Joyner Takes Big Step Up for the Padres

Nothing against Kansas City, says Wally Joyner, who enjoyed living in Missouri for four years and loved playing for Bob Boone in 1995.

But coming as it did after six years with the Angels, he regards that tenure with the Royals “as a step sideways.”

“Not a step forward or backward,” says Joyner, now the first baseman for the San Diego Padres.

He was acquired in a December trade for second baseman Bip Roberts, the first deal by new San Diego General Manager Kevin Towers, a former teammate of Joyner’s at Brigham Young.

Towers’ goal in taking over a team that was the most improved in the National League last year and was still competing with the Dodgers for the Western Division lead in September, was to enhance the defense, power and on-base percentage.

He failed in a bid to sign free agents Ron Gant and Craig Biggio, but took major strides toward accomplishing his goals.

He improved the defense, on-base percentage and run production (if not the power per se) by trading for Joyner and signing Rickey Henderson as a free agent.

A step forward? Definitely, said Joyner.

“It’s definitely exciting to come back to Southern California with a contender,” he said. A team capable of continuing to play the way it has, he added.

Amid the euphoria of early April, the Padres are leading the division, off to one of the best starts in franchise history.

And Joyner, through Friday, was batting .531, making a mockery of the adjustment to a new league and new pitchers.

No one expects the average to stay that high--the Padres will leave that to Tony Gwynn--but Joyner’s 10-year consistency is such that Towers could predict what he was getting.

A .300-plus average, the general manager said, 80 or more runs batted in, a solid on-base percentage and a first baseman “who would suck up everything. I mean, we hadn’t had a legitimate defensive first baseman in a long time,” possibly since the retirement of Steve Garvey.

Joyner led major league first basemen in fielding percentage last year. He has never won a Gold Glove, surprisingly, but the Padres have four players who have: left fielder Henderson, right fielder Gwynn, center fielder Steve Finley and third baseman Ken Caminiti, a human vacuum of whom batting coach Merv Rettenmund said, “At this point in the season, he has more saves than any pitcher in the league.”

Joyner batted .310 with 28 doubles, 12 homers and 83 RBIs in his final season with the Royals, which is characteristic of the way it has been since his spectacular debut as first base successor to Rod Carew with the Angels in 1986.

He hit 22 homers and drove in 100 runs that year and hit 34 homers with 117 RBIs in 1987. He has not hit more than 21 homers since, but he had tried to tell people he was not really a home run hitter. Anaheim was abuzz over WallyWorld at the time and no one paid attention to his disclaimers.

A series of contract hassles ultimately eroded the relationship between Joyner and owner Jackie Autry, leading to his free-agent departure.

Contract concerns also led to his departure from Kansas City, where the Royals have pared the payroll commensurate to one of baseball’s smallest markets.

After both the 1994 and ’95 seasons, Joyner volunteered to restructure a five-year contract he had signed after leaving the Angels if it would help the Royals retain him for a longer period or trade him.

They accepted on the latter basis, and Joyner signed with the Padres for $7.25 million through 1997, with the club having a 1998 option that could make the deal worth $10 million.

Joyner hits the way the Padres generally do and the way the respected Rettenmund preaches: with patience, soft hands, use the whole field, make the pitcher work.

“I’m not the type player you build a club around,” Joyner said. “I don’t create a club, but I enhance a club. I think I’ll have the opportunity in this lineup to drive in a lot of runs, and I’m confident I’ll continue to do that. Our strength is that we can keep a rally going and score a lot of runs without hitting a lot of home runs, although we’ll hit some at times.”

Joyner bats behind Henderson, Finley, Gwynn and Caminiti, and ahead of Brad Ausmus, Andujar Cedeno and Jody Reed.

By any yardstick, it’s a big step from the anonymity of the rebuilding Royals, but for Joyner, moving up and moving forward, one of the best things about it is that “No one here is pushing for the limelight, and everyone roots for everyone else.”

HIT PARADE

The limelight? Gwynn doesn’t have to push for it. He is off to another illuminating start.

On Tuesday night, against the Florida Marlins, the Padres’ hit machine passed Mickey Mantle and tied Pie Traynor for 81st place on the career list at 2,416. He passed Traynor on Wednesday night, added two hits against Greg Maddux on Thursday (Gwynn has a .443 career average against the four-time Cy Young Award winner) and through 10 games was on a pace to collect an astounding 275 hits in 1996.

But no comparisons, please. No more questions about 2,500 hits or 3,000 or how high on the list he hopes to climb.

“I’ve accomplished just about everything of an individual nature that I’m going to accomplish,” Gwynn said Thursday. “I’ve won six batting titles and I won’t rule out another, but I’m not going to win a home run title or an RBI title, and I probably won’t win an MVP award. It’s always been ‘Tony, can you do this?’ or ‘Tony, can you do that?’ It’s always been me, me, me, and the focus now should be we, we, we.

“We have a team capable of winning the division, and this is the first time in a long time I can say it and mean it. We have 25 players, a manager, coaches and trainers trying to accomplish something that hasn’t been done here since 1984 [the only time the Padres won a division title]. This is not about what Tony Gwynn can do. We’re beyond that. It’s about what the team can do.”

ICE BREAKER

The siege of rainouts, whiteouts and chill-outs accompanying the earliest start in major league history have sent industry leaders back to the drawing board. The choice, given an extra round of playoffs, was starting during the first week of April or playing into November.

“We have to come up with a better solution,” acting Commissioner Bud Selig said. “We don’t want a repeat of this.”

There is no easy solution, however.

--Start later and finish in November? Networks abhor the idea of baseball interrupting their prime-time scheduling that late into the new TV season. Besides, it’s the Fall Classic, not the Winter Classic.

--More doubleheaders? Owners oppose losing single-game revenue and believe there is not enough pitching to sustain doubleheaders. There was only one scheduled before the weather postponements.

--A 154-game schedule? Owners would take doubleheaders before losing revenue from eight games.

--Leave it as is but play the bulk of the early schedule in domed stadiums and Sun Belt cities? No team wants to play a large chunk of its home schedule in April and May for two reasons: Financially, teams would prefer to wait until schools are out. Competitively, they don’t want to face an equally large chunk of road games in September, when the race may be at stake.

“The things we’re doing require an extraordinary amount of careful study,” Dodger owner Peter O’Malley said, referring to enacted and proposed innovations and suggesting, perhaps, that baseball has put the cart before the horse in some cases.

“You can’t keep adding layers of playoffs when there’s no way of adding another month in the middle of summer,” he said.

MINOR ADDITION

It will be the first minor league game in Los Angeles County since the Dodgers moved West in 1957, putting the Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars out of business.

It will be played in the first baseball stadium built in L.A. County since Dodger Stadium opened in 1962.

It’s Tuesday night’s California League game between the Lancaster JetHawks and Visalia Oaks at the Hangar, Lancaster’s new $14-million, 4,500-seat ballpark and the latest addition to the Cal League’s refurbished Southern Division, which includes new stadiums in Adelanto, Rancho Cucamonga, Lake Elsinore and, by mid-June, San Bernardino.

Lancaster stepped up when Riverside refused to, prompting the Pilots, Class-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, to move.

“There was heated debate [among politicians and others] in regard to construction of the stadium, but the fan response has been overwhelming,” Dan Hubbard, the JetHawks’ public relations director, said of Lancaster Municipal Stadium.

Characteristic of that response was a two-week holiday boutique during which the JetHawks sold more than 500 caps.

JetHawks? The Hangar? Links to Antelope Valley’s aerospace industry.

NAMES AND NUMBERS

--Marlin Manager Rene Lachemann, on watching Gwynn pass Mantle and Traynor: “He’s hitting .500 and out taking early batting practice. What a story, his work ethic. I wish everybody would take a look at that and see what this guy does, although extra batting practice is not going to make you Tony Gwynn.”

--About the Texas Rangers’ 8-2 start: Of the 346 teams that started 7-3 or better since 1900, 111 won a pennant or division title. However, the Rangers started 9-1 in 1989 and finished fourth in the American League West.

--After three weeks of individual staff meetings, joint technical reviews and (what sources say have been productive) one-on-one sessions between union leader Donald Fehr and management representative Randy Levine relating to both the owners’ revenue-sharing plan given to the union on March 21 and a bargaining proposal of that day in which the owners moved off their previous tax rates and thresholds, formal negotiations resume this week. Both sides say the possibility of a May settlement should be determined during these talks.