There’s an old saying that was repeated recently by Don Draper on the amazing show “Mad Men”. Talking about a controversial bid to tear down Penn Station and replace it with Madison Square Garden, Draper told his client: “If you don’t like what people are saying about you, change the conversation.”
Hearing that Padres’ CEO Jeff Moorad will fire general manager Kevin Towers later today, I wonder if Moorad has been listening to the conversation surrounding his team at all lately. 36-24 since late July. Great trades swung by Towers to turn around a season that looked like it was headed for 95+ losses at the All-Star break. A farm system that looked bankrupt now providing the core for a future contender. Cheaper ticket prices and higher expectations coming soon.
The message going to out to season ticket holders and prospective purchasers for 2010 was an easy one to write: your patience has paid off. The Padres are playing fun baseball now, at affordable prices, with young players you can get excited about and grow with. Join us, things are heading in the right direction.
What’s the message now, after you turn over the front office like a shovel turns dirt? How does sending the longest-tenured GM in baseball-and make no mistake, one of the very best-out the door make you a better franchise or a more compelling sell to your fans?The new message from Moorad is one of uncertainty. It’s a message that says, the improvement you saw in the second half was not seen the same way by the man writing the checks. It’s a message that reinstalls doubt where hope was growing. If the Padres have turned the corner, why is the man who’s been charting the course about to walk the plank?
If Towers had left, or been asked to leave, in 2007 or 2008, the story would have been easier to understand. KT was stuck in an unwieldy triangle with Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta, where his previous freedoms were curtailed. In 2008, with everything going south, Moores pulling up stakes and yanking payroll, and the farm system firing blanks, Towers could have sought a welcome change of scenery. Heck, even last winter, when the ownership change forced Kevin to put Jake Peavy, the very same kid he had drafted, cultivated, watched grown into a Cy Young winner and then signed to the biggest deal in club history, on the trading block…that would have been a time where if Towers left, you could at least have an idea of why it happened.
But now? After Towers managed to shoot the moon with a crap hand? Why would you possibly mess with a good thing now?
Continuity has been part of the Padres’ story since 1995, when Towers took over as GM for Randy Smith. For years, it was KT and Bochy in charge. When Bochy left, Bud Black stepped in and kept a steady hand on the wheel. But what will the new GM want? If San Diego gets off to a slow start next year, how can Black not feel the hot breath on his neck of a general manager that didn’t hire him and wants his “own guy” at the helm?
Doubters, you can talk all you want about the good moves and mistakes that Kevin Towers made as the Padres’ GM. He wasn’t perfect, but for every Ray Lankford you pull out, I can show you an Everth Cabrera. The guy had way more hits than misses, and he had to shoot with his hands tied more often than not. You can talk about whether or not he deserved to keep or lose his job…or the related argument of whether an owner should always clean house in a losing situation. That doesn’t interest me right now.
I doubt Don Draper would have approved of changing a message that's working
What I’m interested in is how, with everything rolling in the right direction, Jeff Moorad could possibly think that it would be a smart business move to replace Kevin Towers with an unknown quantity. How, with revenue falling in 2009 but hope rising for 2010, could cutting loose one of the best GMs in baseball be considered a step in the right direction to those who Moorad would hope to lure back to the ballpark?
I know this: Don Draper would not approve. Moorad should have liked what people were saying about his Padres, but he went ahead and changed the conversation anyhow. We’ll see what people start saying now.
