By Steven Booth
I’m sure everyone knows somebody (out here in L.A. at least) who has a strangely new-looking Adrian Gonzales jersey, who says they’ve been a fan of the Padres since 1971, and they’ve always beleived the Padres were the team to beat, not only in the NL West, but in the National League as a whole. You don’t know that guy well enough to know for sure, but you swear you saw him in a Carl Crawford Rays jersey two years ago.
Well- the Padres are going to the playoffs this year, even though nobody, even Jeff Moorad or Jed Hoyer beleived it either. Kevin Towers is sitting on a beach somewhere, smirking. This is his team, not Hoyer’s or Moorad’s. This combination of excellent young pitching with Gonzales and just enough hitting, keeps the pedal to the metal. They don’t win obnoxiously- you never feel like they are blowing you away. But they walk away with two out three won every series it seems.
They have won the division, or at leat are six ahead with a little over a month to go. Although the Giants and Dodgers made some smart moves around the deadline, the Padres keep playing good baseball. The Giants are in a scrum with the Phillies and Cardinals (or possibly the Reds and Braves) for a wildcard spot. the Rockies and Dodgers, while still theoretically in contention, are longshots.
The Padres, it is the pitching. It is further proof that good pitching gets you places. It is concievable that they will have three fifteen game winners, all with sub 4 ERA’s (two substantially lower than that). These three all have a good shot at going over 200 innings this year. Good for Jon Garland, Mat Latos and Clayton Richard, bad for the rest of the league. Heath Bell will save over 40 this year, while Luke Gregerson and Mike Adams will handle the seventh and eighth. it doesn’t matter that they’re 23rd in batting average and homers, they do what they need to do. Picking up Ryan Ludwick and Miguel Tejada at the deadline helps, but it is and will be the pitching that gets them into October.
The Giants, while not playing the greatest ball lately, are square in the middle of the wildcard race. Expect them to be in it toward the end. This even though their pitching staff is showing signs of humanity. Tim Lincecum has had some rough outings, and while Jonathan Sanchez and Matt Cain are on the road to having solid seasons, they’ve hit a few bumps in the road, same with Barry Zito. they need to get things figured out. The Phillies have won 7 of their last 10, and seem to peaking at the right time, and while the Cards are playing even worse than the Giants, they will continue to hang around. The Giants pitching needs to get it together, although their bats are doing better than expected, and pickups of Pat Burrell and Jose Guillen will help, like the Padres, it will ultimately be up to their pitching.
The Rockies are in like a rockie mountain purgatory. They haven’t bombed out so bad this year where it’s fire sale time, but they are probably not playing well enough to make a serious playoff run, either. Management acted accordingly, by doing nothing at the deadline. Injuries have hurt, they have never had their guys all healthy and/or contributing at the same time. Rockie fans have to be encouraged by Ubaldo Jimenez becoming an ace, and guys like Ian Stewart poised to have decent years, but their pitching hasn’t come together, Troy Tulowitski is injured too much, and Todd Helton is looking old.
If there is one thing the Dodgers will be able to take out of this year, besides utter disappointment, is the fact that Clayton Kershaw is starting to look like an ace, and Chad Billingsley, while perhaps not ace-like, is having a solid year. the bullpen is a mess, including stalwart Jonathan Broxton, and the hitting disappeared after the all-star break. Instead of an extremely good shot at the playoffs that most expected, they will instead battle to stay above .500 and fight it out with the Rockies over third place. between the McCourt divorce and Joe Torre very likely retiring after this year, it looks mighty bleak in Dodgertown.
At least they are not the Diamondbacks. problem is, mid-market teams like the Diamondbacks accept the fact that painful re-building is part of the job, and they do have some good pieces in a division full of question marks, so who knows? the Padres were thought to be at death’s door, and look at them. it doesn’t look like Kirk Gibson (of course they traded two of his best starting pitchers) has or will make a good enough case to make his managerial job permanent, but who knows? Kelly Johnson’s career year will probably put him back on the trading block, and the DBacks must be encouraged by the solid years of Adam LaRoche and Mark Reynolds (even though they may also be on the block). On the pitching end, Ian Kennedy is turning into a very solid major league pitcher.
