Ouch, a double whammy in today's U/T...
...first there's news of last night's 3-2 loss to Houston, which dropped the Pads to 5 back in the NL West race. And then there's an article describing how Jake Peavy doesn't expect to be on the team over the long term.
Peavy basically says that he doesn't think the Padres will step up and pay him what he'll be worth when his current contract expires. While his comments on the subject are certainly part of his negotiating strategy, he raises some interesting questions about the goals of Padres management.
Might our beloved team be financially tuned to deliver fits of playoff excitement but fall short of World Series gold? Does the unspoken strategy in the Padres front office involve putting up enough cash to field a contender but to stop short of paying for the firepower to win it all? Jake Peavy seems to think so. From today's article:
"I'm more concerned about the team making a conscious effort to win a world championship. At times, I don't know if they've gone out on a limb to make it happen. I believe the big philosophy is right. But the first question I'd ask is, 'Can you give me your word that we're going to make an effort to win the World Series?'
“Honestly, they've done a phenomenal job with what they've spent. But we're being asked at a $58 million payroll to compete against the Dodgers and Giants . . . and we're doing it.
“But if we had made a little bit more of a financial commitment to winning, I think we could have already won a World Series.”
The Padres rank 24th among the 30 major league teams in player payroll this season.
posted by Shane at
9:09 AM
2 Comments:
Interesting to read a bunch of the posts on the U-T comments section for that article -- the 3 contracts that they mention are Zambrano, Buerle, and Zito. Are the posters so dumb that they believe the Padres would be better by having signed Zito, or Buerle? Does everyone really think that Zambrano is going to be an effective pitcher 5 or 6 years down the road?
The fact remains that research shows pitchers are very dangerous investments, due to the injury risk and high rate of attrition for high-performance players. If you were investing in highly volatile stocks, would you try to tie yourself up for 7 years? Especially if you modify the analogy to include the fact that "highly volatile" means high risk of implosion, not merely fluctuation.
Spending money just to spend it != spending money wisely. I think the Padres do need to make a strong run at the high priced players, even at market prices, but overpaying just because the market is dry results in dumb moves like the Zito deal.
Keep up the blogging guys, I'm enjoying it!
August 21, 2007 2:16 PM
Can anyone say Kevin Brown?
August 21, 2007 6:33 PM
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