This Team Makes Me Drink

Guys....... MANNY MACHADO IS A SAN DIEGO PADRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you're looking for thoughtful analysis, you won't find it here. I've already written that article . This is a celebration of today: one of the best, if not THE best, days in Padres history. This fanbase, and San Diego sports in general, has been through SO much this decade. We NEEDED this and we DESERVE this. It almost feels surreal, but it's not. It's crazier than that . Surreal implies that the present reality might seem implausible and bizarre, but is still reality nonetheless; in this situation, Manny Machado being a SAN DIEGO PADRE still doesn't feel real. This moment has an ethereal (see below) feeling to it, which is really the only way to describe it: Tha...

Unless you've been living under a rock since the start of the calendar year, the historically penny-pinching San Diego Padres- yes, OUR San Diego Padres- have been connected to two free agents, who also just happen the two of the best players in the game: Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. The team has been linked to Machado for several weeks now , and met with Harper in his hometown of Las Vegas on January 31st. Surprised? Well, so were the Padres too, apparently- per The Athletic's Dennis Lin, the  Padres pursuit  to land one of the two superstars began upon realizing that the market for the duo was surprisingly thin - traditional big spenders like the Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs and Yankees were not opening up their pocketbooks, leaving Harper and Machado- who are looking for 300-million dollar plus contracts- in limbo with the start of Spring Training just days away. If you're a fan of this team, you're almost certainly checking Twitter and MLB Trade Rumors at l...

As winter approaches, so does another yearly tradition: arguing about who should get voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame now that the ballots are out. The Hall of Fame electorate is entirely comprised of members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). Sadly, some of these voters are clearly very out of touch with the game or use the honor and privilege of having a ballot to make a spectacle of themselves. Consider, for example, the case of noted sabermetric-disbeleiver Murray Chass, who submitted a completely blank ballot in 2017 in part to (literally) to spare ceremony induction attendees the "horrible thought [of making] people sit through 10 speeches in the hot July Cooperstown sun." The man is literally the sports-writer equivalent of somebody who believes the earth is still flat. While I don't have an official ballot, I do write about baseball sometimes- I'd venture to say that I know more about the game than Mr. Chass and I'...

Hey A.J.- are you listening? There's an idea out there for how you can best utilize all of those starting pitching prospects you've been hoarding over the last three years. It might just change the game forever. Well, we'll see about forever. One thing is clear though: teams are now longer bound to the long-held conventional wisdom that has dictated how the game is played. Nowhere is this more evident that in how teams are managing their pitching staffs. The Tampa Bay Rays were at the forefront of the "opener" revolution, which involved starting games with a relief pitcher. The "opener" would simply pitch the first inning, and then hand the ball off to the actual starting pitcher. The logic behind this? Well, in equal parts due to fatigue and batters familiarizing themselves with the pitcher after multiple at-bats against them, pitchers appear to be markedly less effective after they pitch through an opposing team's lineup three times....

That's a wrap, folks. The Padres' 2018 season is in the books. It ended on a walkoff-strikeout to beat the Diamondbacks, which is the most predictably 2010's era Padres-thing I've heard in a while (see below). Speaking of 2010's era Padres, 2018 was more or less representative of your typical Padre season this decade: they were bad, but not the worst . They didn't win 78 games like I predicted all the way back in April, but they also didn't lose 100 games, which is also nice, I guess. Let's recap the good, meh, and the Eric Hosmer ugly in the year that was: The Good A.J. Preller was able to flip Brad Hand for an elite prospect in catcher Francisco Mejia. While the team now has a logjam of talent at catcher, that's never a bad thing, and more teams are beginning to use two starting-caliber catchers to their advantage. Despite some struggles with breaking pitches, Mejia's bat already looks legit- in one of the high points of ...

Guys, remember when I said at the beginning of the season that the Padres would win 78 games?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  I was miserably, miserably wrong. This team sucks.  Honestly though, it's probably in our best interests to really, really, really nosedive this year. The Padres are currently on pace to receive the fourth overall pick in the 2019 draft, and while it might be hard to catch the truly awful Orioles and Royals, there's still hope yet that we might overtake the White Sox for the 3rd overall pick.  So, at least we have that to look forward to. The most reasonable course of action would be to embrace the hell out of the tank, improve what is already the best farm system in baseball, and trust the process for at least one more year, right? WRONG! The Padres were seriously considering acquiring Chris Archer from the Rays for a king's ransom, for some reason. Fortunately, those talks have cooled for now- AJ decided against breaking the piggy ba...

Well guys- the day has finally come. After months (years?) of speculation, Padres All-Star closer Brad Hand and submarine-throwing relief pitcher Adam Cimber were traded to the Cleveland Indians for top prospect Francisco Mejia.  How'd the deal turn out for the Friars? I'd say Padres GM AJ Preller deserves quite a Hand  for making this trade possible ( I swear that's the last time there will ever be a Brad Hand-pun on this blog, btw- the Editor ).  Hand was great for the Padres- the team picked him up off the scrap heap and turned him into a dominant reliever with one of the best sliders in the game. It didn't hurt that they also signed him to a great, team-friendly contract to boot. Cimber, a career minor-leaguer prior to making the team out of spring training this year, also put up solid numbers his rookie season. They'll both be valuable contributors to the Indians' beleaguered bullpen, which has been one of the worst in the league without Andrew...