Take the Padres, please!

The San Diego Padres have to be the most pitiful team in baseball. The new owner, Jeff Moorad, has taken a team that won 90 games last year, in fact one game from winning the division championship and successfully reversed course, with a current record of 63-87.  Only the Houston Astros have a worse record but they sucked last year as well so we will keep them out of this conversation. The Padres have lost eight of their last ten games and seventeen of their last twenty.

How did Moorad perform this Houdini like trick? He fired a very resourceful General Manager, gunslinger Kevin Towers, a man who has catapulted the lowly Arizona Diamondbacks to the top of the standings, replacing him with a young and wet behind the ears yes man, Jed Hoyer. Jed serves as the beleaguered good cop in the Padres drama this year. He gave up our star player, Adrian Gonzalez, currently hitting .340 for the Red Sox for a bag of poop including the weak hitting pheenom Anthony Rizzo and his .143 batting average. They jettisoned all the gritty, hustling players that worked their ass off last year like Scotty Hairston and loaded up on do-nothing Ryan Ludwick types who couldn't hit in the over spacious park.

They have exactly one hitter over .300, Jesus Guzman, a first baseman with no range at a position that is already crowded. The rest of the active roster is strictly Mendoza. They have the second worse team average in baseball, hitting a collective .238. So much for building the sparkling new stadium.

Hoyer and Moorad have woefully cried out about the state of the Padres minor league system but it is all malarkey. When they have a good farm raised product, e.g. Peavy, Gonzalez or Adams, he gets jettisoned anyway. Closer and fan favorite Heath Bell was recently ignominiously put on waivers. Thanks a lot, Heath, let us kick you in the ass on the way out the door, just like Trevor.

The reality is that the Padres are one of the most profitable teams in baseball, according to Forbes Magazine and that Moorad is another Tom Werner carpetbagger getting rich off of the hapless hopes and dreams of the San Diego Padres fan. Moorad is the same skinflint who cut hometown hero Randy Johnson in Phoenix, even after he offered to take a 50% pay cut.

The Padres had the lowest payroll in baseball last year, at 32 million. They were the 19th most valuable team, valued at over 406 million dollars. They had a reputed revenue of 159 million dollars. Sounds like fat city to me. Moorad has recently served notice that nothing will change, don't look for him to spend any gelt next year either.

The Padres are under the perception that fans don't really care all that much about winning and losing, preferring to savor "the Padres Experience." Give me a break. I feel like a sucker for even casually tuning in to this team of minor league scrubs. If you can't play with the big boys, sell the team to someone who can, skinflint. Petco was built under the perception that San Diego would be fielding a major league team.

If you don't know who Moorad is, he is the ex sports agent partner of Leigh Steinberg, the wunderkind who eventually went on a long binge off the deep end. Moorad has a 12%  piece of the Diamondbacks, which was apparently sufficient until he got his own team to ruin. The owner of the Diamondbacks, Ken Kendrick is apparently not real happy with the whole situation but at least now Moorad can cheer for a winner. The rest of the Padres ownership group, at least as reported in Wikipedia, is former Dallas Cowboys QB Troy Aikman, Rancho Santa Fe businessman Wayne Seltzer, entrepreneur John McAvoy, local home builder Al Baldwin, Phoenix, AZ businessman/real estate developer Jay D.. Stein, NoCal money manager Rick Berry, CEO of Save Mart Supermarkets Bob Piccinini, cell-phone honcho John McEvoy, and Panda Restaurant CEO Tom Davin. A Texas guy, an Arizona guy, a Nocal guy, one dude from Rancho Santa Fe. Maybe a summer home...

I don't go back to Lane Field, but I am a Padres fan all the way back to Westgate Park when they were a Dodgers farm club. I don't know why we always get these lousy, sharpie, big belt buckle, little dick owners. The last guy with any integrity and a pot to piss in was Ray Kroc.

If you fall for this team's brand of b.s. you will eventually get what you deserve. Nothing.