By the tone of newspaper columns the past couple days, you'd think the Padres season was over right now, here in the first full week of May. There's some truth to what's written. The Dodgers are clearly better and, unless injuries happen, will likely win the National League West by a comfortable margin. If that's all you care about, strictly winning the division, then it's time to put up those remaining Padres tickets on Stub Hub.
However, if you're still interested in exciting major league baseball, stay tuned. While LA is the class of the division, I don't at this point see much difference between the Friars and Arizona, Colorado or San Francisco. We will learn more this week as the locals host the Rockies and Diamondbacks for a pair of games each. If they're swept, I'll be back with other ideas of how to spend the summer, like kayaking on Mission Bay, taking the canines to Dog Beach or saving up some extra dollars to bet on the horses in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. I'm betting that the Padres will at least split, particularly since pitchers Jake Peavy and Chris Young will get a shot at the Snakes.
While no one likes to suffer a four-game sweep, especially in LA -- where tweaking the early-leaving "fans" is a sport in itself --the fact remains that the Dodgers are off to a hot start, which says little about the way the Padres are playing even when it generates angry newspaper columns. When you run into good pitching and what turned out to be very strong unDodger-like defense, you're going to look bad. It's just how it is.
So let's move on to some other division opponents and host the apparently really bad Astros for the weekend and then we'll have a much better idea of how things are going to be this year.
For me, nothing has changed since my preseason assessment of the team. There's Peavy and Young and nothing else in the starting rotation and the bullpen beyond Heath Bell and Cla Meredith is a mess. Manager Buddy Black is desperate for RF Brian Giles to begin hitting.
My eyes, and I think yours, too, are on 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff and CF Jody Gerut. Kouz we know is a slow starter but usually warms up in May. If he still has only a couple home runs and a small number of RBIs at the end of the month, you might start looking at him as a bust. Right now, the only thing keeping him in the lineup is his surprisingly strong defense. If he remains cold, he might be traded for a pitcher, which would bring Chase Headley in from left and result in the promotion of slugger Kyle Banks from Portland, whose been practicing in the outfield. Gerut, mainly because of injuries, has never been a regular before, so he doesn't have Kouzmanoff's track record. Everyone thought after 2008 how nice it would be if he only had a chance. The shot he's getting might not be a long one.
The bottom-line is, sure, the Padres are on a bad streak right now but it was exacerbated by four road games against a strong team, and they've had a hot streak as well when they played good ball and were interesting to watch. I think we all know where the truth really sits, but if they can at least get back to the "interesting to watch" mode, the season will in no way be a total loss.
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