A little more about the KT Pizza Feed. First off though, I should apologize that Jon and I didn't go around and proactively try to meet everybody. We're a couple of wallflowers when we're together. And also, we told the peeps we did meet that we'd hit Imperial Palace (Imperial Garden?) after the game, but we left early, checked the place out, and Jon got nervous and didn't want to wait. Inside there was a dude on the keyboard doing a pretty good rendition of Benny and the Jets and the place looked appropriately seedy to be meeting members of the Padres Blog Patrol, but...
1. Jon gets a little freaked out hanging out in places like that.
2. Jess just brought a kitty home that day and we wanted to go and meet it.
I say "it" because we thought "it" was a girl at first and now it looks like it might be a boy. I got to name it Kimi, after Kimi Raikkonen, F1 driver, even though we thought it was a girl at first because Kimi's an appropriately unisex name. If we had known it was a boy right off, I would have wanted to name him Dave Roberts.
So that's why we didn't stick around to hang out with the peeps after the game. We'll have to do another game again, Baseball Prospectus or no, and actually maybe get pizza beforehand fo' rizzo.
John Evans provides us with a link to the UT forum thread about the event. Plenty of good info in there. I had meant to highlight more of what KT was talking about. Here we go:
- KT thinks the Cesars could be with the big club in two years. Am I remembering that, correctly? I think I am.
- KT likes Ramon, but not so much to block Kottaras long term. At least that's how I interpreted what he was saying about not wanting to do a long term contract with Ramon. I think a three year deal would be fair. Ramon doesn't have aspirations to retire a Padre, does he? Maybe he does.
- Speaking of Ramons. KT had a chance to bring Ramon Vasquez back to the Padres and almost pulled the trigger until his coaches all made comments about Vasquez's attitude before he left San Diego the last time. Calling the organization a group of liars, calling out Bochy and threatening to pee in the Gatorade jugs. Kevin decided that the clubhouse didn't need guys like that.
- KT's not a Nevin guy. At least the way I read it. He was tight lipped about Nevin other than to basically say that, yes, he actually has tried to move that guy. I'll tell you a bit of bonus info though. Rememnber when Nevin was at the height of his whining about Petco last year? Remember the game where he gestured up at the GM's box like, "look at this crappy park"? Apparently, KT wasn't beyond dropping a few F-bombs on your boy Nevin to the tune of, "quit yer bitchin'". I got that bonus info from a secret source with a very firm handshake that's also friends with one of our favorite readers.
- KT is a big Nady guy. Wants to find a spot for that guy. Has also brought up the idea that Nady could play third base, but has acquiesced to Bochy that Nady would need to work on his skills at third before playing there regularly. KT's a firm believer that Nady's a good enough athlete to take over the position. He thinks the defensive loss would be outweighed by the bigger bat.
- The bigger bat would have to be bigger than Sean Burroughs' bat, which isn't hard. Towers is a very funny person and went on at length about how weird Sean Burroughs looks when he's running and swinging and how he doesn't use his lower body properly and what not. My take is that Sean's such a natural athlete, that he's just not very open to coaching or more specifically that a lesser athlete could possibly know what's best for him. At least that's what I think.
- The draft. KT thinks that this is probably the best draft that he's been a part of with the Padres. We can expect an impact from this draft by 2007 if his expectations are met.
- He complimented several GMs. Mentioned his "inner circle" of GMs. All of which we're probably familiar with just because of the deals that usually get done. Cashman, Beane, Epstein... I'm forgetting a few.
- He singled out Tampa Bay as being crazy difficult to make deals with which he credits as part of the reason why they're never going to really amount to anything. They just don't seem willing to do what it takes to improve.
- KT enjoys his relationship with Bochy. He also noted how difficult it would probably be to have Dusty Baker as a manager considering how much input Dusty would likely want in putting the team together. He says that he and Bochy work pretty well off of each other though there are times when he has to sit down and explain what he's shooting for with certain players. Nady's a good recent example.
Big thanks to Baseball Prospectus, Paul Swydan & Dave Pease, and especially Kevin Towers for being so rad.