Tweets like this one by CBS's Scott Miller make me cringe as a Padres fan.

Orlando Hudson has gotten a bad reputation this year, both with fans and with the team.  When he wasn't mixing it up with fans on Twitter, he was making bad plays in the field and not providing any veteran leadership in the clubhouse.

Bill Center reported a couple of days ago that the Padres are trying to trade either Jason Bartlett or Orlando Hudson before the beginning of next season.  He suspects the team will have an easier time getting rid of Barlett.

The Padres have officially announced their signing of Mark Kotsay for $1.25 million in a one year contract.  I only watch Padres games so really I haven't seen Mark Kotsay play since some time in 2003.  Plus he spent most of his time since then in the American League. 

I'm pretty indifferent about the move in general, but I liked Kotsay a lot in the past.  The only problem is we are living in the present.  This is the kind of move, that Padres fans have come to expect.  The team signs an aging veteran on the tail end of his career and grabs him by the nipples and yanks frantically trying to milk a little more value out of him before he retires.  It's what we do.

Here's the opinions of other bloggers and news folk from around the internet:

Apologies to RottenTomatoes.com

  Kotsay should be good fit for the Padres
Mark Kotsay definitely has a little bit of David Eckstein in him. During a brief interview on Wednesday night, Kotsay, who officially signed with the Padres, sounded just like The Scrappy One.

What Does San Diego See In Kotsay? | FanGraphs Baseball
For the second year in a row, Mark Kotsay does not deserve a spot on a major league roster — at least, not on his merits as a baseball player.

Padres reportedly reach agreement with Mark Kotsay | Through The Fence Baseball
I reiterate, while Kotsay will be a bench option, I’m not sure the Padres couldn’t have filed that hole internally for less, spending that money and saving a roster spot elsewhere.

Mark Kotsay Returns To San Diego Padres On One-Year Contract - Baseball Nation
Which isn't to suggest that Mark Kotsay is bad. Mark Kotsay is not bad, for what he is. Over the last three years, he's hit .258 with an 86 OPS+ while playing first base and all three outfield positions, which is okay for a bench player. He also played for the Padres between 2001-2003, so he brings some kind of familiarity. On its own, the notion of giving Mark Kotsay $1.25 million as a free agent is not ridiculous.

Kotsay is once and future Padre - San Diego San Diego Padres | Examiner.com
The lefty-hitting Kotsay doesn't project as a productive signing for Petco Park -- think Brad Hawpe -- but he has maintained a home in San Diego, is considered a good influence in the clubhouse and he has playoff experience

Mark Kotsay Signing Makes Zero Sense " MLB Dirt
To sum it up, Kotsay is a horrible defensive outfielder that hits well below league average with below average base running skills and has been the worst player with at least 2000 plate appearances the past six seasons and the Padres just gave him a guaranteed spot on the 25-man roster and $1.25M. Make sense?

Twitter / @619sports:
Kotsay=one of the nicest people I've met in baseball+not very useful to the #Padres+former Moorad client=business as usual

Twitter / @thesacbunt: .
I understand that the 2011 team lacked leadership/chemistry and Kotsay provides some but do not pretend that he's not a bad baseball player.

Twitter / @woedoctor:
I don't think it's awful, just don't see the necessity given that corner OF/1B aren't a priority like some other positions.

Twitter / @FollowThePadres:
Padres dreadful vs. RHP (.229/.301/.340) to add a career .280 hitter vs. RHP for bench job for $1.25m. Please tell me why it's a bad deal.

Padres Sign Mark Kotsay - Friarhood
I like the idea of the bat off the bench. If he is starting over Guzman/Blanks vs RHP, then I'm going to turn on this move very quickly.

Wednesday's Frosty Mug - Brew Crew Ball
Knowing that he won't be in center field or at first base next season brightened my mood considerably

• Padres Jersey Redesign: A fireside chat with The Sacrifice Bunt
  The guys at the Sac Bunt have a fruitful conversation about the state of the uniforms. I agree that the Padres should choose a distinct design and take inspiration from their Major League history rather than their PCL days.  I'd prefer if they just ditched the redesign all together and went back to a classic uniform.

  We both prefer some version of brown, aside from that happening, we have different ideas about the direction the team should go. Neither of us are in love with the redesign.

• PADRES: Bartlett's return in 2012 uncertain
  The Padres want to trade Hudson or Bartlett in the off season. I think we all would prefer they trade Hudson but the Padres don't think there will be any takers due to his contract. Trading Barlett will probably be more likely.

• 'Numerous' teams interested in Padres' Bell | SignOnSanDiego.com
  Bell wants a three year deal and to stay in San Diego, but he likely can't have both. He has heard that multiple clubs have interest in him and he has yet to hear from Padres GM Josh Byrnes.

  "I’ve heard Boston might have interest in me," said Bell. "I could go play with Adrian (Gonzalez) again. I could do that."

  This comment makes me think he's trolling now.

• Padres' offseason moves will hinge on closer Heath Bell | padres.com: News
  Josh Brynes is waiting to see if Bell will accept arbitration because it will have an affect on the rest of the team's payroll. Bell doesn't seem to think he'll come back to the Padres.

  "I think it's a long shot," Bell said.

• Padres reportedly reach agreement with outfielder Mark Kotsay | padres.com: News
  The Padres haven't made an official statement about Mark Kotsay but he is already saying his goodbyes in Milwaukee.

When I saw this blog post on Yahoo!'s Contributor Network titled San Diego Padres Should Stop Wearing Camouflage Jerseys: A Fan’s View, I thought for sure it was was written by another peace activist, but I was wrong.

The author, Eric who incidentally is a Mets fan, doesn't have any problem with the Padres honoring the military.  He just thinks that the new camouflage jerseys work so well that they hide the players from the fans' view. 

With all due respect to our military, the uniforms are so realistic that it makes Padres games troublesome to watch both on television and in person at Petco Park.

He goes on to describe how camouflage is meant to hide people in their surroundings.  Which is true, but in this case the desert camouflage would really only hide them in a desert, not on the green grass of the outfield and the dark clay of the infield.  Not to mention that all the players wear bright white pants.

Now I would agree if his complaint was that it's hard to read the names and numbers on the players' jerseys.  The numbers after all are written in a darker shade of tan that blend with the rest of the jersey.  The names on the back are written in bright white that reflect the sun and are difficult to read even on television.

But he's saying that it's pointless to even watch a Sunday home game because you can't see the players clearly.

Thinking about taking the wife and kids to a Sunday day game at Petco Park? Don't even think about it, as the players will be nearly impossible to follow from the upper deck.

The jerseys blend in with grass, sand and dirt, which makes nearly all the players on the field tough to see unless you're up close.

I suspect he's purposely being a little over dramatic to emphasize his point because I've never heard any other complaint about fans not being able to see the players.  I mean it's not like they are wearing Japanese invisible fabric.

I was talking to Dex about this article and we were both wondering if he was being serious.  Dex asked if I thought he was color blind, but that can't be it.

At one time the U.S. Army found that color blind people could spot "camouflage" colors that fooled those with normal color vision

Eric then suggest that a better alternative for the Padres would be to wear a commemorative patch or host military personnel at the ballpark like the Mets do at CitiField. 

Perhaps the Padres should take a page out of the Mets' book by honoring the military in a similar fashion.

This suggestion made me wonder if Eric has ever actually witnessed a Sunday game in San Diego, because the Padres, who are the Team of the Military, have been hosting Marines and Marine recruits every Sunday for well over a decade. They even pay tribute to them by playing the Marine Corps Hymn between innings while the Marines stand at attention and fans cheer them.  If anything the Mets have already taken a page out of the Padres' book and it's probably only a matter of time before they start to wear realistic camouflage jerseys too.

[UPDATE]

Cameron Maybin is back on twitter and back in Cali.  He's my favorite. I like his avatar.  I like his tweets.  I like how he calls himself the Kid.    I like his new name @spidermayb24, which is probably a result of Mark Grant nicknaming him "Daddy Long Legs". Listen, I like everything about him.

Just like Anthony Rizzo before him, Cameron Maybin returned to twitter after deleting his account over the summer.  I don't really get why players delete their account when there is a possibility of coming back.  It  would make more sense to just not tweet for a while, because when they do come back with a new account they spend weeks trying to regain all of the followers that they lost.  Then they have to rely on the Friarhood to help them get the word out that they're back, design contests and answer questions.  It's a whole ordeal. 

Plus how are you ever going to get verified on Twitter if you keep leaving?  I guess none of that stuff in the past really matters anymore now that the Kid is back.

And so the Josh Byrnes era begins... already he is showing the baseball world that he isn't a procrastinator like his predecessor Jed Hoyer, who waited until the last week before Spring Training to start filling his roster.  The game is afoot!

Ken Rosenthal reports that the Padres have signed Mark Kotsay to a $1.25 million one year deal, pending a physical.

A few months ago I heard a radio interview where he said he was considering retirement, but no longer.  He must have heard that there is a baseball club in San Diego that allows you to ease into retirement, like you would the cool waters of the Pacific.  The Padres probably think they can squeeze a little bit of veteran leadership and hustle out of him, maybe even bring him off the bench to face some right handed pitching in a pinch. 

Hoyer's attempts at signing fan favorites and veteran leadership didn't pan out last year in the form of Orlando Hudson, Brad Hawpe and Jason Bartlett, so Byrnes knew he had to act quickly to grab likeable former Padres before Kevin Towers could.

It's hard to believe that it was 10 years ago when the Padres first signed Kotsay.  So much has changed.  The Padres no longer play in Qualcomm Stadium, the 3 Doors Down Kryptonite song fell off the charts.... and that's about it.  Everything else is about the same, even the uniforms look like they did in 2001.

Personally I've always liked Mark Kotsay.  Of course I haven't really seen him play in 8 years, but if I concentrate hard enough I feel like I can almost remember him chasing down line drives in the gaps and swinging ferociously for the fences.  Maybe he can do that sort of thing again if he concentrates hard enough.

He signed my glove back in 2003 when we had some front row seats along the first base line, which is weird since it was probably the only time I've brought a glove to a game.  Even stranger is that he signed it in a ball point pen and yet his autograph is still there, clear as day, even after years of use and repetitive oiling.  I have my own name written in permanent marker for identification purposes and I've had to re-ink it multiple times since then. It's a strange phenomenon.  It's like the story of how Saint Didacus's body remained incorrupt and smelled fragrant long after his death, only with a ball point pen signature and without the fragrant scent.

Anyway, I can already tell that Twitter is going to hate this move, but if it's between Kotsay and Geoff Blum I don't mind giving Kotsay a try again. 

Mark Kotsay

#0 / Right Field / San Diego Padres

Height: 6-0

Weight: 210

Bats: Least favorite mammal

Throws: L

Born: Dec 02, 1975

Married: Jamie Kotsay

I know the feeling when you pour mental effort and creative juices into something, only to have it laughed at when you thought it wasn't exactly funny and mocked as trivial when you thought it was important. I know that feeling at a certain level, and I wonder to myself how the original designer of this feels now:

Yep... There she is in all her glory. Notice the "San Diego" in the 2010 version, a font which was previously exclusive to a Pantene bottle or a bottle of Garnier Fructis. The wave effect, ripped directly off of a bottle of Suave.  That combined with the alliterative nature of Padres, Pert, Protane and Pantene... Positively Perfect!

Except that I hated it. I mean, look at the images above. Even San Diego itself seemed to run away from the logo like, "Hey guys... I'm just gonna stand over here... and ummm... TAXI!!! TAXIIIIIIII!!!!"

So I wonder how the original designer felt about that effort. It was like, in trying so hard to avoid the 1970's, they completely focused on the fact that everybody had a lot of hair in that decade and then decided that the opposite of "hair" is "shampoo", when obviously that's insane.

Back on topic...

So they've abandoned the shampoo bottle logo and reworked it into this:

So they took the homeplate outline, the most masculine thing in the previous logo, and they turned it into the outline of a Superman crest, thereby making it even more masculine. ROWR.

Now, instead of the bottom of the logo slowly filling with wave and white wash, a shout out to 1969 is thrown in there all bold and military logo like. Like a banner or a Swatch watch or something. I'm very glad the wave is gone. It was thrown in like a latent sexist symbol of washing luxurious hair in the 1980's. The thing seemed to rumble in a deep, soul singer's voice, "This one's... for the ladies". 

The drop shadow that once was used to give the "Padres" some pop has fled the scene, embarrassed for having tried to escape its flat fate, like a 3D pie-chart. 

And, perhaps most prominently, the skyline of Petco Park hovers over the word Padres. A proud reminder that we have a ballpark that is more than capable of hosting a baseball game and is the perfect venue for your next rock.

My thoughts:

Being firmly in the camp of hating the shampoo bottle logo essentially from the beginning, I'm glad that the Padres have moved away from it. From my understanding, this version of the logo is now tertiary, giving way to the interlocing SD and the Swingin' Friar so we may not see it in a lot of places.

This is a good thing, because, for as much as I appreciate the changes, there are little things that kinda stick out to me. I think the skyline was well done, but feels a little bit busy for my tastes. The wave is not completely abandoned as the one swath of underline still swooshes through like imitation Nike's in Korea. The script font in general is still there.

Still, as far as changes go, this one will be seen minimally and the previous one will now be seen not at all. Or, maybe, like 20 years from now when crazy kids totally grok with 1980's shampoo bottles and the director of marketing is then forced to reintroduce the shampoo bottle to satisfy the demands of their new younger, edgier market. Cest la vie.

Go Padres!

So the uniforms have been released and everybody is oohing and aahing, but I think the logos have been somewhat ignored even though these are the changes that have made me most (and least) happy.

Let's start with the new primary logo:

The new primary logo is a modification of last year's secondary logo and also borrows the circle border concept that was used in just about everything that the Padres did in the 90's. I've always liked the SD interlocking. The fact that the S and D interlock to make a little P in the middle of the logo doesn't look quite intentional, but is still a nice touch that justifies the "Yet Another Interlocking Letters Logo" beyond the jumble that I see in the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees logos.

(Not to say that those logos aren't perfectly fine, Dodger Fan. It's a subjective judgement. What? I'm not allowed to have subjective commentary on my blog? Why? Oh because True Blue LA only deals in "facts"? OK, just don't yell at me again. No seriously. Please. Go enjoy Downtown LA. I insist. Skid row is just right over there.)

Personally, I like this logo the best. I like the interlocking SD. I love the addition of "baseball club". This makes for a great patch or t-shirt and just looks nice and clean to me. I've always been a fan of the "half-serif". It's a very nice improvement over just the block version of this logo.

Onto the new (old?) secondary logo:

I am so torn by this logo. It would be my favorite, except that just a few touches nag at me.

If you had to break the Padres up into two different eras, there would be the Kroc years and then an extended period of unspoken embarrassment over ever having been associated with the Kroc family. That's not a criticism of the current ownership group, who I think, has made baby steps towards acknowledging that the team actually existed in the 1970's and 1980's (outside of 1984). Just overall, everybody seems kinda weirded out by Ray Kroc. Every ownership group, including Joan Kroc, has subsequently fed into the idea that brown and yellow is ugly and that the original branding was somehow off. It's a McDonald's uniform. Cartoon friars are for kids and baseball is for grown-ups (like manly Dodger Fans). The words "classic baseball" and "1970's" have no business being in the same sentence.  

This embarrassment seemed to be the case with the "fixed" Swingin' Friar, introduced in 1996. Gone are the goofy eyes and scribbled look. The awkward smile was left for a more confident, polished Swingin' Friar, that seems to say, "Yes. I did intend for my hair to be cut this way."

So on the one hand, I love the return to the 1969 Friar. The original looks so happy and haphazard. It just feels like Schoolhouse Rock or the cover of a Beach Boys album or classic Hanna-Barbera. The "fixes" that they had made to the Friar in 1996 (specifically around the face and head) all seemed to be made in the spirit of, "Nobody's going to take us seriously if this dude looks so goofy". That thinking, to me, is the lack of self-confidence that the Padres have always had.

On the other hand, the fixes to this one again feel a little off. For one thing, the original 1969 logo was two-tone in brown and yellow. The new one done in a single blue reminds me of a carbon copy. Notice the yellow circle in the original:

It makes the logo so breezy as less "stamped". Also, notice that the Padres script on the bat has been changed to the new script, which I really dislike. The new script feels glaring. It's like New Coke or something.

Can you guess what the two most popular items are at McDonald's? French fries and the Big Mac (coincidentally introduced to McDonald's nationwide in 1969). Both items have remained essentially the same for years.

Why do I make that comparison? Just to demonstrate the point that when you get it right the first time, it's best to leave it be.

I wish they had made the effort to introduce a second color as the circle (sand maybe?) and that they had just left the bat script untouched. I get the idea that we want to keep the number of fonts being used to a minimum, but in this case, why tarnish the classic logo with the new font? It just nags to me like a constant reminder, "Yeah this is cool, but it used to look cooler."

It's like what happens when Pet Semetary meets baseball graphic design.

Those are the first two logos introduced last week. I'll tackle the new tertiary logo, a variant of the previous primary in a future post.

Go Padres.

There are some who are critical of the way that Gaslamp Ball handles the SB Nation Awards voting. Some people think we're idiots. Some thing that we don't care because we let a non-site manager vote for us. Others think that our methods reveals a lack of talent as baseball writers, which of course is ridiculous, because we've never claimed to be "baseball writers".

I'll explain our thinking, but first... Why even have a SB Nation Awards separate from the traditional awards?

The fact that the BBWAA are allowed to vote subjectively for things like the Cy Young award, the MVP, etc is a beautiful ridiculous part of baseball. Arguments always abound about who's "truly" deserving or not deserving of the awards. There are almost as many arguments about who's "truly" deserving or not deserving of even having a vote in the awards. There are many talented baseball writers who don't get a vote because they write primarily on the internet. There are many more untalented baseball writers who DO get a vote because they happen to write for some dinosaur newspaper that can barely afford to send them to the baseball games of the teams that they do cover, much less encourage them to put out any effort in covering teams that fall outside of their media market.

It's a messed up system that, more often than not, still manages to get it "right".

So, how would you "fix" such a thing?

In our humble opinion, any subjectivity that you wish to eliminate from voting professional baseball writers is not accomplished by leaving votes up to baseball bloggers. With baseball bloggers, you potentially introduce more subjectivity in four ways:

1. Baseball bloggers who want to credit players, not for their accomplishments on the field, but for other irrelevant accomplishments, such as really really liking a guy. Keep in mind that this is some of the same subjectivity that appears with traditional baseball writers. I would admit to this.

2. Baseball bloggers who want to be "smart" baseball writers and therefore vote, not according to ridiculous metrics such as Wins or ERA, but according to "smart" metrics like WAR or whatever other smart metrics get used by Bill James or Baseball Prospectus. In other words, baseball bloggers who want to completely remove subjectivity by being totally "objective" according to a subjective judgment of what metrics are most objective.

My opinion on that? If four different sites calculate WAR four different ways: F_ck WAR. In many ways that makes it worse than ERA or Wins. Have an opinion, robots! (Note: I'm not calling out any of our fellow SB Nation writers as robots. Love my peeps.) 

3. Baseball bloggers who are fans of a single team and therefore pay minimal attention to the other teams in the league. This is the East Coast Bias in effect at a granular level. I'm not paid to watch baseball. I have a day job. I watch MY team and rarely watch anybody else. I fully admit to this. Does it make you a better fan because you watched every single baseball game this season, regardless of who played? I guess so. Also makes you a damn liar.

But you know what? Even if you are a "better", more knowledgeable fan, we have a vote and you don't. Am I less qualified to vote than somebody who doesn't have an SB Nation blog? No. I'm exactly qualified to vote in the SB Nation Awards because the qualification is HAVING an SB Nation blog. Sorry.

4. Baseball bloggers who are such big fans of a single team and who own their team rivalries SO much that they are completely willing to vote from the heart and say, "I have no other reason to not give this guy credit for his accomplishments other than I actively do not like the team he plays for."

This fourth thing is what happened with Clayton Kershaw. Managers and coaches can lie all they want about the truly stupid ways that they give out Gold Gloves. Writers can pretend like they know soooooo much more about baseball and therefore don't really need to look at stats to determine who wins Rookie of the Year. These guys are forced to lie and pretend that what they do is rational. That's what happens because they're being held to standards that you hold managers and coaches and writers to.

You know what standard I'm held to? I have an SB Nation blog and I am a fan of the Padres. You know what that means? I f_cking hate the Dodgers. You know what that means don't you? Oops. 5th place vote Clayton Kershaw?

BUT WHHHHYYYYYYYYYY???? HE WAS SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD.

Yep. Probably the best pitcher in the NL. And OOPS. He's a Dodger.

I f_cking hate the Dodgers.

Done and done. Requirement for casting an SB Nation vote: Rationality? Sure. My rationality for that is that we root for the Padres and we hate the Dodgers.

That said, I actually didn't cast that ballot. We let one of our favorite contributors cast our vote, but you know what?

She f_cking hates the Dodgers too. So there's that.

What... You don't really think that stuff like that doesn't happen to the BBWAA do you? How else do you explain some of the crazy choices they've made? I'm pretty sure there are dudes who let their kids vote or who vote because they happened to meet one of the players who made a good impression or bad impression or whatever.

All that said, if it were up to us, and it really isn't up to us, a more interesting argument could be made that we're voting on the wrong things entirely. If we really wanted this award to be given to the player who (objectively) is the best pitcher of the season, then what we should be arguing about is which metrics are most correlated with greatness. Is it WAR? If so, who's calculation? Is it some combination of metrics?  Which ones and how do we combine them?

Until we get to that point, then we will happily admit that we're not baseball writers. We are not robots. We are not wannabe baseball writing robots. We are completely biased, consciously lackadaisical, admittedly incompetent, irrational judges of baseball talent.

If you don't like it, argue about it same as you would the real Cy Young Award and everybody's happy.

What seems to be lost in the new uniform announcement is what I feel is the best public outreach program to come out of the Padres organization in quite some time.  It's called the Padres Little League Initiative.  The team is donating 10,000 Little League uniforms to 4 districts in San Diego County.

I'm really excited about this program for a few reasons.

First, Little League is usually a gateway to becoming a fan of Major League Baseball.  Many kids will choose their favorite team based on their corresponding Little League team.  This leads to kids wearing Cardinals, Yankees, Cubs and any number of other team hats around San Diego.  I've asked some of those kids on occasion why they are wearing and rooting for an opposing team when they are from San Diego.  Almost always it's for no other reason than their Little League affiliation.

I never played Little League myself, but Jonny was telling me that in his League growing up in the 80's that they didn't even have team named after the Padres.  No one wanted to be associated with them, probably the result of some lack luster Padres clubs and transplanted Little League coaches and administrators.

With the Padres reaching out to kids between the ages of 4-12 and saturating the leagues with Padres jerseys and caps they are laying a foundation for future Padres fans that we need desperately.  Just as important they are instilling a sense of civic pride.

Second, the Padres are introducing these kids to Padres jerseys and colors that are unfamiliar to them. 

I've been working on a theory and trying to create a formula to figure out how a Padres uniform becomes your favorite.  It factors in parameters such as when you were first introduced to the team, the uniforms worn when you were 10 years old and all of this in relation to the Padres nearest championship club.  I haven't quite figured it out yet.

In any case even the oldest kid in these Leagues at the age of 12 have no memory of seeing a team earlier than 2003.  They only know Blue, White, Sand and Gray.  Dull colors, but their favorites because it's all they know.

In a way, I'm hoping that this Little League Initiative backfires on the Padres front office.  They've made it quite clear that they like the current colors and fonts.  I'm hoping that these Little League jerseys and caps will spark a new interest in returning to Brown, Gold and Orange.  They'll no longer be thought of uniforms from a bygone era, but once again become relevant, and a youth movement will transform a vocal minority into a majority.

Finally, I just think it's cool that almost every team in the League will be named the Padres.  On a given weekend you could have the '78 Padres facing the '92 Padres or the '69 Away Padres playing the '12 Camo Padres. We were told that Little League teams are already fighting over which jerseys they'll get.  That's the kind of excitement you probably don't see a whole lot on the Little League level.

While Padres President and COO Tom Garfinkel was speaking to our group last night, I started to zone out.  I interrupted him talking about Minor League Prospects and told him that I may want to become a Little League Coach in an effort to get one of those throwback uniforms.  He said something to the effect of, "I'll get you one of those jerseys if it means you don't corrupt our city's youth."  I laughed it off, but I think he was serious, which means he really does care about San Diego and so do the Padres.