The trade deadline has passed and the Padres completed the following deals:

-Tony Clark to Arizona for Evan Scribner
-Randy Wolf to Houston for Chad Reineke

Exciting, huh?

As we detailed earlier, getting Reineke and Scribner are classic Kevin Towers moves. They’re both under appreciated arms that will likely come out of the pen. Think about Heath Bell (acquired, with Royce Ring, for Jon Adkins and Ben Johnson), Cla Meredith (acquired, with Josh Bard, for Doug Mirabelli), and Scott Linebrink (selected off of waivers). Given that the Padres bullpen E.R.A. has gone from 3.01 in 2007, first in the league, to 4.47 in 2008, 28th in the league, it’s no surprise that Towers took this course of action.

What is surprising is that this was the only course of action taken.

Many Padres heard their names being tossed around in trade rumors, from Brian Giles to Greg Maddux. Besides Clark and Wolf, the only player that seemed to come close to leaving the team was Maddux. But with a trade to the Dodgers never coming to fruition, Maddux will likely continue not winning games for the Padres for the rest of the year.

Maddux handcuffed the Padres when he let them know that he would only accept a trade to a team on the West Coast. Through the process of elimination, this left us with just the Dodgers and, as we’ve already detailed, he won’t be returning to L.A. anytime soon.

At 42-67, the Padres are just behind the Mariners and the Nationals for the worst record in baseball. They’ll have to go 39-14, a .736 winning percentage, to get to .500 by game 162. And while we’re filling in a lot of the blanks here, we think it’s safe to say that the moves not made by the team signal that they’re in it to win it/remain competitive next season.

Giles is a big chip. He is a good hitter with a great O.B.P. and he’ll only get better the further away from Petco he gets, and his name was mentioned in trade rumors with the Mets, Cardinals, and Brewers. Clearly, nothing came true and Giles will remain a Padre for the remainder of the season and, likely, next season as well.

There’s two ways to look at the Giles situation. On one hand, he is this team’s three hitter and is one of the best defensive right fielders in the game. On the other, he is 37 years old and has shown a susceptibility to injuries. In 2006, he finished the season with a slugging percentage of .397, and his .415 mark this season isn’t much higher. The Padres, it would seem, are banking on Giles’ O.B.P. to stay strong into next season, which is risky.

The biggest name to mention in all these trade talks, however, is the one player who wasn’t traded but still isn’t in the Padres organization. On May 9th, Jim Edmonds had an O.P.S. of .498 and was cut by the team. He was picked up quickly by the Chicago Cubs and went Kevin Kouzmanoff, raising his O.P.S. to .757 on July 31st. Edmonds OPS+ was 39 With the Padres. With the Cubs, his OPS+ stands at 132. And the Cubs didn’t have to send a single player to San Diego to get him.

Of course, this move wasn’t so black and white. The management has said that they wanted to see what they had in Jody Gerut (OPS+ 118) and Scott Hairston (OPS+ 117) and you can’t fault them for that. You could say that Edmonds was traded for Gerut, but that’d be disingenuous. Gerut was already on the team and with left field being the game of musical chairs it was, it’s not like there wasn’t room for Gerut. Given the lack of return this team saw at the trade deadline, it would’ve been nice to get something back for Edmonds, even if it was just salary relief.

Looks like we won’t be dealing with the Cubs. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get Matt Murton.

Earlier today, Buster Olney reported the Athletics are looking to move Murton and Huston Street, maybe to the Rays, or maybe even to OUR San Diego Padres.

The Murton news makes perfect sense. When Kevin Towers falls in love, he falls hard. It comes as no surprise that he’s still after his little redhead. And now it seems like Murton has fallen into the best possible scenario for us to grab him. Last year alone, we turned over Jack Cust to Oakland.  They then returned the favor by trading Milton Bradley to us. Maybe that Billy Beane is just a sweetheart and grabbed Murton with us in mind.

The Street news is more confusing. If there’s one skill Towers has shown an aptitude for, it’s finding relievers. Think back to how Towers acquired Bell and Meredith on the cheap. Something tells me it’ll take more than a Ben Johnson to get Street.

21 days left.

Following Trevor Hoffman’s departure from last night’s 3-1 loss to the Twins, boos rained down from the bleachers. Boos, it would seem, intended for the future Hall of Famer after surrendering back-to-back home runs, including the game winner. This didn’t sit well with the Padres clubhouse.

“I didn’t like it,” said manager Bud Black. “This city should be very proud of a player like that for everything he’s done on the field and in the community. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s fair.”

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“It’s disheartening, knowing what Trevor has meant not only to the organization but the city, and his level of accomplishment is unmatched in our game,” (Tony) Clark said.

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Jake Peavy, who started the game, said he heard the boos in the clubhouse. “I could not believe that,” he said. “That is as disheartening as it gets. I don’t understand it. When you look at all of his achievements, what he has meant, it’s ridiculous.”

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Said teammate Shawn Estes: “How soon they forget.”

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(Heath) Bell didn’t hear the boos that came after Hoffman gave up two home runs in an inning for the eighth time in his career. “If the fans were booing him, shame on them,” he said.

Hoffman hears boos in Twin killing

While we here at The Sacrifice Bunt don’t condone booing, we don’t condemn it either. There is a time and place to boo, although we couldn’t say if that time was following Hoffman’s poor performance. While there are shades of grey when discussing the merits of booing, the merit of the Padres post game conversation seems a bit more black and white.

The Padres lost last night 3-1. They again squandered a great performance by Peavy. In the bottom of the eighth, they had runners on first and second with no out and neither runner made it to third. In the seventh, they had runners on first and third with no out and two ground balls ended the inning with only one run scoring. Jody Gerut was caught stealing on what appeared to be a botched hit-and-run attempt when Edgar Gonzalez flailed futilely at what would’ve been ball four. In back-to-back at-bats, Gerut and Craig Stansberry were unable to get down sacrifice bunts. Oh, and the team’s increasingly unreliable closer came in and jumped his ERA up half a run.

It was an ugly game.

The fact that the Padres find it shocking that the fans could boo their performance seems naive or arrogant, or maybe a little bit of both. The team has fallen back into last place, setting themselves up for a potential rematch of the worsts this weekend when the pitiful Mariners come to town. The offense and pitching are below average. They let Milton Bradley slip through their fingers in the off-season and now he’s leading the A.L. They signed Jim Edmonds to man centerfield, then dumped him after a month and now he’s caught fire with the Cubs.

Now, it should be said that this season is an aberration. The current Padres management has put together the best run in the team’s almost 40 years and we haven’t even begun to reap the benefits of the new farm system. But that doesn’t affect the team that is currently taking the field right now. And the responses of the players from last night suggests they are more concerned with something other than their performance.

Again, we want to be fair. We’re sure that the players are as concerned about their performance as we are. But when the topic on the tips of their tongues is the reaction they got from the crowd, red flags go up. Maybe the fans aren’t what the players should be concerned about. The boos from the stands are a reaction to what is taking place on the field.

More disconcerting is the reaction of manger Buddy Black. For starters, he’s called out the entire city, which seems disrespectful given everything this city has done for the team. At what point does protecting become coddling? A good manager should stand behind his players, but at what point do these players take responsibility? If they continually fail to put down a bunt, a skill practiced by children, does he simply give them a pat on the back? And this doesn’t even get into the idea that Black is asking players ill-equipped to handle a task attempt to perform it anyway.

It’s not like this kind of whining is anything new. Be sure that if the Padres decide to trade a player sometime between now and July 31st that the Union-Tribune will be filled with quotes from players, decrying the actions of the management. We’ll leave you with some past highlights.

“Incomprehensible,” was Trevor Hoffman’s reaction. “Four other teams in the National League West are awfully excited. I probably need to take a day before I say something about this because I’m going to say something stupid.”

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“You have to trust your front office when you are in the middle of a playoff run,” Jake Peavy said. “But, man, to trade away your setup man . . . what kind of a message are we sending here?”

Padres trade Linebrink