New York Nine

With changing of ownership and front office guys the Padres were the talk of the early off-season. Indeed, when "fire sale" popped up everyone assumed this was a total makeover for the team, ditching their high priced players and hoping to rebuild their anemic team and farm system. Well its March 31st and Jake Peavy and Brian Giles are still in Padres uniforms, and with some the exception of a few bargain bin pickups their offseason was remarkably quiet and ineffective.

The biggest loss of the season was undoubtedly the loss of Mr. Padre, Trevor Hoffman the career leader of saves. After a very messy divorce and refusal to pay him, he went off to the Brewers, leaving their so-so bullpen in even worse shape. This puts the burly rights Heath Bell into the closer job and its not looking so good. After an electric year in 07 where he struck out 107 in 93 innings and a stellar 2.02 ERA he plummeted to a 3.58 ERA with his strikeouts way down to 71. While he wasn't awful and he supposedly is in "the best shape of his life" just like half of guys out there in spring training, its no longer a lock in the ninth inning and more importantly they need to find someone to replicate his innings in the 7th and 8th innings.


The Padres also traded away Khalil Greene to the Cardinals, but as I have mentioned before this is pretty much addition by subtraction, with Greene taking his obscene .260OBP to greener pastures. However they did nothing to replace him despite the fact there were many cheap middle infielders like Orlando Hernandez and Orlando Hudson available for next to nothing. Indeed, the Padres added nothing of worth to their remarkably awful offense, leaving Brian Giles and Adrian Gonzalez with a bunch of stiffs in the lineup. They have another year of star prospect Chase Headly and Jody Geruit after a rebound year, but there's no sure bets here, its going to get even worse before it gets better at the plate for this team.


Finally the biggest move was really a non-move, that being keeping ace Jake Peavy. A great pitcher in his prime still, but after him it gets pretty dicey. Chris Young is back in the rotation after being out all of last year, but he has looked very bad this spring with an ever diminishing fastball and after him it gets even worse. Kevin Correia was picked up from the giants to start, but used primarily as a reliver he wasnt very good last year with a 6.05 ERA or 72ERA+, Josh Banks from the blue jays the year before is equally pitiful as well. They have Cha Seung Baek back from injury who proved to be effective at times and they have the incomprable Mark Prior, but god only knows what you'll get from him at this point.

This is a team that is bad and getting worse. Instead of trying to trade their valuable assets like Peavy to start rebuilding they held onto him and continue on their path to replicate their 99 loss season. CHONE projections have been rather kind to some of the new guys in the rotation, but that lineup is still pretty suspect. I give them a D for the off season, getting nothing of value accomplishing and destined for the bottom of the standings.