On Apr 18, 9:39=A0pm, Chris <> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:20:59 -0700 (PDT), Seapig
> Look, there are teams that for whatever reason, just seem to gel, that
> seem to have a year that's just meant to be. Unfortunately, that
> doesn't seem to be us this year. Teams that are just in a temporary
> slump or a funk don't go 110 innings without a home run. Sure, only 16
> games thus far (not including tonight's embarrassment) but that's 10%
> of the season already.
The Padres haven't had a winning April since '04. Giving up on them
now would make as much sense as it would have to give up on them when
they were below .500 in April of '05 or '06.
The current offensive drought is frustrating as hell, but, unless
there's some reason to believe that these guys have collectively lost
their ability, I don't see any reason to think it will last all
season. If we want to try to guess what they'll do the rest of the
season, we'd do better to look at the track records of the players
involved, than to try to project 2 1/2 weeks of performance over six
months. Looking at the team's personnel, there's no reason that the
offense should be significantly worse than it was last year.
> >> The owners promised they would be competitive and thanks to a weak
> >> division the last few years, we've been that. Those days are gone.
>
> >Those days have been gone for a few years. =A0The West was the best
> >division in the league last year, and the Pads were still competitive
> >- they won more games last year than in any season since '98.
>
> >> We
> >> have great starting pitching, better than average relief pitching,
but
> >> no speed and certainly no power. There's no sense of excitement in
the
> >> stands when we come to the plate. We're used to hoping that we pitch
a
> >> shutout every five games and can scrap maybe four runs per game when
> >> we don't.
>
> >> No pitcher fears us, and that's why we have so many hits (singles).
> >> There's no one in our lineup a pitcher wants to avoid. There's no 98
> >> Greg Vaughn. There's no 96 Ken Caminiti. When's the last time we had
a
> >> guy hit even 35 home runs? We go nuts when our cleanup guy hits 100
> >> RBI's, which is just pedestrian for that spot nowadays.
>
> >It's pedestrian if you play half your games in one of the new
> >bandboxes, like in Cincinnati or Philadelphia, but when Petco Park is
> >home, hitting 30 HRs and driving in 100 runs, like Gonzalez did last
> >year, is plenty impressive.
>
> Disagree. That's what we should expect at a minimum from the number 4
> batter in any park. Qualcomm wasn't that small even when the fences
> came in and look what we had in some cases. Heck, Nate Colbert hit 38
> with the 17' wall in place.
The old stadium was never a great hitters' park, even after they moved
the fences in, but compared to Petco it was paradise for hitters.
What Colbert did was impressive, but remember, he was playing on teams
that would have considered winning eight out of seventeen to be a hot
streak. If we want to look for a template for the current team to
follow, I'd prefer the '84 Padres, who went to the World Series
without anybody hitting more than 20 HRs, rather than one of the last
place teams that had Nate Colbert hitting the way a cleanup hitter is
supposed to hit.
> If we're not going to have a power team, fine, then let's score lots
> of runs with high batting averages, clutch hitting, and speed. In
> fact, I'd rather watch that, especially with our pitching, =A0but we
> don't have those things either.
It's easy to say "let's score lots of runs", but it's not going to
happen. They might be able to score a few more runs by tailoring the
team to the park, but they'd just give them right back when they go
out on the road and play in parks where power is still king. I'd
rather see them build a good team - one that can play anywhere. The
jury is still out on whether this team fits that description.
> >I'm kind of a broken record on this topic, but as long as the Padres
> >are calling Petco home, the offense is never going to be as bad as
> >everybody thinks it is, and the pitching is never going to be as good
> >as everybody thinks it is.
>
> Fair enough. Time will tell if they are equally impotent on the road.-
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