The Diamond Fan

With Memorial day fast approaching, it is not too early to begin considering which teams may have already played themselves into “wait ’til next year” mode.  This season one need look no further than the West Coast, home of what are easily the two most disappointing teams in baseball: The Mariners and the Padres.

The Mariners are 18-30 as of today; the worst record in the American League.  They are 5-15 in May: 2-1 against San Diego, 3-14 against everybody else.  They have scored more than four runs only four times all month, and two of those games were losses (by scores of 13-12 and 12-8).  The team OBP of .309 is the worst in the league, and the team ERA of 4.60 is third worst in the league.  36 year old Raul Ibanez and 34 year old Ichiro Suzuki are the only really effective hitters, and Fleix Hernandez and Eric Bedard the only two effective starters.  The bullpen has been decent, but JJ Putz does not get enough leads to protect to make much of a difference.

In short, the Mariners at this point are the very definition of hopeless, and quite a bit of work needs to be done to get them into rebuilding mode.  The trade of potential future star Adam Jones in the Bedard trade is looking like a bad deal.  Bedard is not enough to get this team into contention now or in the near future, and Jones will be producing somewhere long after Bedard is past his peak effectiveness.

Things are not much better in San Diego.  The team OBP is .304, worst in the majors.  The pitching is somewhat better at a 4.40 ERA, but then again Petco Park is known as a good ballpark for pitchers, so 10th in the league is not all that great.

The saving grace for the Padres as compared to Seattle is that there is some decent young talent on the team.  Adrian Gonzalez, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Khalil Greene are productive regulars under age 30, and starting pitchers Jake Peavy and Chris Young are 27 and 29 respectively.  But there is not a lot in the Minor League pipeline, so the team is not super-well positioned for the future.  This season is quite a fall from three years of playoff or near-playoff caliber teams.

For two franchises that came into the 2008 season expecting to complete for a pennant, these two teams are in sad shape.

Tony Gwynn has long been one of my favorite players. By the time he came up to the big leagues in the early 80s I was a committed Dodgers fan, but I still loved to see him hit; just an amazing hitter, who on his better days seemed almost impossible to get out. And while his hitting rightly garners most of the attention, he was a fine all around ballplayer as well: good speed on the bases and solid defensively.

One of the most memorable games I’ve ever attended was a game between the Padres and the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium in which Tony figured prominently.  I don’t remember the exact year, but Orel Hershiser was in his prime and pitched for the Dodgers that night. He was on his game and almost unhittable. In fact, he faced the minimum 27 batters that night. The only Padre to reach base was Tony Gwynn, who did it twice: once with a base hit and once with a walk. Tony was erased on a double play and caught stealing, and the Dodgers won on Hershiser’s great performance (I think the score was 2-0). A most memorable game, as I said, featuring terrific performances by two truly great players.

I got to see Tony play a number of other times, too, and always loved watching him hit. When I started collecting baseball cards with my then very young sons in the mid-90s, the player I chose to collect was Tony Gwynn. I have a pretty nice little collection of Tony Gwynn cards (about 300 or so)  featuring a complete run of his Topps base cards and several autographs and game-used memorabilia cards.

I was delighted to see that mlb.com has produced a nice video tribute to Mr. Gwynn, Tony Gwynn: The Making of a Hall of Famer, and naturally I shelled out the $4 to download the video to watch on my computer. It is a good retrospective that covers his life and career; nicely done and it really shows the human side of a great player and very likable man. I’m really glad that he has taken his well-deserved place in the Hall of Fame, and glad that I had a chance to watch him play.

Thanks, Tony! You are one of the guys who make baseball the special game that it is.