The story of redemption is as old as, well, stories. It's even more compelling than the story of success, because of the added intrigue of the fall.
If A.J. Preller's signing and trading binge preceding the 2015 season had catapulted the San Diego Padres to the playoffs, that would have been noteworthy: A "small market" team with a history of mediocrity (or worse) opens the vault and imports a division title.
Instead, what Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, Andrew Cashner, James Shields and Derek Norris delivered was the familiar stench of ineptitude, three games worse than the previous year's 85-loss season.
The recent head-scratching trade of Matt Kemp to Atlanta for Hector Olivera -- a 31-year-old washout with a domestic abuse suspension -- amounts to the final unconditional surrender following that brief episode, which unraveled less than halfway through its first season. With Kemp's departure -- a pure salary dump; Olivera was designated for assignment immediately -- and not withstanding the continued employment in SoCal of catcher Norris and his .191 BA, the slate has been wiped clean.
The Padres have banked some prospects in the process, saved some cash to allocate elsewhere and continue their merry prance through the bottom of the NL West, 15 games under .500.
So the future is next year for the Padres, as it almost always has been, except for one thing: the speed with which GM Preller acknowledged the failure of his plan and pivoted to a new one. In the space of a year-and-a-half he has course-corrected 180 degrees. That demonstrates remarkable maturity and aptitude, even in a business where your successes and failures are displayed publicly in the standings every day.
In 2013, the Toronto Blue Jays pushed their chips to the middle of the table, acquiring Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey, Melky Cabrera, Mark Buehrle and others for a run at the sagging AL East. At 74-88, the gamble went bust, and it only improved a little the next year when the Jays finished 83-79.
The team stayed together, though, and with Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion anchoring the lineup, and of course the addition of MVP Josh Donaldson, Toronto catapulted to the top of the AL standings in 2015. The moves made by GM Alex Anthopoulos in the 2013 took two years to pay dividends.
Cross the continent and a similar scenario might appear to be playing out in San Diego. The Padres' new GM, A.J. Preller, collected a bulk set of spare parts -- Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel -- for renewed relevance in the NL West. The Friars were becoming MLB's version of the Premier League's Everton -- a perennial also-ran rarely good or bad enough to be noticed.
They got noticed -- for stinking up the joint, just as the Blue Jays had, skidding to the same 74-88 result. Kemp and Myers were mostly a disaster, Kimbrel suffered his worst season (he was merely brilliant) and Upton performed as advertised.
Now in 2016, are the Priests poised to become this year's Blue Jay? No, no they are not. Here's why.
Kemp and Myers did not stumble last season; they are both broken. Once the favorite toys in the chest -- Myers is a former Rookie of the Year and Kemp had his 2011 MVP stolen by Ryan Braun's doping -- neither is that anymore. Injuries have reduced Kemp to a replacement player -- 1.7 WAR the last two seasons -- and the league has caught on to Myers and his free-swinging ways. Each is a disaster in the field, Kemp yet more cringe-inducing than Myers.
Worse, Kimbrel is gone, traded for prospects, as are Joaquin Benoit and Ian Kennedy, with little on the farm to replace them. Upton, the team's lone salvation, has moved on too, and who can blame him? San Diego did ink reliever Ryan Madson to an overstuffed three-year deal, but is otherwise without much in the way of assets.
Worse, unlike the AL East, the NL West is ascendant. The Dodgers still have a pile of talent and money. The Giants are salivating at the even year with Johnny Cueto aboard. Arizona added Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller to a squad already showing signs of emergence. The Padres are toast in that crowd.
Where the Blue Jays took a step forward their second year after the big moves, the Padres are more likely to step back. This is a team that needs to admit it is in complete rebuild and get about jettisoning all the veteran talent it can. The alternative is to remain like Everton, neither champion nor relegation fodder, just there, filling up the standings.
Our dads love us unconditionally, no matter how messed up we are. Baseball's dads, the Padres, appear to be applying paternal love with a vengeance this Hot Stove season. The question is, will that make the team any better?
General Manager A.J. Preller took the reins of the franchise this winter and apparently has a mandate to compete in a division that includes the Brinks truck in Los Angeles and the defending champs in the Bay.
Last year, and seemingly every year prior, the Friars trailed all of baseball in plate crossings en route to another losing campaign. Preller has attempted to remedy that with a Tasmanian Devil imitation. He's made more moves than Allied Van Lines*, swapping out fringe players and farmhands for outfielders Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Justin Upton, and catcher Derek Norris, then signing hurlers Josh Johnson and Brandon Morrow.
*This is an awesome reference to the seminal '80s parody band, Blotto, and their signature song, I Want To Be A Lifeguard. And by "reference" I mean "theft" of the line "Summer blonds revealing tan lines, I'll make more moves than Allied Van Lines." After you click on this link, listen to this and this and be schooled.
What do all these players have in common? They all live in the Land of Lost Toys. Take Johnson, a once-upon-a-time Marlins star, who's twirled fewer than 82 innings in two of his last three seasons, posting ERAs ranging from 1.64 to 6.20. Or Norris, who busted out to a .292/.402/.477 first half of 2014 and then cratered to .245/.314/.324 second half as part of the team-wide collapse in Oakland.
Or Myers, who lit the AL on fire his first season en route to the Rookie of the Year award and then stunk up the joint during his sophomore campaign last year, bleeding 180 points of OPS before fracturing his wrist, along with much of his promise.
Of the above-named group, only Morrow, a fourth-starter type, has failed to post a sine-curve career, mostly because he's never really peaked, unless you consider his 10-save performance in '08 a crowning achievement.
Well, there is Upton, a certifiable star who's just 26. He's also a one-year rental who will be flipped to a contender if the experiment lurches out of the gate.
Padre fans could be forgiven for feeling like the glass is half full. First, the glass has been merely moist the last few years. Second, Preller has bought all of these shiny trinkets on sale. After all, the best player he's relinquished in these deals, by a wide margin, has been Yasmani Grandal, a good-looking young backstop with fledgling on-base skills and pop, but not exactly Buster Posey's profile.
While the Giants get stripped by the rest of MLB and the Dodgers throw money into the wind, Preller might just be on to something. Or he might be reprising the crash-and-burn Miami Marlins of 2012. If you're a San Diegan, have faith. After all, father knows best.
