2010 A Distant Memory as Padres Season Looms

Live by the pitch, die by the pitch. This turn on a phrase is all about the Padres in 2011 when the team will be hard-pressed to match last year's success on the mound or the win column.

Moves by the Padres in the past week or so reveal some desperation in the front office regarding a pitching staff that doesn't come close to what they had last season. The woes are many: Mat Latos is starting the season on the disabled list, Clayton Richard and Dustin Moseley didn't hit any kind of stride during spring training and no one knows how long Aaron Harang is going to last. When the Friars need a fifth starter, do they pull Corey Luebke out of the bullpen or recall Wade LeBlanc from AAA? The only rock appears to be Tim Stauffer, who missed most of last season after an appendectomy.

Even the mighty bullpen is not immune from questions behind GAB. Samuel Deduno and Pat Neshek were off the radar when spring training started. Can these guys, along with Ernesto Frieri, stop the bleeding in the fourth and fifth innings of bad starts to get the ball to GAB with a chance to win? The formula worked last year but appears doubtful in 2011.

The Padres are no 100-loss team, but nothing would be surprising this year. But they could struggle to reach 75 wins. There is just no way that their pitching staff can match up with the Giants or Dodgers, whose rotations would be the best in the league in a normal year (see the Phillies, this is no ordinary year).

The Padres will be much improved defensively everywhere but first base, and the bench will be deeper except at catcher. But at the plate, there is no way they'll be significantly better than last year. It is true the lineup will have more difficult outs top to bottom, but with Adrian Gonzalez gone, there will be less power than in 2010. That's kind of like the weak skinny kid went on a diet instead of hitting the weight room. You can't score in this division by stringing a bunch of singles together, because you simply won't be stringing a bunch of singles together. You need a big bop in there someplace, and to say you'll get consistent power from Brad Hawpe, Chase Headley or Ryan Ludwick is wishful thinking.

Last March, I predicted the Padres would be in the NL West race well into September and they were. This March, the prediction is that they'll remain in the race -- until June. This is a team held together by spit and glue, and I the front office knows it.