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Baseball Operations

2813

Guest Column: Wrong Perceptions, Right Move

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by admin on October 5, 2009

John Conniff from MadFriars.com has a different take on the Kevin Towers firing.  He will join us later to discuss the story:

The firing of popular Padres General Manager Kevin Towers produced an outcry from the local and national media with the consensus that new owner Jeff Moorad erred in firing the long time general manager in favor of installing his  “own guy”.

However, after the knee-jerk responses fade, Moorad, who made a fortune running a sports agency, may have more valid reasons for the change than ego.

In the process of taking control of the team from John Moores, he is not a Daddy Warbucks style owner in the same vein of Detroit’s Mike Illitch, but the leader of a consortium with a finite budget that is expected provide a return on investment.

Towers was not evaluated as a general manager, but rather as the head of baseball operations, Sandy Alderson’s old job, which these days is considerably more than the running a team, but involves, which has been the popular buzzword the past few days, a “strategic vision.”

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Towers Fired! What The Hell?

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by Chris Ello on October 3, 2009

Maybe trading Woody Williams to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ray Lankford finally caught up with him. Kevin Towers always used to say that was the one trade he would have loved to have back.

Wonder if new Padres owner Jeff Moorad will ever feel the same way about letting Towers go, which he did prior to Friday night’s season-ending series opener against the San Francisco Giants?

Maybe it has crossed your mind over the last couple of seasons, and maybe you even dreamed about it. After all, there are many in San Diego who have pointed the finger at Towers over the years every time the Friars have fallen.

But now that it has actually happened, now that baseball’s longest-tenured General Manager has actually been given the heave-ho, it really does feel like a shocker.

If nothing else, the timing of it seems puzzling. Sure the Padres are in the midst of finishing up a rather mediocre season in 4th-place in the National Continue Reading →

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240

Strasburg or Lavigne? Tony?

May 28, 2009

ShareTony Gwynn hasn’t made his way through thousands of games of Spades by holding his cards out for everyone to see.  (That would be the role of Aztecs’ Director of Baseball Operations Mike Sweet).  And when it comes to selecting his starter for Game 1 of the NCAA Regionals on Friday, Tony is going to [...]

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