What's wrong with the San Diego Padres? And can we just be done with it already?

What has been the biggest good news story since the O'Malley group has taken over?

Here are a few nominees:

The Padres brought in the fences and Phil's BBQ will be served in the park. The biggest on the field baseball good news? Jedd Gyorko doesn't appear to suck.

And that's it. This is the "splash" of a new ownership group.

Among the billion bad news and non-news stories since the O'Malleys took over: John Moores steals $200 million from the team, Time Warner Cable refuses to carry Padres games, No new signings, Chase Headley injured, Mat Latos is a star, Edinson Volquez considered the worst ace in the league, Yasmani Grandal suspended for PED, Andrew Cashner hurts his hand, Anthony Rizzo is super exciting, Saturdays are actually Sundays sometimes, Everybody else injured, internet troll manages to mock the entire club and associate the current team with every bad thing that's happened since 1969... And the press covers it nationally.

Literally. That happened.

So it's hard for me to argue when Jonah Keri, who we can generally agree is pretty smart, considers the Padres the second worst team in baseball. His analysis is basically what I summed up here and it's nothing new to regular followers of the blog, but it really begs the question, "What are the O'Malleys doing?" I mean really. There isn't even a steady stream of "Things are looking up" communication happening. When Moorad came in and Tom Garfinkel started in on his road show, The Blueprint to Improvement made sense. You basically have a three pronged attack for building a team:

1. Fix the minor league system.
2. Avoid getting locked up in idiotic no-trade clauses attached to expensive long term deals.
3. Free agency is for suckers.

If you admit to yourself that you're not ever going to have as much money as the guy sitting next to you, don't hang out in auction houses. Grow your own. Be smart. Your money should be on the future possibilities of young talent, not on lottery tickets attached to old dudes hoping to eke out another 6 months of baseball.

But now here we are and when we start out the season hard, it's tough to even get angry considering how pathetic it is. If I were the Padres Front Office, I would not be as worried about the loud Padres Fan who doesn't attend games and doesn't plan on attending games. Nor would I necessarily worry so much about the long time season ticket holder who likes to brag about how long they've had their season tickets and is currently disgruntled. I would worry more about the Steady Fan who's slowly fading. The messages are being heard by those people, but Steady Fan isn't the type to whine and complain. Steady Fan is just more apt to disappear and not be seen, taking his/her steady fanhood off to a different hobby.

Me? I'll vent for now and tomorrow I'll enjoy the home opener and wait for the good news start rolling in. If you've truly stuck with the Padres for the last couple years, then you've paid more than enough karma to deserve some good news. Or you've just steadily gone and done something else like the ghost of Winfield's Ghost.