not the fans: As I said in the previous section, Jeff Moorad implied that it was on Padres fans to buy tickets if they wanted to see the payroll increase to a reasonable level. The Padres fanbase has no reason to trust ownership, and this kind of attitude isn't going to serve you well with San Diego fans. We need a reason to trust that you have the club's best interests at heart.

What you shouldn't do is come into town telling us who and what we are; Tom Garfinkel-style turd polishing will not work anymore. I wish I had all of the answers to what you need to do to rebuild trust, but I know bringing in legitimate Major League talent is the first step. Make us feel welcome in our own park, and establish Petco Park as home of the San Diego Padres and Padres fans, not the "any fan will do" method that has allowed opposing fans to fill our ballpark. Thank your predecessors, because you're walking into a shit situation and it's their fault. The good thing is that when we're given something to buy into, we show up.

GET THE GAMES ON TV. NOW: Don't shill for DirecTV, don't throw up your hands/shrug your shoulders and tell the fans to call up Time Warner and AT&T and do your job for you. Get the games on TV, now.

Focus on draft and development: This should be an easy one for a team in this market, but our history suggests otherwise. If you're serious about winning in San Diego (and if you're not, stop reading and please drop out of the bidding), you're going to need to build from the ground up. Draft the best talent available, then sign that talent. "Signability" is not a word that should be in your vocabulary. Spend money on international scouting and free agents. Do not stick your nose in the process, allow the people you hired to actually do their job. Which brings me to....

Hire/retain good baseball people and let them do their jobs: Stay in the owner's box. Do what you need to do to make this business run optimally, but do not directly involve yourself in the on-field product. We don't need the owner forcing things like, say, multi-year deals with Orlando Hudson. Or drafting Matt Bush over whomever. Let the baseball people work, and if they're not doing their job, step in and replace them.

Intelligent free agent signings: In the world of sports talk radio and newspaper comment sections, willingness to spend big in free agency is the ultimate measure of an owner's constitution.  I would argue that free agency isn't as important as developing your own talent and retaining it, but it's a necessary piece of the puzzle. Free agency should be used to compliment your existing roster, to fill in holes that you're unable to fill through your system. The Padres are never going to find themselves in the position to sign Albert Pujols, nor should they aspire to be in that position. We should use free agency dollars to bolster a homegrown roster, not putting all of our eggs in one or two baskets...or worse, create a revolving door of stopgaps (i.e. the Kevin Towers Plan).

Additional items I'd like to see:
+ I'd like to see less of a "house cleaning" and more "taking out the trash". Namely, Black and Byrnes being sent on their way.

+ Bring back brown (and gold) as our primary color(s). The common misconception seems to be that the "Bring Back The Brown" movement wants to bring back a specific uniform set. That's not the case. Rather, I'd like to see an evolution. We do have a history, which has now been ignored for 22 years. We need to embrace that history and re-establish a kit that is distinctly San Diego Padres. Give us our identity back.