Meet the Padres, America's Team

SAN DIEGO -- The NFL has the Dallas Cowboys as America's Team, which is fine if you like an egomaniac owner and Big As Texas excess.

As America struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, maybe it's time to praise frugality and industry in the sports world. Baseball boasts a bargain-happy, low-ego team that should resonate with Americans sweating to meet the next mortgage payment or pay the next doctor's bill.

Meet the San Diego Padres, who rank next-to-last in payroll and are as flamboyant as a Wal-Mart greeter yet lead the National League with a 60-40 record.

Admittedly, there's the small matter of America not knowing the Padres exist.

ESPN and Fox TV have yet to broadcast any of the team's home games.

Equally unimpressed are pundits at Sports Illustrated and FoxSports.com. They recently dismissed the team's playoff chances, each with the certitude of a snooty Wall Street analyst trashing a mom-and-pop donut business.

Here at West Coast Bias, we offer fish tacos, pleasing surf and a few statistics as counterpoint.

Over the last 162 games, which equates to a full season, the Padres are 97-65. Chew on that one with your breakfast hash.



Owners of the NL's best road mark and a 32-20 record at home, the Padres have nearly a 70% chance of holding on for their first National League West title since 2006, based on the Baseball Prospectus postseason odds report fed by a computer simulation run a million times.

And the league's pastry cart will roll past again, presenting the Padres with three more games with the Pirates (36-65), nine with the Diamondbacks (37-65) and several more against clubs with overpaid ballplayers.

"You've got to take them seriously," said Dodgers manager Joe Torre, whose club dropped the series in San Diego on Thursday with a 3-2 defeat, slotting third-place Los Angeles, the two-time defending champ of the division, seven games behind the Padres.

Just like they've treated the Padres as a whole, many critics likely will pooh-pooh the team's trade on Thursday that will bring Miguel Tejada to San Diego for Friday's game against the Marlins. Maybe Tejada is another washed-up ballplayer who faded after being linked to performance-enhancing drugs.

Tejada will be playing shortstop at least part of the time for the Padres, which promptly sparked skepticism from Jim Bowden, the former Nationals GM. Now a pundit, Bowden said the team is imperiling its defense-first formula by entrusting Tejada at his former position.

True, Tejada is 36 and hasn't played shortstop this year.

Padres players, though, were ecstatic with the move, and given what they've accomplished, disregard them at your own peril.

The way the Padres players see it, defensive reliability and a winning-is-all-that-matters mentality are the new market efficiencies, and Tejada aces both of those tests.

"He's going to be perfect for this ballclub," said utility man Jerry Hairston Jr., a former teammate of Tejada's. "He is one of the best guys I've ever been around."

"He's going to be perfect for this ballclub. He is one of the best guys I've ever been around."
- Jerry Hairston Jr.
on Miguel Tejada Tejada's ugly defensive range numbers with the Astros in 2009 make sabermetricians gack.

But the Padres believe he'll be more reliable than speedy sophomore Everth Cabrera.

Reliability is a big deal to the Padres, and becomes more important as the pressure mounts. No one made a big deal about it, but the only game the Padres lost to the Dodgers this week resulted from a two-run single that got past Cabrera, whose positioning wasn't spot-on. The lad has a bright future and will stay with the Padres for now, but he also was being force-fed major league duty after skipping both Double-A and Triple-A. Tejada has forgotten more major league games than Cabrera has played.

"All we really need is for [Tejada] to make a routine play," said first-baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who has won Gold Gloves the last two years. "We don't need anything extraordinary."

Gonzalez noted that the team's pitching and smarts have a way of making all infielders look better, provided those fielders can throw accurately, which had become a minor issue for Cabrera.

"We position ourselves in the right place, and the ball is hit nearby most of the time," Gonzalez said. "We haven't made a lot of spectacular plays this year. We've just always been in the right place, and that goes because the pitchers can execute their pitches."

Tejada's right-handed bat also drove the trade, which sent Double-A pitcher Wynn Pelzer to Baltimore and netted the Orioles about $1.1 million in salary relief.

The Padres expect Tejada to deliver smart at-bats, likely as the hitter behind Gonzalez in the lineup. Like every Padres hitter, he will not concern himself with his statistics, which already are subpar (.670 on-base and slugging percentage) and could be further dampened by the team's large ballpark and coastal air patterns.

"There's no set way to pitch to him," said Gonzalez, who fits that description perfectly. "You just can't say I'm going to throw sliders and get him out. Or, you can't say I'm going bust him in with a fastball. He makes adjustments. You might be able to get him to swing and miss at one pitch. Throw it again, and he's going to be all over it."



The Padres aren't done shopping. They're always looking for pitching. They're still searching for a hitter who can boost their success against right-handed pitchers.

Yet even with the Tejada purchase, their payroll remains under $40 million, which is striking considering that the Yankees are paying $53 million to the left side of their infield, Alex Rodriguez ($32 million) and Derek Jeter ($21 million). No wonder a few baseball player agents are rooting against the Padres, who if they win the West would give other owners a good reason to cut ballplayer salaries.

The way Padres players describe it, if Gonzalez and teammates such as 22-year-old ace Mat Latos had accrued enough big league time to reach free agency by now, their own payroll would be much higher.

"There are some teams that go young that are terrible," said Hairston Jr., who collected a World Series ring with the Yankees last year. "This team is young and talented. And the front office did a great job of tailoring the team to the ballpark. This ain't a hitters' ballpark. The front office knew that and got guys to catch the ball and run the ball down in the outfield."

Great defense generally prevails, no matter the sport, said both Torre and Hairston Jr.

Less known is that the Padres' offense has evolved into one that's average, or perhaps better than average within the stale NL when ballpark factors are applied to the raw data.

The Padres still have a lot of work to do, what with the Giants trailing them by only 3 1/2 games and drawing on similar strengths. Should the Padres win enough to bring Big Media to San Diego, Gonzalez will be asked for the umpteenth time to explain the great mystery of their success, which really is no mystery at all.

"Pay attention," he said. "You'll see. That's all there is to it. We play the game of baseball the way it's supposed to be played. I don't care what level you play at. If you play baseball the way it's supposed to be played, you're going to win a lot of games."