Over the summer I went to Portland for work and I managed to catch a Beaver's game. Portland's downtown reminds me a lot of San Diego's downtown in that it's not overly dangerous and terrifying at night like downtown LA and you still feel like you're outside when you're outside, unlike Manhattan.

After my meetings, I cut out of work and took a cab to the ballpark. It was about an hour after first pitch and the ticket windows were all closed. I walked up to the gate and, after a few batted eyelashes, scored a free ticket. I bat my eyelashes like Bud Black bats different lineups - often and with wildly varying effect.

PGE Park is very much an old style looking park. Past the right field wall, the park is built right up against a building, which I was later told by a Portland native is a health club. The whole thing sunk a bit into the street. No outfield seats except for some bleachers at the health club that you can walk out to. I assume that, after workouts, the gym patrons can go out to the bleachers, watch a game, and see what people who are really in shape look like.

The outfield scoreboard is one of them old timey time wooden boards that needs somebody back there to constantly update. Updating the scoreboard is always portrayed as something romantic. Like the 106 year old man who has sat behind the scoreboard at Suchansuch Ballpark since 1908. Really, I imagine the job to be dark and dreary. Something reserved for criminals and interns who don't take to Excel as quickly as you might like.

I don't recall much about the game except for what I might have tweeted at the time. I remember we were winning when I left the hotel and we were losing by the time I found a seat.

Above the seats is a wooden overhang that appeared to extend out and cover all of the seats. It rains a lot in Portland so I figure it keeps people in their seats during delays.

The other thing it does is make for amazingly loud echos whenever music is played or the fans get excited and cheer. The sound just reverberates up into the rafters and directly down into your ears.

Not unsurprisingly, the American Tinitis Association had a booth set up out on the concourse area near one of the exits. No lie.

Outside of the park there are huge faces guarding each entrance from Portland spirits. They are terrifying and ghastly.

After the game, I walked back to the hotel. It was a Thursday night and about 11 blocks away. Downtown Portland is nice at night. I don't know what they do with the homeless people. Probably, they remind them that it rains all the time and they should seek more temperate weather, like San Diego or something.

As I understand it, there are plans for a new better ballpark, which makes me kinda sad. The current ballpark is nice and old school and seemed to be well attended. It was college beer night or something, so that may have had something to do with it, but still. Lots of cities build new ballparks to recreate the look that Portland's current ballpark has.

I be glad I bagged it when I could.

Pictures up shortly

via www.fox5sandiego.com

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• Detroit Lions receivers coach turns to baseball Hall of Famer for help with dropped passes | Highlight Reel - MLive.com
  To help his guys out, Jefferson is turning to some advice that he got San Diego Padres Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. The lifetime .338 hitter told Jefferson when he got into a slump at the plate, his solution was to get more batting practice: "seeing the bat make contact with the ball -- every time."

• Padres in the Hall of Fame? — Votes take place in two weeks
  Former Padres Roberto Alomar and Fred McGriff are now eligible for the Hall of Fame -- do they have a chance on the first ballot?

• Padres unlikely to go big in market | padres.com: News
  Free agency is set to begin at 9:01 p.m. Thursday, though if history is any indication, the Padres will likely be quiet on that front again this offseason.

• Perpetual Padres Saga: Dynamic Duo
  Everth Cabrera+David Eckstein=all the Padres need at middle infield.

• XX Sports Radio: Dick Enberg (MP3)
• XTRA Sports: Corey Brock (Quicktime)

Leading by example with Padres flair

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• XX Sports Radio: Tom Garfinkel Interview (MP3)
  Garfinkel likes to quote old movies.  Jed Hoyer has the final say on any Gonzalez trade.  The Padres won't shop Gonzalez but they will listen to offers. Garfinkel dated a girl from Nicaragua at one point.  He's become a Chargers fan.  "At the end of the day... autonomy... moving forward... etc."
  

• insidethepadres
  former Padres national crosschecker Scott Littlefield has joined the Rangers as a special assistant in baseball operations

• Inbox: Will Correia return to Padres? | padres.com: News
  In the latest Inbox, beat reporter Corey Brock looks at Kevin Correia's status, whether Joe Thatcher should be traded, what the new GM might do at catcher and more.

• Multi-team trade for Gonzalez a tough task | padres.com: News
  Trying to trade a burgeoning superstar -- like Adrian Gonzalez -- is never an easy proposition for a team, and attempting to do so within the framework of a multi-team deal figures to be an even thornier plan.

• Should the Padres trade Kevin Kouzmanoff? " Another Padres Blog
  I think the answer is yes, and it is largely due to factors not really about Kouzmanoff.

• Who's your Padre?: A Padres primer for arbitration ...
  My guess? None of these guys make it to arbitration and deals get done before the start of Spring Training.

• Padres general manager Jed Hoyer basks in opportunity in San Diego - ESPN
  Recently hired Padres general manager Jed Hoyer is now the leading man in San Diego after spending the last several years in the background in Boston.

I forgot to mention it when it happened, but jbox and I recently had lunch with Warren Miller and his media relations team, Brett Picciolo, Josh Ishoo and Shaun O'Neall who runs the Padres Magazine.

It was a pretty informal meet-and-greet. JBox and I didn't really have an agenda other that to keep in contact with Warren who has been very gracious with us and to meet some other dudes who put together what we as fans see and hear about our favorite team. If the Padres organization was a large sea lion, then those in our lunch bunch would be the sea lion's vocal chords, barking incessantly and occasionally mooing. Letting you know that you should throw some raw fish its way so as to satisfy the needs of its gray, blubbery body.

Shaun O'Neall looks the part of a grizzled beat reporter, now spending his days shilling the five dollar magazine. Brett's a younger guy. Probably a little younger than me or jbox. Chiseled features. The cool and calculating type. Josh looked like the youngest guy at the table, but he could've easily just been baby faced. Josh wasn't wearing Padres colors. Bastard.

Lemme just say right off that everybody was real cool to us. However, Brett did come off a little bit tight lipped, to match his cold and calculating features. It was like he might be afraid of what me and jbox might say to you, dear reader. As if at any moment something might be revealed, wherein I would pull out my trusty laptop while jbox would cry out, "Check and MATE!"

The only time he really perked up was when I called out Josh during lunch. We were asking them where they all were from and who they rooted for outside of work. Josh said, almost apologetically, that he rooted for one of the "big East Coast teams".

"Don't worry. It's not the really bad one."

"Which one do you think is the really bad one?" I asked.

"Oh, the Yankees of course."

I looked him in the eye and told him, "You sir, are much much worse."

JBox and I then went into a brief diatribe about how Boston fan is so smug about their championships, but furthermore feel like they're entitled to be smug because they were "long suffering". Yankee fans are just douchey, but Red Sock fans somehow end up being douchey and whiney at the same time.

That was the part where Brett perked up a little bit and started nodding, I think a little encouraged that we were right about something. Anything.

So, we insulted Josh and we weren't really sure if Brett liked us much at all.

Shaun, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. I think we had a bond right off because the "salad" that came with our sandwiches consisted of shredded lettuce with no dressing.

Sure, we said. Send the not so subtle message to the fat guys.

We talked a bit about how the traditional media gets their hands tied and how little they can really report on because of the lack of hard proof. For example, he was pretty confident that most every sportswriter out there knew about steroids well before Jose Canseco exposed it to the world. It also didn't seem to come as a surprise to him that Ruben Rivera had been sneaking underage girls into bars and that Jim Leyritz is a swinger.

We also compared notes on some of the beat reporters who are left and what the state of the Padres online world is.

In summary:

• 619Sports is doing a great job.
• MightyXX gets love from us because their interviews are good, they've shown us love, and their website is MUCH easier to work with than 1360's (read: I can open the site up and not be worried about NSFW content).
• Sabermetric type fans are a niche that's tough to target, and, I guess, not one that gets targeted heavily.
• Clayton Richard is doing a great job with his Facebook Fan Page.
• Lots of regular conversation happens on Gaslamp Ball and the SignOnSanDiego forums.
• Twitter's great if you're willing to put the time in to figure it out.
• Paul DePodesta should blog more about more.

That's about it. JBox and I didn't ask for press creds or anything like that, though I'm still hopeful that Warren, despite insulting his team at various points during the lunch, will help us get some better interviews during the offseason and into next season.

Also, I'm hopeful that having a better relationship with these guys helps us get more better info with which to mold and shape into humorous anecdotes and wild assumptions.

More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - AP

You want to know how Heath Bell lost so much body mass? It be called Wii Fit Plus. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

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I've been sitting on the rest of these projections for the Padres because it's a pain in the ass to transcribe the PDF over to a table in HTML. Rather than do that, I'll just upload the set of projections from the Bill James Handbook and we can talk about them in a civilized manner here.

I will also note that, after reading through the book itself, it's tough to judge it just based on the projections. They mention especially with pitchers how difficult (and pointless) it is to try to project something like wins or ERA considering how many things beyond the pitchers' control goes into these things.

Also, if you're gonna buy the book, here's a link to Amazon.

Now some notes on the projections:

• Heath Bell is projected to lead the league in saves yet again. Also projected to mention how the new Wii Fit Plus will allow him to drink that much more beer while maintaining his svelte physique.
• Kevin Correia is projected to lead the team in wins with 11. Clayton Richard follows with 9. To be fair, there aren't a whole lot of Padres pitchers even projected to start games for us.
• Luke Gregerson is projected to do well again. Maybe a holdover closer if we can get value for Heath Bell? Hmmmmm?

In any case, it will be good to revisit these numbers once we start settling in a bit as to who our pitchers will be, but if that happens, then we won't be able to transfer over the ERA and W/L projections, so maybe it'll be a little bit hopeless.

(Also, yes. This is another post with an Amazon link. I'm trying to save for the holiday season.)

I've never used this newfangled SBNation news clipper before. This be my first time. So I created some clips and there were only four and now here they are.

• Ducksnorts Unraveled: Site Non-update
  A few details on Ducksnorts and its current non-state. Apparently a hosting company got hosed. Pssst, Geoff... Wordpress.
• MetsBlog.com " Read: Free Agents, Contracts, and the Economy
  a MetsBlog post about free agents not getting much money this coming season. Adrian Gonzalez is discussed in the comments.
• Masur's Musings: No News Yet...
  Andy Masur's notes on the Padres trading block.
• 2009 MLB Awards: National League Rookie of the Year - ESPN
  Rookie of the Year will be announced today. ESPN's list of the contenders.

I've always liked big baseball books, or at least, I've liked the idea of big baseball books. Tomes of base-ball knowledge!

Take this scene from a little known film about baseball:

Now, while you may have been paying attention to the moving monologue performed by Sir James Earl Jones, I was trying to determine exactly which page of the Baseball Encyclopedia he was on before being so rudely interrupted.

So what is a big baseball book lover to do? If you're me, then you and me are currently reading The Bill James Handbook 2010, which we recently had a preview for.

I know we looked at the 2010 hitter previews in the book before, but the much more interesting things are the plethora of statistics gathered and all of the imaginarily colorful black and white tables.

Like take for example the section on Manufactured Runs. Bill James' definition of a manufactured run is any run where at least 2 of the 4 total bases needed for a run come from something other than station to station baseball. When Adrian Gonzalez gets a base hit and then requires three more base hits in a row to score, Bill James considers that the opposite of a manufactured run.

However, when other teams besides the Padres get a player on base, steal second, then score on a single, that counts as a manufactured run.

So, knowing that manufactured runs sound like they'd be pretty fun to watch and would be effective ways of scoring runs, does it surprise you to know that the Padres were tied for third to last in all of baseball in manufactured runs (130 manufactured runs). That's a poorly written sentence, but basically, the Cubs and the Pirates were the only two teams who manufactured fewer runs (123 and 121 respectively).

Interestingly enough, the book also breaks down the number of times players participated in a manufactured run and despite the Padres only managing 130 manufactured, our own Everth Cabrera participated in 26 manufactured runs, which is among the top 10 in the NL. Anthony Keith Gwynn Jr and Chase Headley are second and third on the Padres with 19 and 15 contributions respectively.

So, what does that mean? What do we do with that?

If you're like me, you use the book to try to find stats to explain why you didn't find the Padres interesting this season and Manufactured Runs is a terrific one. Now, when people ask me why I got bored with the team, I have statistics to back me up.

Chrissy Russo and Matt Vasgersian play poker

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• Limited range puts votes out of Kouzmanoff's reach
  Kouzmanoff did not immediately respond to an interview request placed through the Padres. Gonzalez said he suspects Kouzmanoff was overlooked because “his name doesn't pop to mind.”

• Gonzalez in a golden position - The Boston Globe
  “I’ve always said I’m in a win-win situation,’’ Gonzalez said. “If I stay, I’d be in position to keep playing in this great city before these great fans. More than likely, if I’m traded, I would go to a team that had a chance to win a World Series championship next year. I think if I stay, I should also be in a position to win a world championship someday.’’
• Friar John's Blog: Good as Gold
  Again, FJ agrees with Gonzo. That's Golden Rule No. 2: Defense paves the way for success at PETCO Park.
• Unfinished Business: WHAT A JOKE!!!
  Oh but of course, there is the little matter about his RF and UZR. According to a mlb.com article, Zimmerman's RF is 2.9 and Kouz's is 2.2. Zimmerman's UZR is 18.1 and Kouz's is 7.5. I HAVE NEVER EVER HEARS OF THESE TERMS!!!!! I have no idea what they are and why they should matter. Oh, Zimmerman's UZR is higher than Kouzmanoff's. Let's give the glove to him.
• The Matt V. Charity Poker Tournament
  Friday, November 13 (don't be scared it is lucky Poker Day!) Hall of Champions in Balboa Park - the only free parking lot in San Diego! Doors open at 5:30pm First Round 6pm

More photos » by Al Behrman - AP

9 days ago: FILE - This is a July 30, 2009, file photo showing San Diego Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez eyeing a foul ball hit by Cincinnati Reds' Brandon Phillips for an out in the eighth inning of a baseball game in Cincinnati. Gonzalez was honored Wednesday Nov. 11, 2009, with a Gold Glove for fielding excellence. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

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Congratulations to Adrian Gonzalez for winning his second Gold Glove, I guess. 

He doesn't sound the least bit excited about it.  Instead he thinks that Helton, Pujols and Lee were all deserving and the voters chose him based on his defensive performance in 2008.

Is he trying to win a modesty award too?  Is he aware that there is no modesty award?  Furthermore does he know that it's really annoying that he can never just graciously accept an award or a compliment?

When it comes to Gold Gloves for first basemen voters like consistency but at third base it's a different story.  They want flashy great plays and that's where Kouzmanoff was lacking.  Sure he only had a few errors, but this isn't the award for fewest errors or best fielding percentage.  It's an award of perception and if you want to be thought of as a great third basemen, then you better be diving into foul territory and throwing out  runners while laying on your back.

Kouzmanoff barehanded a few bunts, made routine plays, but besides that I didn't see anything that impressive from him this season.  If there weren't so many articles about his lack of errors and his Gold Glove candidacy in the past few months, I would never even have considered him.

Kouz and Young do Science

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• Padres to meet with Gonzalez about future | padres.com: News
  "If they want to offer an extension, I'd be more than willing to look at it and see what they think of me or what value they've put on me," Gonzalez said. "I'd like to see where they're at, wanting to sign me long-term or trade me or not."

• Let’s make a big deal - BostonHerald.com
  "He’s a great player and he fits our team perfectly for the next two years," Hoyer said. "We’ve had a lot of internal meetings and discussions about that. If you’re asking me have we moved forward on trades, yes, I guess, but at the same time I’m still learning the Padres and getting to know work styles of everyone like that."

• PADRES: Will Gonzalez be golden next year?
  Over the summer, Gonzalez said he's keeping a close eye on the franchise's direction in case he has to make a decision on whether or not to stay with the Padres. The slugger said he saw progress over the final two months of the 2009 season, but also said: "I don't think we're there yet. There's still a few pieces that need to be put in place this offseason."

• San Diego's Great Science Experiment | NBC San Diego
  "It was one of my favorite subjects in school," Kouzmanoff said. "I enjoyed mixing all the stuff together, playing with the acid, all the proteins."

• Gonzalez repeats as Gold Glove winner | padres.com: News
  "This year I was as happy with the way I played. I don't think I had as many chances. The opportunities weren't there. Teams were a little more reluctant to bunt my way. I think it was more off of things I was able to establish last year and the years before."

• XX Sports Radio: Adrian Gonzalez Interview (MP3)
  The Padre 1B won his second consecutive Gold Glove.

• Gonzalez Wins a Gold Glove, Kouzmanoff Does Not :: Friar Forecast
  Before I touch on Adrian’s award, I want to reiterate that Kouzmanoff did not deserve to win a gold glove this season. Sure, he made very few errors, but he also has limited range.