It's not often you hear of a contract extension to a manager who is 11 games under .500 and 16 1/2 games out of first place on July 3. The San Diego Padres, however, aren't in position to complain about the job done by Bud Black up to this point. Thus, the Padres are planning to extend his contract in the coming weeks, though there is no word for how long.
Heading into the season, expectations were at a probable all-time low in San Diego. Under new ownership, management has been ordered to trim payroll, which led the expectation that ace pitcher Jake Peavy would be traded. The team, notably the back-end of the pitching rotation, seemed to be a patchwork group.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... That the Phillies are grateful to be in the NL East.
The division got out-scored 37-7 on Friday as the AL East swept in interleague play. And it's only the rest of the division's mediocrity keeping Philadelphia in first by a half-game.
After their 11th loss in 13 games, 6-1 to the Blue Jays as Ricky Romero didn't allow a hit in the first six innings, the Phillies held a team meeting.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... The Mariners have plummeted back to reality.
Seattle lost Thursday when closer Brandon Morrow allowed three runs in the ninth inning on a pair of Texas homers. The night before, the Mariners scored a run in the top of the 11th before Morrow gave up two in the bottom of the inning.
"I don't know about shell-shocked, but those are two games we definitely could have used," reliever David Aardsma said. "To have two wins pulled away from us like that is tough, no matter who you're playing, but especially against a team in your division."
Special note for Fanhouse regulars: Today's Dugout is taken from a story that happened a few days ago, so if you're the type who can only process immediately new information please direct your attention to whatever shows up above this posting.
Now! Earlier this week we learned an important lesson: If Albert Pujols hits a line drive into the middle of your face and it not only doesn't kill you, but you can wake up the next morning without any mental retardation, you are immortal. Chris Young should throw himself off the side of a building to see if it stuck, and if it did, he should use his newfound powers to fight crime in the old city. Oh, and as a secondary note, if you SEE Pujols hit a line drive that hits somebody in the middle of the face, don't stand in front of him when he's trying to run. It's not going to end well for you. Just move out of the way. You might get the business from your teammates or booed by the fans, but at least you'll be able to move around for the next eight weeks.
There is so much freaking room on the San Diego Padres bandwagon these days, it is kind of awkward. You could jump on the back, look around and you might not even see General Manager Kevin Towers. And with the recent news that Jake Peavy is bound for the disabled list, it should come as no surprise that there are shake-ups a-plenty coming around the bend. Assuming you base that on Towers' little post game freak out last night.
'We're bad, no question about it,' Towers said Monday. 'You can't just say it's early in the season. I haven't seen any signs in the last couple weeks that lead me to believe or our fans to believe we're going to turn this thing around.
'It's up to the guys in this clubhouse. I am certainly not going to watch this for four more months.'
[...] 'You're looking for even a little bit of progress,' Towers said. 'It's like Groundhog's Day, over and over.'
+1 for the Bill Murray reference. -10 for throwing your squad under the buss and acting like it's not your job to assemble the team. But wait, there's more!
'I hear morale is good, but I can't believe it's good,' he said. 'When you hear the morale is good, then we've got major issues. If morale is good, then they have no expectations of getting better. That's not what championship ballclubs are about.
'Morale should be horrible right now.'
What rules the shouting!!! Sorry, I got caught up in the late 90's slapstick references. Look, Towers is panicking and lobbing Bud Black's nearly fired corpse underneath the nearest set of moving wheels. It's kind of embarrassing, yeah, but what do you expect? The guy wants to protect his job.
The news just keeps getting better for the Padres, owners of the worst record in baseball, as it turns out the elbow issue that caused Jake Peavy to miss his start Monday will send him to the DL, possibly for an extended period of time.
Apparently, no one's really sure just how long he will be there either.
Manager Bud Black said the club has no timetable for Peavy's return.
"Hopefully," Peavy said Monday night, "this will be a short stint. Best-case scenario, maybe I miss a few starts."
A hiatus of at least six weeks could be more like it, based on Peavy's other stay on the DL, a six-week term in 2004 because of a tendon strain near his elbow. Peavy said this ailment is closer to the ligament than the 2004 ailment was. "That is a concern," he said.
Peavy's injury -- "short stint" and "few starts" really don't jive by the way -- buys GM Kevin Towers and manager Bud Black some more time. Yankees expected, the Fathers are probably the biggest underperformers of the 2008 season so far, and both guys are on the hot seat. Now, with the staff ace sidelined, they can at least claim some sort of excuse. It is still very likely that you see a firesale of the veteran talent and some early callups from the farm system though, as this season is basically white-flagged as of today.
Fantasy Spin: Nightmare for Peavy's owners, but you just can't do much at this point other than hold onto him. He's a Cy Young winner and one of the best pitchers in the game when he's healthy, so unless you're getting full value (you won't) or at the very least a decent return (good luck with that), trading him is not worth it, given the lack of timetable.
The selections seem completely arbitrary: as my collegue Pat Lackey pointed out over email, it seems odd that Black is getting the honor given that San Diego currently has the worst record in baseball and completely collapsed down the stretch last year. The selection of Leyland is equally confusing given Detroit's slow start.
Not to go all Dusty Baker on you here, but I tend to think that regardless of how many pitches the guy on the mound has racked up in a game, if he is throwing a no hitter, he deserves a chance to stay in there and keep toeing the rubber until either he gives up a hit, he throws the no-no or his arm falls off. Bud Blackdoes not see things from the same point of view that I do. From his MLB.com chat with the fans, re: Randy Wolf:
crittergp: Would you have pulled Randy Wolfe [sic] yesterday after 7 innings if he had still been throwing a no hitter?
Black: Good question. Yes I would have. The reason being, first of all, Randy's pitch count was getting to that point where I felt he was being pushed physically. The early innings were quite taxing on him. Coming off shoulder surgery in September, I didn't deem it necessary for him to try to throw a no-hitter at the expense of risking a pitcher who might be tiring into his 130th to 140th pitch to go nine innings. In the back of my mind, I was hoping for a combined no-hitter, but it is so tough to throw one at any level.
Bear in mind now, that the San Diego Padres, in the history of their franchise, do not have a no hitter. And Randy Wolf would have gotten one too, were it not for those nosy Baseball Tonight kids. (Quick aside: is there anything worse than their constant look-ins at no-no's? Could you possibly jinx them anymore, Karl?)
Actually, I guess in this case, he wouldn't have. Granted, Wolf does not seem like the type of guy that's going to keep a team off the board for an entire nine innings -- especially a team like the Rockies -- but he came darn close. And Black's line of thinking is pretty reasonable actually. Wolf had 112 pitches through seven innings (with one hit, obviously) but you gotta think he'd be pretty furious getting pulled only six outs off such a huge accomplishment.
Your answers are probably no, and no for the Rockies, but yes for baseball. In Monday's live blog of the game, Mullet noted that Matt Holliday said post-game he had no idea if he touched home upon scoring the game-winning run on a Jamey Carroll RBI sac fly in the 13th. Ever the Rockie hater, Mark Kiszla led his column saying Holliday still hadn't touched home. He also offered this quote from Holliday:
"The umpire called me safe, that's all I know," Holliday said in a Rockies clubhouse drenched in champagne. "I don't even know what happened on the play, to tell the truth."
Padre manager Bud Black said he thought Holliday did touch the plate, but Black was probably still in shock that Trevor Hoffman, the all-time saves leader, had blown consecutive playoff berth-clinching opportunities. With so much riding on one call, I say instant replay was necessary to make the proper judgment.
Tim Kurkjian on ESPN argued after the game that instant replay would have ruined the great reaction and celebration in Denver. True. But the Padres got jobbed in a game they never lost. If Holliday's called out, that's a double play, and Hoffman just needs to get Hawpe out to send it to the 14th. It's also ironic that none other than Rockies manager Clint Hurdle was calling for instant replay earlier in the year. Were instant replay in effect, Garrett Atkins would have been awarded a home run in the 7th, and the Rox would have had the game-winning run taken away in the 13th.
It's kind of hard to sum up my thoughts on the recent Milton Bradley incident more succinctly than fellow FanHouse purveyor Matt Watson did in this headline, especially since we now know that in the process of arguing with the umpire, he managed to tear his ACL. It does seem as though Bradley is to blame for his destroyed leg, but Bud Black must have shrunk a foot after realizing what he inadvertently did.
So, Milton Bradley did something stupid again. We can't really know for sure what exactly was said, but given Mr. Bradley's predilection toward referencing high-school-level reading in his diatribes, I can only assume that this exchange was more of the same. After hours of tedious lip-reading and conjecture, I have done my best to reconstruct it in chat-room format. I'm almost certain that it's completely accurate.
It's not often you hear of a contract extension to a manager who is 11 games under .500 and 16 1/2 games out of first place on July 3. The San Diego Padres, however, aren't in position to complain about the job done by Bud Black up to this point. Thus, the Padres are planning to extend his contract in the coming weeks, though there is no word for how long. 
Starting Five
Special note for Fanhouse regulars: 
There is so much freaking room on the San Diego Padres bandwagon these days, it is kind of awkward. You could jump on the back, look around and you might not even see General Manager 
The news just keeps getting better for the Padres, owners of the worst record in baseball, as it turns out the elbow issue that caused 
Major League Baseball 
Not to go all 
It's kind of hard to sum up my thoughts on the recent 
