It’s a lot easier to think of teams as physical entities. Not organizations run by disparate groups of people, providing entertainment for millions, but individuals. If corporations can be people, with individual rights, then franchises can be people with individual feelings.
The Padres didn’t sell, and the revamped Blue Jays can explain why
Are the Padres foolish for holding onto their assets, or are they playing a longer game?
Denis Poroy/Getty Images
If you’re still with me, imagine how it feels to be the Padres right now. They were the It Team of the offseason. A.J. Preller was shooting transactions out of his carbon-fiber transaction suit as he flew over San Diego, saving the city from certain boredom. Everyone was amazed, enthralled, gasping. It was a defiant circus act, but exactly the defiant circus act the franchise needed.
They’re on the ground, now, this year’s Padres. FanGraphs has them at less than a one-percent chance of making the National League Division Series, and just over a one-percent chance of making the Wild Card Game. They held at the trade deadline, ostensibly because they were still hoping to contend. Now they’re limbless and on the ground, saying, “All right. We’ll call it a draw.” And when they look up, they see those damned Blue Jays, soaring overhead.
The Blue Jays are the It Team now. They were under .500 just last week, and now they’re the ones tossing transactions to the hungry masses. They will never lose. They have built a phalanx of All-Stars, and as everyone keeps pointing out, they’re not satisfied with the second wild card spot. A quarter of their remaining games are against the Yankees. How do the fans feel about this?
“It’s fun, city’s buzzing,” said Mark Buehrle, who threw seven solid-enough innings Thursday as the Jays won 9-3 to seal a four-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins. “You got that feeling every day coming to the field, ‘Who’s next? ... ‘Whose butt we going to kick today?’ That’s a good feeling. We haven’t had that the couple years I’ve been here.”
It’s fun. City’s buzzing. It’s fun. City’s buzzing. The Padres, this physical entity, want to punch the team saying that. Want to punch them right in the nose. Or beak. Or whatever. These good-timey vibes were theirs, by right, and now another team has them.
It’s at this point that we’re supposed to laugh at Preller and the Padres for not selling, for believing that they still had a shot. Ben Reiter of Sports Illustrated tried to figure out what Preller was thinking, and this was the first comment:
Yeah, dummy. All they have to do is win 20 straight games. Why exchange assets that are declining in value for assets that might increase in value? Some people, man ...
And if we’re supposed to laugh at Preller for standing pat, we should take some time to check in with the players they gave up last offseason. Let’s see, Joe Ross is thriving in Washington, and he looks like a potential star. Trea Turner is playing extremely well in Triple-A, which will make it fantastically easy for the Nationals to fill their shortstop hole, which happens to be the biggest hole in the Padres’ organization, too. Matt Wisler is in the majors with the Braves (with mixed results), and Yasmani Grandal made the All-Star team for the Dodgers. Jesse Hahn is hurt, but that’s OK. He won’t be arbitration-eligible for a couple years, so the A’s can be patient.
If there were a way to CTRL-Z the offseason, the Padres would have done it on July 31. Get the prospects back. Cut/paste Matt Kemp and James Shields onto another roster. Try again in the offseason. That would have been the plan, except they weren’t going to get that kind of value back. They weren’t going to get an All-Star catcher, future rotation stalwart and top-tier shortstop prospect back for what they had to offer. So they held onto all of it.
With that out of our system, let’s return to the Blue Jays for a moment. When they made their monster moves, I concern-trolled a bit and wondered if it was the right play, considering they were behind two different teams for the second wild card spot, and the Yankees were out of reach. They’re now leading the race for the second wild card, and the Yankees most certainly aren’t out of reach. I’m dumb; they’re smart.
These aren’t the Blue Jays that apply to the Padres, though. We don’t know how it ends for this year’s Jays team, if it’s slightly tempered pain or pure glory. The lessons from the 2015 Blue Jays team can wait.
The lessons from the 2013 Blue Jays really, really apply, though. You remember the ‘13 Blue Jays, right? They were the offseason champions, the team that emptied the farm to get R.A. Dickey and jimmied up their payroll to get Jose Reyes, Buehrle, and Josh Johnson, becoming a hip World Series pick. They had a season of pain. Dickey was disappointing, as were a lot of the other additions. They had 50 wins at the deadline -- the same as the ‘15 Padres, and they had just dumped a lot of their talent and capital to take their shot.
They were quiet at that deadline, too.
Was it a mistake? Should they have dumped what they had, looking to get back the next Noah Syndergaard? Maybe, but lalalala, they can’t hear you over the sound of DAVID PRICE and TROY TULOWITZKI. The buzz is back in Toronto.
Now contrast that with the It Team of the 2012 offseason, the Miami Marlins. They are, not coincidentally, the team that made the Blue Jays the It Team the following year. The Marlins made moves and deals, hoping to set themselves up as a beacon of excitement for the entire city, if not the entire state.
And as soon as there was a rough patch, they threw their hands up and said, “Whoa! This contending stuff is hard! And expensive! Get these guys out of here!” They reversed course after one season. You could give them Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Chris Sale, and Mike Trout, and I’m not sure if you have the buzz that the Blue Jays have this year. I’m not sure if the Marlins would have it next year, even if they were 20 games up in first. The whiplash from all-in to rebuild, year after year, has left the fans awfully sore, to the point where it’s hard to care about the next exciting acquisition.
That’s why the Padres didn’t dismantle the team at the deadline. That’s why they were OK with a compensation pick for Justin Upton, rather than whatever the equivalent was at the trade deadline. That’s why they kept Craig Kimbrel, even though a closer on a bad team is like a nice Le Creuset dutch oven in a filthy kitchen filled with roaches and licorice. There’s something so very final about the PARDON OUR DUST, WE’RE REMODELING sign that’s hung in front of the ballpark. It’s why it took the Phillies so long, too long, to admit it.
The Blue Jays never admitted it and kept pressing every offseason, reloading instead of rebuilding, and the simmering hope of their fans allowed everything to boil over after an exciting deadline and a frenetic week of winning. That’s what the Padres are shooting for -- another shot. They built excitement before the season, drawing nearly 5,000 more fans per game, on average, and they don’t want to toss water on it.
The Padres had a choice to reload or rebuild. They chose reload, while at the same time expressing a (probably PR-minded) belief that they could still contend in 2015. Even if that’s not likely, there’s still a chance they know exactly what they’re doing. Look at the Blue Jays, past and present, if you need to see why they’re doing it.
★★★
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