It's Official---The Mets Are Unwatchable

• Mets 9-Nationals 7:

When Vinny Testaverde was playing in the NFL, his father was unable to watch the games

because he had a bad heart and got excited to the point that it was jeopardizing his health; I'm beginning to think that the Mets are going to be a proximate cause for some emergency room visits during the final week and a half of regular season play...*

*Did you know that former Van Halen frontman and failed radio talk show host David Lee Roth is an emergency medical technician? Can you imagine needing EMT assistance and seeing him standing over you?

This game was exhausting to watch and the players looked more relieved than happy that they managed to win a game over a team that's coming close to 100 losses. David Wright is a great player, but he sometimes gets into these gamelong funks in which he looks like he needs the jaws of life to extract his head from his posterior. In the top of the ninth inning, with runners at first and third and one out, he swung at a ball that was around neck high to strike out. Given that the score was 9-5 and the bullpen is in such disarray, wouldn't it have behooved Wright to choke up on the bat and try to smack the ball the other way for one at bat? I understand that's not the general job description for a number three hitter

and no one's asking him to move his hands up Jack Perconte-style six inches above the handle, but there's a time to try and whack one out of the park and there's a time to just make contact. Then he goes out on the field and, clearly thinking about and beating himself up over his failure at the plate the previous half inning, threw a ball in la-de-da fashion to first base on Lastings Milledge's routine grounder and gave the Nationals an opening that could very well have cost the Mets the game. Then there's Aaron Heilman...
It's at the point where manager Jerry Manuel can't put Heilman into any game unless the lead is eight runs or greater. This is not the time to be concerned about anyone's feelings and with the way he's performed in the bullpen over the past two seasons, the Mets are going to have to make a decision on whether to trade him or move him into the starting rotation; as for right now, he can only be used in an emergency or a major blowout. Al Reyes has been with the Mets for two weeks and hasn't gotten into a game; while I

understand that Heilman is above him on the totem pole, last night was a perfect game to put Reyes in and see what he's got. The same thing with Robert Parnell. I'll be stunned to see Heilman in another important game for the rest of the season.
This was an escape more than a win and the Mets are going to need Johan Santana to keep his pitch count low and go very deep into the game tonight not just to rest the bullpen, but because the majority of the bullpen's confidence is so shot that they can't be trusted to even hold the most comfortable of leads. They're facing a pitcher for the Nats in Tim Redding, whom they've had trouble with; but with Jose Reyes playing like he'd had a couple of Red Bulls and Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran hitting, the Mets are going to have to score early and often even with Santana pitching because they can't take any chances. (Incidentally, Delgado consciously altered his swing to try to drive an insurance run in the third inning, something Wright should take to heart.)

• Detroit 17-Texas 4:

Despite the unprecedented occurrences of two safeties to account for Texas's four points, Detroit executive Matt Millen celebrated the victory by saying, "See? Executiving isn't all that hard." Following the game, he was rewarded with a thirty-year contract extension.

• Brewers 6-Cubs 2:

Ben Sheets is a great talent, but what's his problem? In a game that the Brewers absolutely, positively had to win; with all the turmoil going on around the team after the managerial change amid a collapse; and with C.C. Sabathia having lost the night before, Sheets pulls himself out of the game after two innings with "forearm tightness"? He leaves a game that could possibly break the Brewers season if they lost it and lets their shaky bullpen bear the brunt of that pressure?
I'm not questioning someone else's injuries; nor am I saying that Sheets is imagining these maladies, but what must his teammates think of him after he pulls something like this only two weeks after yanking himself from a game against the Mets after five dominant innings in a game the Brewers eventually lost and served to start the current tailspin? What do the players

around the rest of the majors think when they watch SportsCenter or read the game recaps and see that Sheets pulled himself out of another game? It's going to be interesting to see who ponies up the cash to sign Sheets long-term after the season because with antics like this, he's a major risk to be the next Carl Pavano or Erik Bedard.
With all of this baggage, a team considering Sheets might be better off going after someone like Bronson Arroyo, who doesn't have half of Sheets's talent, but goes out there and pitches no matter what without complaint; teammates appreciate and respect that far more than they admire unused talent. If Sheets is begging out of games now as free agency is weeks away, what's going to

happen when he has an $80-120 million guaranteed contract to fall back on? Then how many injuries are going to crop up that are going to limit his innings and give him the excuse to pull himself from games? I said a couple of weeks ago that I'd risk signing Sheets with the idea that he'd find his groove and stay healthy with a different organization, but after this September display, I can't in good conscience recommend that any team risk such a huge amount of money on such a soft pitcher.

• Is this the time to be blogging?

I'm trying to imagine what none other than George Steinbrenner would be doing if one of his top baseball "experts" were sitting around blogging about his team as they're marching inexorably towards 100 losses, but then George would've fired the entire staff months ago. I

know what I would tell our old friend, Padres executive Paul DePodesta, regarding his blog, and it'd go something like this: "You have a choice, you can either work here in the baseball department trying to fix this mess you helped create, or you can sit around and write a blog; if you wanna work here, then work here and take that laptop and fling it out the window. Otherwise, beat it. Let me know by the morning what you wanna do."

• Sean Hannity's interview with Governor Sarah Palin:

I only saw bits and pieces of it, but from what I did see, Hannity looked as if he were seconds away from yanking Sarah's shoes off and giving her a foot massage.

Paul DePodesta's Pretentious, Self-Serving Blog And Other Stories

• The best laid plans of the pompous and inept:

I've just about given up trying to understand how even the most ardent and determined Moneyball advocates can still defend Paul DePodesta and the Padres. No one has provided

any explanation----and it doesn't even have to be a good one, something would be welcome no matter how absurd----for his on paper and in practice ineptitude in not only working for the Padres, but in his time as the GM of the Dodgers. I'm not going to get into any conspiracy theories, but for Moneyball believers, who put so much emphasis on results over appearances, there has to be an agenda in defending the likes of DePodesta whose main attribute as an executive seems to be that he's one of them.
I was looking at his blog and besides the fact that it's pompous, condescending and simply boring (to quote Ball Four, his writing would "gag a maggot"), it's also delusional and self-serving. If I were team chairman John Moores, I would tell DePodesta to shitcan the blog and get to work and making the team that he helped formulate less of a laughingstock. I honestly believe that on the day he started the blog----May 9th----and the Padres were sitting at 12-23, he truly believed that the team, as constructed, was going to experience a "market correction" and end up at the top of the NL West standings and have a great shot at winning a championship.
I'm not throwing stones here because I too fell, in part, for the press coverage of how "smart" the Padres were; how they built an economical and structured team formulated to not only win but to make money, by looking past their drastically flawed roster and barren minor league system to pick them to finish at

79-83. There were credible people who picked them to win the World Series, so it's not a narrowly made mistake. Now, as the team has stumbled into a worst-case-scenario, there's little left for DePodesta and his defenders to do but repeatedly attempt to extol his virtues as an executive and try to find ways to promulgate the myth that the team is "building for the future".
They're building for the future with Greg Maddux. They're building for the future with Brian Giles. They're building for the future with Trevor Hoffman (who blew another game last night). They're building for the future with journeymen like Scott Hairston, Jody Gerut, Michael "The Right Hook" Barrett. They're building for the future alright----if it's the decaying wasteland from The Terminator films and the post-apocalyptic scenario.
His blog is agenda-driven and without any firm concept of reality. It would be refreshing if he openly said the words, "Y'know what? It took awhile for me to wake up to the reality, but this team's crud." Instead, we get reports on the minor league system and the Latin American free agent signees; we get professorial primers on the post-trading deadline ability to make deals by getting players through waivers; we get delusions and defense of the indefensible; and we get DePodesta increasingly functioning as the Padres front man which, mark my words, will result in current GM Kevin Towers being allowed to leave and DePodesta taking over as GM after the season. And I'm still waiting for a realistic defense of the Padres front office, but one doesn't appear to be forthcoming. Perhaps it's because no one could come up with one----even one that's patently absurd and unbelievable to even the most intense sabermetricians----because the results are on paper and in practice for all to see on a daily basis.

• Angels 1-Yankees 0:

The Angels were hot before they got Mark Teixeira and now they look even more

energized. That's one of the aspects of making a bold and somewhat risky move like the Angels made in getting a player like Teixeira that the sabermetricians don't appreciate and account for when they say that Teixeira's acquisition is only for the post-season because they've already won the division; it's a signal to the team that the organization is serious about going for it NOW!!! That they're jolting the roster with electricity because they believe in what they have and needed that one piece to win a championship.

Now, it may not work; there's every possibility that the Angels run into a hot pitcher like a Joba Chambelain or Jon Lester; or a young team that doesn't know any better and jumps into the playoffs fearless and unconcerned about pressure like the Rays and the Angels get bounced in the first round before they know what happened; but the signal was sent that the organization is in it to win it this year and that adds a spark like the Angels are experiencing since the trade.
On the Yankees side, they've run into that hot team and are getting caught in the crossfire, but it must be frustrating to get such a good performance from a guy like Sidney Ponson only to see it wasted. He has only so many good games in him and they have to win them when they get them.

• Rangers fire two coaches:

I'm starting to like Texas Rangers GM Jon Daniels. First he impressed me by dumping the aforementioned Ponson while he was pitching well for them because he was causing trouble within the team and now he dumps pitching coach Mark Connor and bullpen coach Dom Chiti

to get a head start on next season when the Rangers might have a chance to contend if their pitching improves.
These moves may have come from the notoriously deliberate and ruthless Nolan Ryan, but it makes sense for the Rangers to do this now to give the new coaches----Andy Hawkins and Jim Colborn----a head start to look at what's there and what can be salvaged before deciding whom to keep and whom to dump. They're playing well and may finish over .500, but if their intent is to be in a genuine playoff race next year, they're going to have to straighten out or improve their pitching and letting the new coaches evaluate makes plenty of sense.
On another note, here's the clip taken verbatim from the Associated Press report on the firings on ESPN:

Rangers manager Ron Washington called the firings "the toughest thing I've ever had to be a part of. But sometimes you've got to go in a different direction."vf cbhngvfbnvcfvbhnm,vg

It makes perfect sense until the last----words? prayers? spells? chants?----I don't know what that last thing means. Is it some kind of code? Was Washington so broken up that he started muttering incoherently? Or did the reporter's cat walk across the keyboard and accidentally press "SUBMIT" before the story was done? Is it a way to send the fired coaches to another dimension so no one can hear their story? Any ideas? Anyone?

• More on the Brett Fav...ruh saga:

Brett Fav..ruh clearly has no motivation to preserve his legacy as the ultimate gamer (which was pretty absurd to begin with and more of a media creation than objective reality) if he's really thinking about taking the Packers offer of $20 million to stay away from camp and to stay retired----ESPN Story.
First, he has to have enough money to live like a king for the rest of his life with or without the $20 million that the Packers are offering. Second, either he wants to play or he doesn't; is

that money going to replace his desire to play football somewhere? Anywhere? Part of Fav...ruh's appeal to the masses was that he always looked like he'd be just as happy playing on a sandlot with four spectators as he would in front of 50,000 maniacs who wanted to coronate him at home, or kill him on the road. Now the desire to play is absorbed by money?
If he has any interest in retaining some shred of his reputation, he has to come back and play be it with the Jets, Bucs, Vikings, Packers or whoever; if he doesn't, he'll have tarnished his well-crafted image, perhaps beyond all repair if he hasn't already by considering the offer to begin with. So much for the simple, country guy who just wants to play football for the joy it brings him and his fans, who are probably becoming more and more disenchanted with their hero every time this story takes another embarrassing turn. And I don't need to see any weepy press conferences when he receives the check to stay away either.

The Momentum Theory Loses...Well, Loses Momentum

• Mets 6-Phillies 3:

Jim Leyland and Tony La Russa, two men who combined probably know more in-the-trenches baseball than any duo currently breathing, have always believed that

momentum stops and starts with the performance of the next day's starting pitcher. No matter how disheartening a loss, if the next day's starter delivers a stellar performance or just keeps their team in the game, the previous night's game is forgotten. Fans would be amazed at how quickly a professional athlete puts a poor performance behind him once the next game starts; this Mets game was a case of them facing a pitcher in Brett Myers who is at a crossroads in his career; having their entire bullpen ready for action in situations familiar to them (Billy Wagner won't get booed for awhile at least); and getting a required performance from starter John Maine of seven innings and three runs allowed under a reasonable pitch total of 104.
For every self-styled expert who thinks he's got his fingers on the pulse of an athlete like Mike Francesa from The Mike and the Mad Dog radio show, and who treated the loss on Tuesday like an epic catastrophe, one would think they'd learn by now that momentum comes from performance. If a player is slumping that's one thing, but the game on Tuesday could also be seen as one in which the Mets dominated the Phillies, but didn't execute when necessary for tack-on runs and their bullpen gacked up a lead because they weren't mentally ready to replace their All Star closer even for one game.
As for the Phillies, they're going to have to come to a solution with Myers and quick. There's something not right. The minor league assignment hasn't fixed much of anything that

was wrong with him and either he's hurt or he was affected more by the sudden switch in roles to closer last season than anyone realizes. They traded for Joe Blanton ostensibly to replace Adam Eaton in the rotation, but Myers hasn't been any more reliable than Eaton; if Myers isn't hurt and Tom Gordon is out for a lengthy period, they may have to keep Eaton in the rotation and use Myers back in the bullpen. Myers was reluctant to move back into the rotation anyway and his problem may be nothing more than the drug-like adrenaline affects of pitching almost every day in games the team has to win. J.A. Happ acquitted himself well in his two starts replacing Myers and Kris Benson is still down in the minors (his numbers aren't good and I don't even know if he's healthy), so there are options if they have to move Myers to the bullpen and don't want Eaton in the rotation either. If Myers is physically healthy, then the Phillies have to find out what's going on with him because they're going to need him to perform in some capacity if they want to make the playoffs as a division winner or Wild Card.

• Brewers 3- Cardinals 0:

In a blog on June 10th discussing the potential for C.C. Sabathia to get the Johan Santana/Barry Zito-type contract he's going to want as a free agent at the end of this season, I mentioned that the big lefty might have to go on an Orel Hershiser-style run of shutouts and

lead his team (then the Cleveland Indians) to the playoffs and World Series to guarantee the paycheck----Pinning Their Financial Hopes On The One Desperate Lunatic; well he's starting to look like he is going on such a run only he's carrying the Brewers on his broad shoulders instead of the Indians.
Three straight complete games and last night's virtuoso performance bring back memories of Hershiser's unbelievable streak; the acquisition of Sabathia for the Brewers brings back memories of the Cubs acquisition of Rick Sutcliffe from the Indians in 1984 in which Sutcliffe went 16-1 to carry the Cubs to the playoffs. Sabathia is reveling in his situation as the "hired gun" as David Cone used to like to call himself, and at this rate, he's going to hypnotize an owner to give him the money he wants.
One note about the Cardinals: it's very interesting that manager Tony La Russa allowed struggling closer Jason Isringhausen to pitch two innings and throw 31 pitches. Is La Russa planning to possibly move Isringhausen into the starting rotation or make him part of a "pieced together" starter with Todd Wellemeyer and the (possibly) returning Chris Carpenter? He's been so bad in late innings, using him for three or four innings isn't a bad idea and La Russa's got the guts to make such a move in the latter portion of a season.

• Red Sox 6-Mariners 3; Reds 9-Padres 5:

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the Seattle Mariners have been considered a poorly-constructed, leaderless and embarrassing laughingstock and both GM Bill Bavasi and manager John McLaren have been fired and team CEO Howard Lincoln is under fire while the

Padres expectations were as high, if not higher, than that of the Mariners and there's not a similar righteous indignation at their humiliating performance this year. ESPN's Rob Neyer for example (with whom I agree and disagree on many things----I agreed most recently with the confusion regarding the Randy Wolf and Jon Rauch trades; and who, after my anger induced attack on him earlier this year, was a beyond-the-call nice and reasonable guy) is still referencing Paul DePodesta as a qualified baseball guy and I do not understand it. It's one thing to have a personal affinity for a guy as Neyer clearly does with DePodesta, but that shouldn't blind one to reality. I think Omar Minaya's a nice guy and a good baseball man, but I've criticized him when warranted. How is it that the Padres are not being raked over the coals as their performance, in many ways worse than that of the Mariners, is being glossed over and ignored for the travesty it's been?

• Speaking of embarrassing travesties, is this some MTV-teen reality show, or is it two of the most revered and canonized NFL franchises and one of the most beloved (especially by the media) players in its history?

So now the Brett Fav...ruh saga has descended into accusations and denials as to whether or not he used a "Packers-issued" cell phone to talk to the Minnesota Vikings about joining

them? These big, tough football guys are acting like members of the cast of The Real World instead of the cold, calculating military-style leaders and tough and oblivious to the elements performers they're portrayed as being by the NFL.
Those that are involved with the NFL in one capacity or another like gossiping as much as any teenage girl and this absurdity is to the point where it needs a resolution because all this is doing is bringing attention to a situation that is going to drag on until it's resolved and it's just going to get more and more silly.

The Eerie Similarities Between The Padres Front Office And The Bush Administration

Strange things come into one's head at odd times; after the Padres lost another game yesterday in unique fashion----Aaron Miles hit a walk-off grand slam to win the game for the

Cardinals after the Padres came back with two runs in the top of the ninth to tie the game after Heath Bell blew a lead in the bottom of the eighth----to extend their losing streak to six games and their string of embarrassing ineptitude to 19 losses in 24. What's worse, they're not even living up to their record under the Pygmalion

Win Theorem anymore with an overall record of 37-62 and a Pygmalion Theorem Record is 39-60. It suddenly occurred to me last night, as I was watching The Pope of Greenwich Village on IFC, that there were eerie similarities between the Padres front office structure and the Bush administration.
Both are dogmatically driven, inept and historically disastrous, yet still insist that they're right and everyone else is wrong; that their view of how to run things would have worked had the delegates held their part in the bargain and done what was expected of them in their intricate theories and plans. What follows are the members of each failed management team and their counterparts:

• Vice President Dick Cheney/Padres CEO Sandy Alderson:

Both portray themselves as strong, silent believers in an ideology whose main focus is to get results. Cheney's public stance is to create democracies around the world by use of the

United States military might and thereby make the United States and its allies safer by creating allies where enemies once stood. The power, according to Cheney, should stand in a strong and unassailable executive branch led by the president and his proxies without question or objection from the inconvenient and inconsequential congress, media or voters.
Alderson, educated at Dartmouth and Harvard Law and a former Marine and an experienced executive whose modus operandi is to manipulate the strings of his subordinates from a behind-the-scenes position while not desiring credit for his work. Not wanting to hear about anything other than results, numbers and facts, he's been seen as a ruthless, corporate executive who lets nothing stand in the way of getting his operations in line with what he believes to be right.

Both have been back room operators whose previous incarnations----Cheney as defense secretary for the first President Bush (in other words, the competent one) and chief-of-staff for President Ford; Alderson as a lawyer and then GM of the Oakland Athletics, followed by stints in the commissioner's office----provided an aura of competence, evenhandedness and professionalism. It was only when they achieved a level of power and recognition that their true natures came to the forefront as did their blind adherence to unyielding principles that work in theory, but not in practice (and one would presume that both knew the theories were unlikely to work in practice, but did them anyway).
Cheney with his goal to "re-make" the Middle East and enrich his allies (radical right-wingers whose main goal in life is to accrue power and money) is seen as the "evil genius" behind the "Bush-doctrine", but is in reality a small, petty man whose main objective is to garner credit for himself and push forward his narrow agenda to benefit that small group with a sociopathic lack of concern about the consequences. Alderson desperately tried to shoehorn his way into the Moneyball story in which Billy Beane was seen as the architect and genius behind the way the Athletics organization was built. Alderson pointed out relentlessly that it was Alderson who hired Billy Beane as a scout; it was Alderson who introduced Beane to the work of Bill James; it was Alderson who demanded that the Athletics organization focus on on-base-percentage, power and a figurehead as a manager; therefore it was actually Alderson who was the true mind behind the man and Alderson who is the true genius.
The thing about these men who are supposedly "evil-geniuses" is that the truly great ones have a certain amount of charisma to them that attracts both scorn and grudging credit. In looking at such characters, all have that certain "something" that demonstrates their power

without necessitating an open exercising of it (see Vader, Darth; Lecter, Hannibal; Corleone, Michael; Lebowitz, Paul----aka New York, Prince Of).
Both men are "flexible" with the truth by using "insider's" terminology to disguise their true intent and swallowed by those who either take everything they say as gospel or are too desensitized to the subterfuge and disingenuousness to bother questioning them further. In reality, neither Cheney or Alderson have much of a persona that would attract people to them; it's their positions that get results rather than a force of personality and both have been the architects to historic disasters although they'll continue to insist that their blueprint was sound and the implementation the true failure. In other words: "Don't blame me; my ideas are brilliant, they screwed it up."

• Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld/Special Assistant for Baseball Operations Paul DePodesta:

Rumsfeld's life has been spent attaching himself to people like Cheney, trying to accrue power, attempting to imply a level of confidence and use innovation to reinvent his image as

that of an arrogant, pompous, condescending and despised bureaucrat. As defense secretary for the second time, Rumsfeld appeared to be trying to re-fight the Vietnam war, this time in Iraq and this time doing things his way by re-making the military by trusting his own theories rather than those of the experienced warriors who dared go against him. Surrounding himself with gutless armchair warriors like Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and military men who wouldn't object to his interference and lack of knowledge about that which he spoke, Rumsfeld succeeded in alienating anyone who did know what they were doing with his dogged interference and abusive intrusions to delay or prevent truly supporting the troops who were little more than vague, fungible pieces on a chess board to put forth his agenda. Humans aren't "real"; what's "real" is the plan and the focus on achieving it at any cost.
DePodesta benefited more than anyone by Moneyball as Beane's right-hand man. Hired by

the Dodgers based on owner Frank McCourt's goal of building a profitable team and helped along by his young son's starstruck gaze at DePodesta after reading the book, he took twenty months to wreck the team with his adherence to out-of-context statistics rather than what the baseball people in the organization wanted. With two horrible drafts and a series of nightmarish results in his wake, along with an pomposity that alienated everyone in Los Angeles other than those that bought into whatever his laptop spit out, he was fired by the Dodgers and landed with the Padres to take a central part in another disaster.
Both Rumsfeld and DePodesta have supporters who defend them to the last. Rumsfeld has been seen to be an innovator who tried to put ideas that will eventually work into practice by streamlining the military. DePodesta is referenced by those that are attached to stat-driven

theories for their own purposes and writes a delusional blog that has provided little nuggets such as that the Padres are "a winning team". Rumsfeld was fired (three years too late) after a hellish 2006 mid-term election for the republicans; DePodesta was dumped by the Dodgers after trashing the team and preparing to hire a manager who was "on the same page" as the front office. In parlance, that means someone who'll take short money and do what the front office tells him without question. For some unfathomable reason, DePodesta is still being presented as a possible future GM. The obvious reason is that DePodesta, like Rumsfeld, is one of "them" and is therefore qualified.

• President George W. Bush/Executive Vice President and General Manager Kevin Towers:

Bush was a well-liked and popular governor of Texas when he utilized his father's connections to make himself the inevitable presidential nominee in 2000. His "Christian

credentials", populist message and promise to restore "dignity" to the White House brought him enough centrist support to counteract a perceived lack of intelligence and experience to overcome Vice President Al Gore's woodenness and attachment to the scandals of the Clinton administration to win the electoral college and gain election even as he lost the popular vote.
Once elected, Bush did nothing in his first eight months other than go on repeated vacations. After 9/11, he became even more of a zealot for the conservative ideology espoused by his base. Bush was the front man armed with the enthusiasm for spreading democracy like a present day repeat of the Crusades without the expressed attempt to convert others to Christianity. Cheney and Rumsfeld's power behind the scenes became even more pronounced as they (and Karl Rove) guided Bush into places where his father never would have gone. In an attempt to "correct" his

father's mistakes and listen to a voice (Rumsfeld) who the senior Bush is said to despise, the younger Bush has demolished his father's legacy and become perhaps the most polarizing (and worst) president in history.
Towers was a respected GM for years before Alderson arrived and exerted his theories on the GM. For Towers it was either go along or move along and, before they hired Josh Byrnes, it appeared that Towers would escape to Arizona and the Diamondbacks. After that fell through, Towers seems to have resigned himself to working under the Alderson parameters.
Towers worked with his solid field manager in Bruce Bochy and rebuilding his team using principles of both statistics and on-field results, the Padres had a reasonable budget and willingness to bring in stars to try and win. Towers rebuilt the team after a sell-off following the

1998 World Series and again restored them to respectability and contention. After Alderson's arrival, Towers has scoured the bargain bins and tried to find whatever he could based on the budget. Their farm system is devoid of prospects and he's likely to get the blame for going along, just as Bush has. Unlike Bush, Towers will probably receive an opportunity to redeem himself as a solid baseball man in his own right after his inevitable departure, leaving the Padres to do as they wish without Towers on the firing line as the man in "charge" of an ill-thought-out train wreck.

• Former Secretary of State Colin Powell/Manager Bud Black:

Powell could have done anything with his life after leaving the military. He could have run for president himself; he could've been vice president; he could've simply chosen to go and

make himself a ton of money in private business or simply giving speeches. Instead, he decided to use his experience, likability, connections and pragmatism to be Bush's secretary of state. Powell's speech in front of the United Nations, which later was said to have contained claims that Powell himself didn't even believe, demolished all of the good will that Powell had accumulated in an exemplary life of public service.
Bud Black was respected as a player for his guts and honesty with the media, management and teammates. He was the well-liked and competent pitching coach for the world champion Angels of 2002 and was seen as such a smart baseball man that he was considered a second bench coach for Angels manager Mike Scioscia. Mentioned as a possible manager for many jobs, Black was reluctant to pull his daughters from school in Southern California and turned down opportunities to stay with the Angles. It was when the Padres job opened up that Black would

have the opportunity to show his skills as the field boss; but in the system used by the Padres, the manager is never really in control of what happens----he does as he's told, takes an entry-level contract and is easily dispatched when things go wrong.
Black's lack of managerial experience and preparedness for all the criticism that comes down on the manager mirrors the excoriation that Powell has received for being the good soldier. Black has made some egregious mistakes that have been similar to those of Powell in following orders (in a less important sense of the baseball world compared to actual war) that have haunted him and sullied his reputation. Like Powell, it's likely that if Black is removed from his duties in San Diego, he'll have to do some penance as a coach or lower level subordinate, but is likely to get another chance to be the man in charge.

In the end, both are disasters of different levels of import. The Bush administration has wrecked the economy, the reputation of the United States around the world and ravaged the military to its breaking point with its adherence to that narrow conservative agenda held by a

hard core, ruthless and disciplined few who care about what suits

their grasp at power and money. In a baseball sense, the Padres are on a level with the Bush administration. There was great hope for a team that would build a financially restrained and successful team that utilizes principles, proven by numbers, and eventually result in a new age of monetary sanity and on-field success. Sadly both have failed in a massive way and it's going to take years to clean up each mess only if competent people are put into position to do it right. In both cases, we'll know soon enough which direction the management of each intends to head. I have more faith in the American public than I would in the front office of the San Diego Padres.

A Disaster On Paper And In Practice

Since Moneyball enthusiasts are so fond of pointing to stats in their beliefs of constructing a team, here are some stats for the San Diego Padres: Team Record: 32-51; Record according to the Pygmalion Win

Theorem: 32-51; ranked 15th in the National League in runs; 2nd in strikeouts; 15th in OBP (they're a Moneyball team!); 9th in ERA; 10th in runs and hits allowed.
They were picked by numerous people----credible and not----to go as far as winning the World Series this year and while teams like the Mariners and Mets have been the object of relentless ridicule this year, no one seems to be unloading on the Padres to the degree that their performance warrants. In fact, there are still those----again, credible and not----who are trumpeting the candidacy of Padres assistant Paul DePodesta for a future GM job. It's getting difficult to come up with analogies to exemplify the silliness of even suggesting DePodesta for a top job considering the anecdotal evidence that he has neither the competence nor the right to be up for any job in baseball, let alone one in

which he's again put in charge of a team.
Manager Bud Black was almost directly responsible for the team blowing their lead in the NL West last season by allowing Jake Peavy to pitch on short rest against the Diamondbacks and hasn't shown the strategic acumen to coax more than what he's gotten from this flawed roster. As well-spoken and respected as Black is in the media, the question has to be asked: given how the team blew a playoff spot last season (similar to the Mets), and that they look like an expansion team this year, how has Black not been fired? The Moneyball ideal of having a manager do the bidding of upper management and take short money for the job also entails the front office's ability to randomly fire the manager when the team isn't performing. In this system, with this

roster, there's no way to tell whether Black would be an effective manager if he were legitimately put in charge of a team, but the evidence of his work so far indicates that he is more deserving of the ax than Willie Randolph or John Gibbons were in their respective jobs.
GM Kevin Towers isn't absolved of blame here either. It's a convenient excuse for every employee in the Moneyball system to shield blame from themselves when things go horribly wrong by hiding behind the numbers. Towers is functioning under some heavy-handed interference from team president Sandy

Alderson and payroll constraints, but he's the GM and receives credit for being "smart"; but is this the roster of a "smart" GM or organization? Are the results? The Padres can only hide behind the injury card for so long. The Angels lost their two top starting pitchers and didn't miss a beat; the Red Sox have been without a chunk of their starting rotation and the best clutch hitter since Reggie Jackson in David Ortiz and you don't hear them whining; the Yankees are hanging in there with a bunch of journeymen starting pitchers; the injury excuse can explain away some poor play, but

32-51 is what it is on paper and on the field.
As for DePodesta, what is it about him that people still insist that he's qualified to be a GM in the big leagues? Is it his Harvard degree? Is he such a charming and nice guy that people want to help him? Is it that they don't want to let go of the Moneyball ideal that the system is "better" than the way other teams go about running their teams when it's being disproved by the day by the repeated failures it's spawned? It reminds me of the democratic political consultant Bob Shrum. He's touted as an "expert" and introduced as a democratic consultant as if the mere designation is supposed to justify his position and imply expertise; but the man has never won one presidential campaign in which he was involved----not one. The list of losers Shrum has been involved with is a vast

wasteland of democratic hopefuls who were dispatched----Dick Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore and John Kerry. One-by-one they lost, all of them. Yet Shrum's writing books about his work and given some form of credibility. Is it because people like him or because he's somehow convinced others with charts, graphs and numbers as to why he's been right all along but was unable to convince the people who matter----voters----of his brilliance?
Karl Rove is sleazy, Machiavellian and repulsive; he looks like the guy in the khaki raincoat who just left the adult bookstore and is skulking away to try and avoid detection, but he has one important attribute to validate his political standing----he wins; and I can guarantee you that he would be just as effective working for the

democrats as he's been working for the republicans. It's fine to stand on beliefs and principles as people like DePodesta seem to with the Moneyball system, but in the end someone has to be responsible for getting results. Adaptability and getting things done are more important than being liked. After DePodesta's nightmarish tenure with the Dodgers and this train wreck in San Diego, how is he still being promoted for a GM job? It's an honest question for which I'm still waiting for an answer. I don't expect one anytime soon.
The one thing that the Padres are fortunate about is that the fans in San Diego are perfectly willing to move along with such a disastrous team because the weather and laid back atmosphere of the town itself precludes such angry calls for someone's head as would be heard in New York, Philadelphia or Boston. They can go along their merry way with a team that, right now, looks like it could lose 100 games and

continue to try and convince the public that it's just a matter of a tweak here and there and things will resume as they were in the past few years, but the truth is right there in the numbers and on the field regardless of what they use as rationale for this nightmare. That the fans can easily say, "The Padres are terrible? Well, Chargers training camp is coming soon and until then, we can just go to the beach" is saving them from the rightful indignation that they deserve and that's part of the problem.