San Diego Padres

Power Rankings

Date	Ranking	Previous
01/26/2012	23	29
Good business: If Carlos Quentin performs as well in his free-agent year as you would expect someone of Carlos Quentin's ilk to perform in his free-agent year, the Padres should be able to spin him for something tasty at the trading deadline. Bad business: Unless somebody overhyped Anthony Rizzo in the first place -- I'm looking at you, Jed Hoyer -- it seems that Andrew Cashner and a fast outfield defense guy is a way-thin return for him. Prognosis as of 11:14 a.m. GMT on Jan. 26, 2012: Sunny and 72 degrees, with a light northwest breeze.
10/31/2011	29	23
2011 eulogy: 2010 was the outlier. Offseason to-do list: Offer Heath Bell arbitration. If he turns it down, enjoy the picks. If he accepts, trade him, a la the Braves/Rafael Soriano after 2009. A puny payroll cannot accommodate a 70-inning pitcher earning $8 million per season ... Attend counseling for inability to forge a lasting, meaningful relationship with a hitting coach ... Shorten Anthony Rizzo's swing. Just chop it the hell down. Require him to wear a girdle under his jersey if that's what it takes. Odds of achieving Cardinals-like glory in 2012: The NL West ain't the AL East. Still: no.
09/28/2011	23	24
What went right: Three semi-regulars notched a slugging percentage of .400 or better. That bested the preseason over/under by three ... The bullpen was its usual repository of keep-the-ball-in-the-park goodness ... Cameron Maybin faded at season's end, but blanketed center field like a champ and learned to distinguish between "strike" and "not a strike." Up next: Conditioning himself to lay off the not-a-strikes. What went wrong: They didn't cash in on Heath Bell the way they did on Mike Adams, and now Bell is making noise about accepting arbitration if the Padres offer it. You can't blame him for wanting to stay, given the weather and complete absence of media pressure ("Heath, how'd you feel out there today? Because you looked really relaxed to me") ... It's been a long season, so now's probably not the best time to mention Casey Kelly's minor-league stats. We'll revisit them later, after everybody has recharged his battery. Regular-season epilogue: What, you expected fireworks? Hyperadrenalized car chases with lasers? That's not how they do things in these here parts.
09/20/2011	24	25
It depresses me even to think about a mid-week series between the Cubs and Padres during the season's final days, much less attend one of the games. The Padres should hire a bunch of philosophy grad students to wander around the stands and counsel fans who are two Jason Bartlett at-bats away from embracing existentialism.
09/13/2011	25	23
What's there to say about the Padres at this late juncture in the season? That's not a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely at a loss here. ... OK. They rarely get blown out. That's something, right? And Cory Luebke might be evolving into one of those good-head-mediocre-stuff guys who thrive at Petco. That's two almost-interesting things about the Padres! Finally, we've got my Pulitzer submission for the year. Thanks for making me work at it.
09/06/2011	23	19
Apparently the cute little Padres will have a big mean regional sports network of their very own come next spring. Conceivably, this means they could up the payroll into the $50-$55 million range by the end of the decade. Hello, big spenders! ... Anyone who dabbles in Bermanesque nicknames should be punched in the ear, but my contribution to the comedic canon -- Tim "Stove Top" Stauffer -- could reenergize the genre and, perhaps, be spun into an episodic series of its very own. That's a Power Rankings exclusive, by the way. Whatever I charge you people, it's not enough.
08/30/2011	19	18
Forget about the current Padres -- let's talk old and not particularly distinguished alumni. We all have a soft spot for Sean Burroughs since his Little League World Series domination way back when, so it was kind of neat seeing him hit his first dinger in six years last week, even if it was for the D-Backs. What a ... wait for it ... great story! Yay, great stories! Great stories are great!
08/23/2011	18	18
Do the Padres consider themselves the best bad team or the worst mediocre one? They're far more interesting as a self-esteem case study than as practitioners of athletic-like endeavors. ... But they keep scoring runs -- since the All-Star break, they've outscored the Red Sox -- and they're moderately competent in all other aspects of the game. 74-win barrier, prepare to meet your maker.
08/16/2011	18	20
Through Sunday, the Padres had scored 458 runs in 122 games; the Giants had scored 416 in 121. It's time to migrate our hit-like-kittens jokes up the California coastline ... We all wrote Mat Latos off, because he melted down during the Padres' late-season 2010 run and because his big jump in innings presaged some kind of ligament apocalypse, complete with splattering tendons and agonized shrieks. But since the start of July -- to pick a perfectly arbitrary point in time -- he has been missing lots of bats and suppressing extra-base power. And since you're about to ask: Only three of those eight starts came at Petco and only two came against matchstick lineups (Giants/Mariners). Good for him, and good for the Padres.
08/09/2011	20	26
Why so high, you ask? Well, why not? Hey, if it feels good, do it ... They plated 35 runs in three weekend wins over the Pirates. While impressive, this seems quite wasteful. It's like scarfing down your entire Raisinettes stash before the previews have ended ... Actual sentence I read somewhere or other last week: "Cameron Maybin is finally playing the way he was born to play." Oh, is he? When Maybin was born, did his father take one look at him and tell the OB/GYN, "Mark my words: Someday this boy is going to play above-average defense in a cavernous ballpark, run the bases like a deer and sort of learn to lay off breaking balls in the dirt"? Come on. Lord knows I flirt with stupidity every three sentences, but that's just silly.