Moorad sees the this current payroll reduction as the natural part of “cycling down.” He did a similar thing when he started with the Diamondbacks. It’s a process of trimming the fat so that you can build the team up. And he specifically said that he expects to build it back up. He’s optimistic about the future because the league is such where teams can “cycle up” very quickly. He cites the Rays and Rockies and to a lesser extent the Diamondbacks in 2007 where they quickly went from taking their payroll from $100+ million down to $50 million and shortly thereafter winning a division and advancing to the NLCS.

I also got the distinct feeling that he doesn’t quite understand why we would trade Peavy. He said a couple of times that he’s interested to hear what the baseball operations people think of the Peavy situation and his inflections were such that he thought he must be missing something there.

He expects not to be involved in player acquisition or contracts or anything like that because that’s what the Baseball Operations staff is for. That’s the way it was in Arizona and he expects it to be the same in San Diego. He knows Towers and DePodesta and has a lot of respect for them and is excited to work with them.

He is friends with John Moores and has a lot of respect for him and he is looking forward to working with him. He thinks he’ll be a great help in understanding the Padres current situation and getting to know the San Diego community.

This deal is not finalized yet, but the agreement has been reached. What I gather that to mean is that no money has changed hands so Moorad is not officially a part of the franchise yet. He expects it to be completed within the next couple of months and at that point he will begin to evaluate the team, maybe make some key decisions that have to be made at that time (Peavy?) and then spend the rest of the season learning about the organization. So, it seems to me, no major changes will happen until October 2009 when the offseason begins again.

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