Offseason Review: The San Diego Padres

Chase Headley: Future team Captain?

The Padres are doing exactly what they need to do, which is to say "absolutely nothing."  San Diego is well aware of the fact that they aren't really in a position to contend in the NL West right now, so they are biding their time. Spare re-signing Jason Marquis and bringing in veteran righty Freddy Garcia, there hasn't been much at all coming out of the Padres camp.  Internally, they have been smart. Bud Black has had relative success considering the relatively modest talent he's had to work with, so his options were picked up through 2015.

One important development is San Diego's interest in extending third basemen Chase Headley. Headley put up numbers that threw him in to the back end of the MVP discussion in 2012 and has the youth and reputation to repeat those numbers for several more years.  In an era of baseball where even lower budget teams are doing what they can to retain their homegrown stars (ie: the Rays extending Evan Longoria) extending Headley may be a good idea.  If he sustains his efforts he'll be an above average starting third basemen, but if he continues to improve he'll be bordering on superstar status.

Other than that, the Pads have been quiet, and reasonably so. San Francisco just won the World Series and Los Angeles is baring their gold plated fangs, so the theme at Petco Park is "rebuild, rebuild, rebuild."  Anything else would be unreasonable. The Padres are going to finish second last in their division, but several games ahead of the miserable Rockies.

Contract Corner: Elvis Andrus, Jeff Suppan

2010 All Star Elvis Andrus

Yesterday the Texas Rangers and shortstop Elvis Andrus avoided arbitration by coming to an agreement on a three year 14.4MM contract. This is a pretty sensible contract, albeit questionable in necessity. The three year deal eats all of his arbitration seasons doesn't delay his free agency, so it kind of begs the question as to why this would even need to happen? With promising prospect Jurickson Profar waiting in the wings it seems a little premature to lock someone down at a position that's as difficult to draft suitors for as shortstop. Still, three years gives both players time to prove their  respective roles in the organization. If I had to guess, they wanted to lock proven all-star Elvis Andrus down in case his value increases without gambling a whole lot of cash.  All in all I'd say it's a win.

As a Brewer's fan seeing this dingus' face pisses me off, but I guess I get it. Depth is important for any franchise and it won't be bad for Padres coming up to get some pointers from ol' soup but don't expect much in terms of quality.  Apparently he'll make almost a mil if he makes the majors but given his close to 5 ERA last year in Kansas City's minors, I wouldn't count on it. You can pretty much copy and paste the review of this deal for Russell Branyan and Mike Cameron's contracts using mediocre offensive/defensive stats. Wasn't even thinking about the fact that they are all ex-Brewers.