Alderson: Padres ticket prices won't change for next season

A few things strike me as strange from this article.

• The first is that Sandy is admitting that the payroll is going to be less than this year's.  I swore he was going to deny that until July of next year.  Actually maybe he was just denying that it would be cut to $40 million.  Well $55 million is a nice compromise.  Wait a second!  I bet the Padres released the $40 million dollar number on purpose so that when they really did drop the payroll by $18 million we'd be like "Well at least it wasn't dropped to $40m".  The Padres and their propaganda machine are good, very good.  Misinformation is the way to keep your fans happy and your wallets fat.
  
• Giles says of Black "He never lost the players".  Actually he lost a ton of players.  There aren't many players that he didn't lose.  Maybe he never lost their love or their friendship, but he lost them in that they are no longer on the team.  Somehow Black totally alienated his fan base too.  When you're a Manager I think it goes with the territory that everybody hates you irrationally, but Buddy did a complete 180 this year.
  
• This quote from Hoffman about Black is absolutely crazy to me. “He's done a good job with what was given to him." Okay we didn't re-sign Cameron, Brocail and Blum, but it is about as close to the same team that you're going to get in the big leagues.  He had one of the best rotations in baseball with a Cy Young winner, the best bullpen and the best catching crew and turned it into this.  Last year we won 89 games this year we've won what 2?  3?  I lost track.
  
• Since Petco Park opened everybody has argued about bringing in the fences at Petco Park and they did bring them in a bit after much debate.  Finally Alderson and crew decided that enough was enough and that the players and fans would just have to live with the Park the way it is.  That is until Adrian Gonzalez makes this great argument that suddenly changes Alderson's mind:

 Cleanup man Adrian Gonzalez has said the right-center wall in Petco Park should be moved 15-20 feet toward home. During batting practice he made his case to Alderson, while pointing to right-center. “He raised the issue,” Alderson said. “We'll leave that for later discussions. He brought it up with me. It's always a possibility.”

He pointed.