This Team Makes Me Drink

There’s no easy way to start a post like this- but Kobe Bryant died on Sunday.  How does one even begin to acknowledge the profundity of such a loss? You know how people talk about those “remember-where-you-were” when it happened moments? This wasn’t just one of those moments- it was more than that; when that initial TMZ story broke, the whole world came to a jarring stop.  Case-in-point: I had been practicing guitar chords while sitting on my living room couch at the time I found out, when several of my friends had all, in unison, stopped whatever they were doing in their lives at that moment to send me the TMZ link.  I didn’t want to believe it. To degree, I still don’t, even as I write this. But before long, it became clear that it was real.  Like my friends who had first reached out to me and broke the news, my life too had come to a screeching, dissonant standstill. Like my friends who first reached out to me and broke the news, ...

Tommy Pham and Jake Cronenworth acquired for Hunter Renfroe and Xavier Edwards  “We gave up Pham for Renfroe and a damn slapdick prospect?!?” Click on that hyperlink and you'll see Blake Snell, the best pitcher on the Tampa Bay Rays, as he bellows this now-immortal phrase upon finding out- in real time, while playing  Call of Duty on a live Twitch stream being watched by thousands - that his team  traded clubhouse favorite Tommy Pham to the Padres.   This is probably the first time since the rise of livestreaming technology that we’ve seen a star player both (1) learn about an unpopular trade by his team as it happened, and (2) give us his candid, unfiltered reaction to it. Truly incredible stuff, huh?  Fun and  games  (no pun intended) aside, the reason why Blake Snell will now occupy a permanent spot on top 10 “Most Embarrassing Social Media Errors in Sports” lists for years to come is because Tommy Pham is a very, ver...

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve written about the Pads on here, huh? A lot of stuff happened since then. I completely whiffed on who the Padres might hire to manage the team. Luis Urias, Hunter Renfroe and Eric Lauer are gone. Brown is back , and so is Drew Pomernanz. And the greatest will-they-or-won’t-they Padres story of the last three years finally came to fruition: we finally traded for Jurickson Profar. The Padres have been so active this offseason, so I’ll be splitting my thoughts about everything they’ve done so far into 2 parts. Part one of my semi-organized musings is below: Jayce Tingler Hired as manager  The Padres hired Rangers coach Jayce Tingler, who has an extensive history of working with AJ Preller. I’ll be honest, I had no idea who Jayce Tingler was before he emerged as the front runner for the team’s managerial opening- but his background is very impressive. While he’s never managed a team before, Tingler worked for the Rangers in mult...

The 2019 season was the year the Padres were supposed to materialize their immense potential into tangible results on the field, and manager Andy Green was supposed to be the guy that led that charge.  Instead, 2019 was the year that the Padres abruptly pulled the plug on the Green administration after the team limped to the end of yet another lost season, only two years after they had extended his contract. 2019 was supposed to be different- and there were times when it was: the Padres were .500 at the All Star break for the first time in seemingly forever. However, they’ve been abysmal since then, sporting a 25-47 record since then.  Certainly, the onus for the Padres second half collapse does not fall squarely on Andy Green- but it appears that Barry Bloom of Forbes was (as much as I’m loathe to admit it) correct: Green had lost the respect of his players.  I mean- look at Wil Myers in this video; he can barely hide the smirk on his face when...

T his Team Makes Me Drink is back! I’ve got quite a few thoughts about the Padres season thus far that I’ll get around to publishing later, but let’s talk about the news of the day: with the trade deadline fast approaching, the Padres were involved in a deal for Trevor Bauer, who they've been linked to for months.  Except, of course, Trevor Bauer will not be going to San Diego.  Instead, he’ll be going to the Reds as part of a three-team-deal with the Indians. The Padres, for their part, acquired Reds top prospect Taylor Trammell, and sent Franmil Reyes and Logan Allen (plus 19 year old minor leaguer Victor Nova, who to be quite honest I had never heard of before yesterday) to the Indians. People have… a lot of feelings about this trade, mostly because of Franmil Reyes, but from the Padres’ perspective this was too good of a deal to pass up. Just WATCH Taylor Trammell’s performance at the 2018 Futures Game: Yeah, if that doesn’t make you excited about ...

Baseball is back, folks! This offseason was like the fourth season of Breaking Bad: we thought we would be getting constant breakneck action, but much of the time our domaine-craving minds became frustrated because it was much more slow and plodding than we desired.  However, this offseason was a masterclass in suspense: you'd be lying if you said you weren't on the edge of your seat most of the time, waiting for the next big shoe to drop. As the months and numerous thoughts of "finally-something's-gonna-happen-oh-wait-nevermind" ( Noah Syndegaard! Dallas Kuechel !! wtf is debt reduction ???? lmao we really signed  Ian Kinsler ? BROWN UNIFORMS !!!! DINNER WITH BRYCE HARPER IN VEGAS !!!!! ) passed, we all expected SOMETHING to happen, we just weren't sure what.  But thankfully, much like the Season 4 finale of Breaking Bad, our patience was rewarded when everything climaxed in an absolutely thrilling crescendo: by signing Manny Machado, the Pad...