If Padres Improve, Question Is ‘How?’

I’m alarmed.

It has to do with missing persons. There are 25 to 30 of them hereabouts, and no one seems concerned. It would seem appropriate to put out an APB, or maybe send a St. Bernard.

But nothing.

Doesn’t anybody care?

Has anybody heard from the Padres?

They finished the 1987 season and disappeared. It might in fact be argued that they disappeared long before then.

Most baseball teams remain visible in the off-season. They do things to stay conversational, if not controversial. They sign free agents or they make trades or, at least, spread interesting rumors.

Not the Padres. Not this year.

After the 1987 season ended, and on through the winter meetings, Padre fans were abuzz about what the local heroes might do. They talked longingly of trades and free agent signings, but nothing happened. They started talking less and less about what the Padres might do, and more and more about what the Dodgers and Cincinnati had done.

And it got to the point where no one was talking about the Padres at all, because there was nothing to say.

What the Padres were in October, they are in February . . . and probably will be in March. That’s disturbing, because the October Padres were the last-place team in the National League West. They were better than last March’s Padres, but hardly the stuff of which pennants are woven.

In essence, the Padres are standing on a broken straight or a pair of treys.

“We’ll play these,” they are saying.

This flies in the face of history, which tells us that the beleaguered should be reinforced.

If an organization does nothing to improve itself, it can only be because it assumes it cannot be improved. If the Padres are, indeed, enjoying such a feeling of superiority, their conceit is misplaced.

Teams they must beat, particularly the Dodgers and Reds, have either dealt for or bought improvements. They have taken steps to get themselves involved in the 1988 pennant race.

The Padres, in contrast, haven’t even been the subject of lukewarm trade rumors, not that rumors alone would make an iota of difference when the season starts. But rumors would at least leave an impression that someone is home in the front office.

The problem, as I perceive it, is that the talents of Jack McKeon are being squandered. He is one of the most shrewd general managers in the business when it comes to wheeling and dealing, and yet he now seems to be much like a car salesman who cannot close a deal without leaving the room to consult with a big brother about the details.

In the Padres’ case, big brother would be Chub Feeney, the club president. Feeney was retired when the Padres hired him last summer, and it appears he’s still retired.

About the only time Feeney has surfaced this winter was to fail to negotiate an extension of Tony Gwynn’s contract. I can’t really fault him for that, not knowing the inner workings of the offers and demands. The fact remains that Gwynn does have a contract guaranteed through 1989 and optioned through 1990. He is a given.

But the Padres’ inactivity on the free agent front can be placed on the president’s doorstep. Not to pick on Detroit, but the Padres might have found uses for Kirk Gibson and/or Jack Morris. If the prez suggested as much to Joan Kroc, I suspect she would have coughed up the bucks.

Gibson, as it turned out, ended up with the villainous Dodgers, and Morris stayed in Detroit, of all places.

And so the Padres now have what they had a few months ago.

Questions.

By the dozen.

Do they have a starting rotation?

If so, who is in it?

Is there a pitcher on the staff who can blossom into a 10-game winner?

Can anyone win as many as 11? (No one did in ’87.)

Can Eric Show come back from 8-16? Andy Hawkins from 3-10?

Is Greg Booker still with the team?

Is Jimmy Jones ready to hold nine-run leads?

Can Benito Santiago match (or come close to matching) his rookie year?

Is John Kruk really a .313 hitter?

Who is this year’s bright new face at second base? And how long will it take Tim Flannery to run him out?

Who’s going to give Garry Templeton’s nagging knees a break at shortstop? Or is a limping Templeton better than anyone else on the roster with two good knees?

Can Chris Brown stay healthy? Who’s playing third base when Brown isn’t? Or who will Brown replace during his brief periods on the able-bodied list?

Who’s playing left field?

Who’s playing center field?

Are Randell Byers, Shawn Abner, Stan Jefferson and Shane Mack all the same person? If not, are they interchangeable?

What ever happened to Kurt Bevacqua?

Abbott and Costello would love this team.

Of course, there may be wonderful answers to these questions. All the youngsters just may mature at once, and the veterans just may stay healthy and the Padres just may astonish the world with their second National League pennant.

And Chub Feeney would be named “executive of the year” for doing absolutely nothing in spite of pressure from an unenlightened media.

Meanwhile, there appears to be only one tangible plus coming from a do-nothing off-season. The Padres can save some money on printing costs. They can use last year’s programs.