This weekend marks, for many people, the end of the baseball season. Come Saturday evening, tailgates will be fired up, the Q will be (not quite completely) packed, and toe will meet leather as the Seahawks meet the Chargers. Football season will officially be here, and even though it might start for many of us with a 10:30pm replay of a blacked-out preseason game, we will still be dusting off our powder blues, celebrating Merriman’s mohawk and debating Charlie Whitehurst’s ambition.
Then, once the game is over, the cycle begins. Each week, a new game, a new opponent, a new week’s worth of news and talk. Baseball? What’s that? The Padres had their chance, they had the summer’s stage all to themselves, and delivered a stinkbomb of a performance. We’ll check back on them next year.
This is the Padres’ ironic lot: the curtain is coming down on them right as the team is getting their act together. While San Diego turns away, their baseball club is just now showing some stick, some speed, a collection of interesting arms and an identity all their own. Nobody may notice, but the Padres are going to be worth watching down the stretch.
Bud Black talks about how the young Padres are learning on the fly:
The Padres have a new team as well
August has brought a new identity to the Padres. It’s almost like when I was reading comic books as a kid. When a mag as going stale, the writers would change some costumes, kill off a hero, add some new faces, and…voila! The “New Avengers”, or the “Uncanny X-Men”. Well, maybe these are the “Uncanny Padres” on our hands now, because the team taking the field bears little resemblance to the lineups of past months.
Certainly, they are showing an uncanny ability to hit the ball. The Padres’ team average this year is .239, with a .698 OPS. In August, they are batting .285 with an .806 OPS. Chase Headley has gone from bust to busting out, with a .322 average and .404 on-base percentage since the All-Star break. In the same time frame, Will Venable is at .288/.352/.538, with 6 HR and 19 RBI. Throw in a resurgent Everth Cabrera (.308/.386/.538 in August), Kyle Blanks’ light-tower power (.278, 5 HR post All-Star break), and Adrian Gonzalez finally shaking his summer blues (.317 average, 1.063 OPS second half) and the Padres are no longer offensive doormats.
Chase Headley talks about his resurgent second half with the young Padres:
(A brief diversion: so, with all of these guys swinging, who does the U-T coincidentally credit for the Padres’ turnaround? Naturally, David Eckstein (.238, .298 OBP post All-Star break) and Henry Blanco (.243 average, .695 OPS). Yeah, I know, their veteran gutsiness naturally made all the others around them better.)
With Mat Latos and Clayton Richard, the Padres have young arms that are fun to follow. Tim Stauffer is a great reclamation project: can he overcome two shoulder injuries and resurrect his career? Mike Adams hasn’t given up an earned run since June. Heath Bell is the NL saves leader. This is a go-nowhere ballclub? They aren’t perfect, but the Padres have young guys worth investing in as a fan.
Mat Latos talks about the young Padres coming together:
Young players like Venable will carry the Padres down the stretch
We started the year with Brian Giles slapping his girlfriend but not the baseball. Jake Peavy pitched with one eye on the rumor mill. Chris Young fell victim to yet another injury. The veteran Padres weren’t worth watching, and for a while, the youngsters weren’t ready. But now, this is the kids’ team. San Diego will sink or swim with the products of their farm system, they will follow the Rockies’ blueprint, and if they come out of it with a contending team in a year or two, they will have a grateful fan base that was able to grow with their club.
The casual baseball fans were gone by June, the Chargers fans will be gone come Saturday, and by next month, the happenings at Petco Park will be pushed beyond the boundary of our attention span. But for true baseball fans and Padres die-hards, the next few weeks of last place, sub-.500 baseball could be the best part of a season that suddenly looks like it’s going somewhere. Feel free to get excited about Padres baseball right now. The bandwagon has lots of space, but the ride is pretty smooth.
