Polarizing sports writer Scott Miller tears into the Padres again.
Marital squabble adds to Padres' woes
The '08 Padres have been sabotaged by poor personnel decisions, underperforming players, injuries, a string of disastrous drafts and, most noticeably, a change in philosophy as general manager Kevin Towers' autonomy has eroded with CEO Sandy Alderson and special assistant Paul DePodesta taking more control of baseball decisions.
It's one thing to blame Sandy but DePo too? Maybe Miller has gone too far this time.
Miller goes on to talk about the rumored payroll cut and the attempted trades of Maddux and Giles to dump their salaries. He points again to the fact that John and Becky Moores are getting divorced. The good news is he has some sources that can speak off the record with absolutely no corroboration.
Sources close to the club say each of the Moores wants to keep the Padres, a competition that should be more riveting than anything that happens to an overmatched club on the field in the near future.
So they're going to fight over the Padres, but how are the Padres going to improve? Well the only way to find out is to get information from an anonymous NL executive. Yes!
One NL executive this week said, "The only thing it appears they can do is to either overpay for a couple of big (free agents), or trade Jake Peavy for a bunch of prospects. What else can they do?"
Overpay? Big free agent? Trade? Does this NL executive know what team he's talking about? This is the Padres, we do none of those things. Miller knows though:
Overpaying -- or even paying market value -- for free agents is almost certainly out of the question under Moores, because once he parlayed the success of the Kevin Brown-Ken Caminiti-Tony Gwynn '98 Padres into inducing San Diegans to vote for a new ballpark, he never has spent as much as promised.
Ah, the promise that meant something different to every fan. Don't blame me, I wanted a new library not a new ballpark. Down with Prop C!
Also they can't trade Peavy without his consent because they hand out full no trade clauses like beach towels. So their only hope is to make sure that Peavy wants to leave. Another season like this and that shouldn't be a problem.
"I certainly think we need to look at the way we see things," Peavy says. "Evaluating whether or not we're going in the right direction."
Then as if things couldn't get any worse, Miller breaks this news:
Hoffman definitely wants to play again next season.
Yay?