No Calm in San Diego Forecast

The San Diego Padres are about to complete their second consecutive season in the depths of the National League West--next to last in 1999, last this year and not likely to surface significantly in 2001.

“I’m not raising a white flag and not saying we can’t be competitive at all, but right now we’re a couple years away from being a serious competitor and contender,” General Manager Kevin Towers said. “We’re behind the eight ball until we get into our new park.

“I mean, this is one of the toughest and biggest spending divisions in baseball. Three of the teams [Arizona, Colorado and San Francisco] have new parks, and the Dodgers have a renovated park and unlimited resources.”

We know about the Dodgers and their unlimited resources. Right now they’re challenging the Padres for the division cellar and the major league lead in errors. They are a $98-million mess, with the possibility that both General Manager Kevin Malone and Manager Davey Johnson will be fired only two years after being hired.

Neither Towers nor Manager Bruce Bochy will be fired in San Diego. The Padres won a National League pennant two years ago. No one is calling the organization a mess now, although there are people in and out of the industry who are tempted.

Put it this way: There are problems in paradise--on and off the field--and that eight ball the Padres are candidly behind may be the size of a medicine ball.

“Since ‘98,” Towers said, “our goal has been to get younger and to stockpile as many arms as possible in the system. We want to make progress every year moving into the new park.

“We lost a lot of players to injuries this year, but we should have a better record than last year and we’ll do it with a younger team.”

The Padres won 74 games last season and went into Saturday’s game with 72 wins. Nothing to brag about, and Towers isn’t, although he would be justified in claiming it would have been better if it hadn’t been for a numbing array of injuries.

The Padres have used 54 players, tying a National League record. They have used 28 pitchers and 15 rookies. They lost Tony Gwynn, set-up man Steve Montgomery and starting pitchers Sterling Hitchcock, Brian Boehringer, Carlton Loewer and Woody Williams for significant portions of the season.

Now, there are a series of questions:

Who’s left? What’s next?

How do the Padres keep getting better en route to the new ballpark with a farm system lacking position prospects ready for the big leagues in 2001 and an owner-mandated payroll reduction to counter what club President Larry Lucchino described this week as the “ongoing and intolerable losses,” necessitating another cash call on owners for $20 million to cover expenses--a bill that was due Friday?

In addition, will the downtown ballpark really open in July 2002, or could it be delayed a year or longer, as someone familiar with the situation speculated?

Although construction continues, the city has elected not to issue the bonds to cover their taxpayer-approved obligation until all legal appeals have been resolved.

There are also differing opinions regarding the seriousness of federal and state investigations into the possibility that council member Valerie Stallings, a leading supporter of the project, received lucrative stock recommendations from club owner John Moores before the council voted approval. Neither Moores nor Lucchino returned calls this week, but Lucchino told reporters in San Diego that the latest cash call meant that he and the other owners, had now had to contribute more than $107 million to cover expenses since paying $84 million to buy the team in 1994.

Cynics, of course, would and did question the timing of this latest move, saying it was aimed strictly at affecting future council decisions by underscoring the club’s conviction it can’t survive in Qualcomm Stadium. The same cynics would and did cite figures recently released by management’s own blue-ribbon economic committee showing that the Padres had revenue of almost $80 million in 1999 compared to a modest payroll of under $50 million and they would and did point out how Moores will emerge as owner/landlord of much of the redeveloped area around the new park, a deal potentially worth billions to him.

Motivations aside, Lucchino insisted that player compensation was now 65% to 70% of club expenses and the new cash call will force the Padres to significantly reduce their $55-million payroll next year. He refused to say by how much, but estimates are $10 million to $15 million, continuing a retrenchment that began with the departures of Kevin Brown, Steve Finley and Ken Caminiti after the ’98 season.

Some of it will be easy. The Padres, for instance, will no longer have to pay the vacationing Randy Myers $6 million per year. Some of it will be tougher.

Do the Padres pick up Gwynn’s $6-million option with no guarantee regarding his surgically repaired knee?

Do they pick up the $4-million option on second baseman Bret Boone with no assurance they could then trade him and/or develop a second baseman to replace him?

Can they trade for catcher Jason Kendall and meet his contract demands?

Do they continue to invest $1 million or more in frustrating outfielder Ruben Rivera?

Can they go into a season with Desi Relaford, Phil Nevin and Damian Jackson as starting infielders considering they are 1-2-3 in the NL in errors, with Boone also among second base leaders in errors?

Can they count on Hitchcock, Boehringer, Loewer and Montgomery all coming back 100%?

Can pitchers Adam Eaton and Kevin Walker legitimately make the jump from double-A, and is Mike Darr ready to play right field on a full-time basis if Gwynn can’t?

Are they about to give up on touted catcher Ben Davis, another in a series of top draft disappointments?

And can they continue to ask productive veterans like Nevin and Ryan Klesko and Trevor Hoffman to tolerate a building process that 1) saw Bochy forced to carry a Rule 5 outfielder who wasn’t ready for the big leagues this year, 2) now faces another payroll setback and 3) may be extended by a delay in the opening of their new park?

For the Padres, that eight ball threatens to roll on.