SAN DIEGO — The Padres not only can get to a World Series without buying tickets. They can win a World Series.
If they can possess all their physical faculties into October, they are no worse than the second-best team. On bloody paper.
Sounds so insane. But it's possible. Because ...
Baseball has become a ham-footed defender and the Padres are Gale Sayers, cutting on a blade of grass, serpentining, turning upfield and scoring.
Just like that — presto! — this franchise, for so long baseball's S.S. Minnow, lost without compass, its crew motley, has become the model speedy warship, with arms and weapons galore, the future of what the game hopefully can be when it grows up.
This, from an organization I've been told lost a lot of money in The Year of COVID-19 (and may lose plenty in 2021).
This, in a city where piggy banks aren't broken. But owner Peter Seidler has left a trail of hefty busted piggies bigger than real big pigs.
The game itself has stagnated, basically motionless on and off the diamond. Meanwhile, A.J. Preller is behaving like the Fernando Tatis Jr. of general managers, outrageous, bold, gambling, stealing, while his brethren wait around for the police report before hearing the worst from the medical examiner.
Play this game inside and outside the lines with your hands on your hips and the fast ship is passing you in the night.
In about 24 hours, the Padres — if they weren't already — became serious 2021 World Series contenders (if there is a season to be played). I'm not here to say they're better than the Dodgers or the few others in the orbit, but while most everyone else is walking away from the poker table, they have the chips to win the pot — with a healthy deck
I have been here for all the good and bad Padres moments, the bad far outreaching the good. But this late December haul/heist is near the top of good.
Nothing was happening in an offseason of attrition. Suddenly, Preller shot his ship out of the fog and, seemingly through force of will rather than blasting away, grabbed his pirates booty — that's what this was, piracy — without firing a meaningful shot or giving anything significant away.
It makes me wonder what's more remarkable, that San Diego has done this — our franchises have a benign history of derring do and loose wallets — or baseball has done next to nothing this offseason.
But this is here, not there.
The Padres not only were the most exciting team last year, but one of the best. And we'll never know what might have been had their two top starters — Dinelson Lamet and Mike Clevinger — been available as they were prior to October.
Now, with Clevinger undergoing Tommy John, Lamet is said to be improving, and in a nerve twitch of time Peller traded prospects for two aces — Blake Snell from the Rays and Yu Darvish from the Cubs — to join Dinelson.
In the meantime, Preller signed coveted Korean infielder Ha-Seong Kim.
And he didn't lose much produce on his farm.
Arms. Snell won the AL Cy Young Award in 2017, Darvish was 2nd in the 2020 NL Cy Young voting, Lamet fourth. Small market? This is big box store.
The Faith is here. Two decades ago, Larry Lucchino told Padres fans to keep it.
"Keep the Faith" is a brand of vintage port. Takes about 20 years to get good. Maybe worth the wait.
