Unlike Melvin, I kind of like drama. Spice of life kind of thing. And for me, this season has been filled with intrigue. It hasn’t been fun, but there’s been a lot to talk about. For instance:

Genuine draft: The Padres will have the third pick in next year’s draft, which will probably be too late to grab Strasburg, but still very high. High enough to grab a potential star. Of course, it’s potential to grab a star anywhere in the 175 rounds that are in the draft, but the higher the better.

Gimme the loot: One of the benefits of playing terrible in a season that you didn’t plan on being terrible is a glut of moveable parts. This summer, the Padres moved Tony Clark, Randy Wolf, and Greg Maddux. What will actually become of the minor league pitchers and players to be named later that we acquired for these players is still to be seen, but if just one of them becomes a key part to a future Padres club, it’s a win.

If it’s broke, fix it: For five years now, the Padres have been sending out a makeshift team. They have, essentially, been rebuilding years, but competitive rebuilding years. And this was the season when the bottom fell out. The strong pitching staff that has carried this team since it started playing in ridiculous Petco Park faltered, with names like Baek and Banks seeing significant playing time. Adding to the mess was regressions, disappointments, and injuries that depleted the team on the field.

With the introduction of Chase Headley, however, the Padres have begun to turn over a new leaf. He was soon followed by other top prospects Wade LeBlanc, Will Venable, and Matt Antonelli. It’s only a matter of time the clubhouse is filled with players that came up, and have been neutered, in the system. Not more forcing square players in the round holes.

Jody Gerut: He’s pretty good.

Hey, it’s baseball!: It still is, technically.

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.

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.”

—–

“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.

—–

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.”

—–

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

—–

(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.”

—–

“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

As Brother Melvin already filled us in, Chase Headley, the God third baseman has arrived. After two games, he’s hitting .375 (wait, who cares?) with a home run. Not bad. And while he spelled Kevin Kouzmanoff at third base tonight, he made his left field debut last night. He made an error, but it was likely the first night of many that we’ll see Headley patrolling the area opposite Jody Gerut.

Left field has been manned by five different outfielders this season. Scott Hairston, Justin Huber and Paul McAnulty have spent the most time in left, although Huber is now in Portland. The survivors, Hairston and McA, will likely see their playing time decrease with Headley in San Diego.

Where have they set the bar for the Tennessee Stud?

Overall, as of last Friday, the Padres left field as a whole produced an OPS of .759. McAnulty is leading this charge with a .913 OPS. He’s second in at-bats to Hairston, who has an OPS in left field of .666. Huber is at .569, for good measure.

Clearly, Headley has come to save us from the horrors that are Scott Hairston and Justin Huber. What this means for McAnulty, though, might be scarier.

Hairston is sticking around. He’s the only player on the team that can back up Gerut in center, and he still has goodwill leftover from those walk off jobs he hit last season. With Huber wearing Beaver blue, that leaves McA on the bench. Despite his defensive deficiencies, another blast was added to the “high”light reel tonight. One would hope that he’ll stick around given his superior hitting: an overall OPS+ of 110 is fourth on the team for players with 100 at-bats. But barring an injury somewhere, it would seem doubtful that McAnulty will find decent at-bats in the near future, which might not be best for the Padres.

(DC and Brother Preston contributed to this article)

In games Scott Hairston starts, why does he bat leadoff?  It’s happened 10 times in the last month.  The dude is an out maker extraordinaire, making an out in 72% of his plate appearances this year.  Why give him the most opportunities to do what he’s done so well?

I know batting order has been shown to have smaller effect on run production, at least compared to how much time we spend talking about the lineup.  But I have a beef, so evidence be damned, lets talk about it.

On Days Jody Gerut gets off (who, by the way, is a pleasant surprise getting on base at a .356 clip), somebody has to hit at the top of the order.  I suggest Paul McAnulty.  He’s one of the few Padres who knows how to take a walk.  Sporting a .364 OBP, he makes the third fewest outs (stay with me now) of all Padres starters.

• Brian
• Paul
• Adrian
• Whoever else

No question we’re short on samples, but Scott Hairston has never shown an ability to get on base.  A few late inning home runs be damned, his career OBP sits at a paltry .295.  And someone once told me runs are worth the same in the first inning as they are in the ninth.

We have a new poll relating to my Padres game advertising article below, so let me know if my time spent studying ads was worth it.  To check out the results of our previous poll on starting outfielders, click the polls link at the top.

Kevin Towers was on XX Radio this morning and talked about the state of THE Chase Headley. Some notable quotes include:

Headley’s the guy that we’ve got our eye on. I mean, he’s really started to heat up with the bat and that’s what we were hoping for. When people were asking “Why isn’t he coming up?” a couple weeks ago, he was hitting about .220 and we want this kid, when he gets up here, to have a great deal of confidence, not only offensively but defensively, and hopefully put him into a situation where there’s not a lot of pressure this guy’s going to be the savior of this ballclub and I think that time is close.

He is the one guy that we’ve got our eye on, just because we’ve struggled in left field. I think if you put Headley in there now with Jody Gerut and Giles, it’s a middle of the order type hitter that should be able to provide a little bit of offense, and I think that’s been the biggest discouraging thing about this ballclub.

So there you have it. Expect Headley sometime before, oh I’ll say August.

There’s a vote of confidence in there as well for the TSB endorsed Gerut. That’s nice.

Edmonds is released by Padres

In 90 at-bats, he hit one home run and two doubles while striking out 10 times. His 38 OPS+ is the lowest on the team of any player with 60 at-bats, the next lowest being Khalil at 53. He also created 6 runs. For some perspective, in his best season (2004: 170 OPS+), Edmonds created 8 runs in his first 32 at-bats.

Along with his struggles at the plate, Edmonds was not the defender most people remembered from his time in St. Louis and Anaheim. He seemed to lack the speed he needed to get to most balls.  Hollywood Jim was no where to be found.

He got off to a poor start with the Padres, suffering a strained calf during Spring Training. This caused him to miss the rest of Spring Training and the beginning of the year. Towers was quick to take this in mind, telling XX:

“I think he probably got a mulligan for the first two to three weeks just based on missing all spring. But, you know, certainly he’s lost a step or two. I think that’s been pretty obvious in the outfield, going back on balls, covering the gaps. And he just doesn’t seem to have his legs underneath him (or) the bat speed with guys that have plus velocity.”

Well, sort of.

Of course, we at The Sacrifice Bunt deserve much of the blame. It was us who started up the Edmonds bandwagon, saying way back in December:

Hollywood Jim could be a classic turnaround story. He’s already on the team’s radar and if he’s as healthy as he says he is, why not? If he bounces back to an average player by his standards, he’ll still be a middle of the lineup guy.

Whoops. Sorry.

Edmonds will be replaced by Jody Gerut, who was hitting 308/.382/.570 in Portland.