This Team Makes Me Drink

So,  I'm gonna do this new thing where I recap the week that was in Padres baseball! Even though the odds are that I won't remember to do this with any regular frequency, there's been a TON to write about this week- and I'm banking on the hope that following weeks will be as exciting as this one! After a disastrous start to the year, the Padres won both series they played, winning 2 out of 3 against the Rockies and 3 out of 4 against the Giants, so check my thoughts below: Padres vs. Rockies: (4/9-4/11) Padres 7 ,  Rockies 6 Padres 5 , Rockies 2 Padres 4, Rockies 6 First off, NOLAN ARENADO IS LITERAL HUMAN GARBAGE. In the series finale, Luis Perdomo threw at him in retaliation for Margot getting hit by a pitch and hurt the night before- and well, just watch the video below: Like it or not, retaliation is a time-tested baseball tradition and a staple of the game's unwritten rulebook. Aside from Arenado, EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. in Coors Fi...

Drake, a very wise man, once told an ex-girlfriend: " I always saw you for what you could've been; ever since you met me like when Chrysler made that one car that looked just like the Bentley... I always saw you for what you could've been ." Indeed, in the wake of an 0-4 start, I find myself thinking about the Padres for what they could've been. It would've been so easy to think about what would've happened if Eric Hosmer didn't ground in to multiple rally-killing double plays, if Brad Hand didn't implode and cough up a 3-run lead in the 9th against the Brewers, or if Luis Perdomo and Bryan Mitchell could command their respective fastballs. It's easy, so, so, easy  to think about the Padres being 4-0 right now and on top of the division- even if just for this week. But is this really  what we want? This has been a very, very long rebuild. and a far from perfect one at that- but it's coming to an end. The question now? What...

HAPPY OPENING DAY! In mere hours, we'll have Padres baseball again. And there's something interesting about Padres baseball being back this time, too. For the first time since 2004- when Petco Park opened- there's a genuine sense optimism about the direction of this franchise. Even national pundits that have routinely disrespected San Diego sports unanimously agree that a bright future awaits the Padres. On this Padres roster, you'll see young faces like Dinelson Lamet and Manny Margot, who are primed for breakout years after solid rookie seasons. You'll also see veteran leaders in Wil Myers, Chase Headley, and Tyson Ross. Also, I'm not sure if you guys checked, but A.J. Preller signed some guy by the name of Eric Hosmer. I don't know if he's any good or not ( more on that part later), so we'll see. But I digress. And of course, as Scott Boras infamously stated, the Padres farm system is "a volcano of hot-talent lava.... [waiting] t...

After enduring the most boring baseball offseason in recent memory , the Padres took a metaphorical sledgehammer to the frozen free agent market and signed first baseman Eric Hosmer to an 8 year, 144 million dollar contract- by far the largest and most lucrative in team history . Obviously, the prospect of signing Hosmer has been an extremely polarizing subject amongst Padre fans, but he does indeed have a nice resume; he had an All-Star season last year (25 home runs and 4.1 Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement), won two Gold Gloves, will be a clubhouse leader ( essentially a worthless construct, but whatever lol ), and was a key contributor to the Royals' 2015 World Series-winning team. The Padres even got him for less than we were expecting- the first five years of the contract are front-loaded and will pay him 20 million dollars annually, in addition to a 5 million dollar signing bonus . After the fifth year, Hosmer can opt out of his deal. Should he decide to sta...

Former Padres General Manager Kevin Towers passed away today after a long battle with cancer at 56. This is unbearably heartbreaking news. Towers, while not a perfect GM, oversaw Padres teams for 15 seasons (KT was a member of the organization for nearly 30 years, more than half his life! )- and he was one of the most gifted talent evaluators of his generation. When he needed to, he could bring stars players into town- like Kevin Brown, who had one of the best seasons of any pitcher in baseball history. Brown was worth almost 10 WAR in his lone year with the Padres after Towers pulled the trigger and acquired him from the ( surprise! ) Florida Marlins...some things never change. Towers turned throwaway players like Heath Bell, Rondell White, and Mark Loretta into All Stars, and acquired franchise cornerstones Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Klesko, Phil Nevin, and Brian Giles. This is just a shortlist- one could build entire rosters of overlooked players that Towers turned i...

W ell, all is right with the world: despite going an impressive 9-3 after starting the season losing 4 consecutive games, the Chargers will miss the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year.  The Chargers became the laughingstock of the NFL after the team got off to that miserable 0-4 start, highlighted by rookie kicker Younghoe Koo missing two straight game-winning field goals. Poor Koo was promptly savaged by social media as a result, and his football career is likely already over . But that was just the beginning:  Announcers, referees, commentators (mostly just Tony Romo), and even their head coach kept referring to them as the San Diego Chargers.  Every single game at the StubHub Center was invaded by opposing fans, leading Keenan Allen to remark that every home game there felt like "a road game" .  In a Veterans Day tweet, a poor social media intern attempted to crop out the words "San Diego" from a picture, but inadvertently cropped out the...

So the Japansese Babe Ruth, Shoehi Ohtani, collectively disappointed the Padres and the city of San Diego and picked the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim . A lot of fans are rightfully disappointed, bemoaning that in a year where the Chargers lost their soul and chased the money all the way to LA, SDSU basketball missed postseason play for the first time in seemingly forever, Steve Fisher retired, and All-American Rashaad Penny was horrendously ignored in Heisman voting, a snub from Ohtani- one of the most coveted Japanese imports in recent memory- especially feels like another kick to our collective groin. But guys... relax . The calculus for next year doesn't change that much. Ohtani or no Ohtani, the Padres probably still would have endured another losing season. Ohtani would've been a luxury that certainly would have at least somewhat accelerated the rebuild process, but losing out on him to the Angels does not change the fact that we have a promising young core that...