Friar Forecast wonders how to "beat" Petco. Krasovic threw out the suggestion recently that Great Pitching should be paired with Hitters Ballpark to maximize the effectiveness of the Great Pitching Team. Hmmmmmm... From MB:
I'm not sure if that's right or if the theory holds true at all, but it's interesting to think about. So what if you build a park that favors fly ball hitters. Load your team with high % fly ball hitters and ground ball pitchers, right? I guess the point is to build a quirky park because it's easier to take advantage of, beyond the normal advantage that comes with playing at home. So the question comes back to, how do the Padres do that with Petco?
I think the best way to answer this question is through a modified SWOT analysis. Lemme see if I can remember the old business school skills. Basically, there are four strategies to follow and they depend on what your current situation is. What we have with the Padres and Petco (in overly simple terms) is:Strengths
Great pitching
Weaknesses
Old outfield
Offensive depth
Opportunities
Pitchers ballpark for half our games
Every other ballpark we gotta play in
Threats
Pitchers ballpark for half our games
Every other ballpark we gotta play in
Now, there are obviously more in each category, and I'm open to what others see as inherent threats and opportunities at Petco and as strengths and weaknesses in the team. However, for our purposes, let's go with these and build our SWOT matrix:
| Strengths | Weaknesses | |
| Opportunities | Great pitching in a great pitchers park and in every other ballpark in the league | Old outfielders and a lack of offensive depth in a great pitchers park and at every other ballpark in the league. |
| Threats | Basically the same as above... | ditto |
OK... This is showing off my "glass half full" mentality as the threats and the opportunities are pretty much the same thing to me. What we have to do now is figure out which quadrant we want to focus on. Strictly speaking, this isn't really a proper SWOT analysis, but a makeshift impersonation of one. Therefore, I leave it to you. What makes sense for the Padres? Currently, we seem to be capitalizing on our strengths coupled with the opportunity of the pitchers park to try to blow teams out of the water, but our home record sucks. Should we instead focus on our weaknesses to mitigate the threats? We could always do something like bring the fences in and remove a threat, which isn't something you're normally able to do in a traditional SWOT analysis, but heck, we're play pretending, right? What should we be doing?