Fourteen years ago, John Moores arrived in San Diego to restore the Padres, to restore respectability and hope for a competitive future to the franchise that had just pawned off Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, Tony Fernandez and others in an embarrassing and dark time that will forever be known as the Fire Sale.
Moores was not part of Major League Baseball at the time he bought the Padres, and in those days before Google, I recall going upstairs to the library at The San Diego Union-Tribune -- I covered the Padres for the paper back then -- and asking the research staff for help to gather information on a John Moores story. Not John Moore, I said, but John Moores.
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His backstory seemed like something out of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington": computer geek thinks of a way to make computers work faster, makes huge dollars, and he and his wife share the profits with everybody in the company. Big baseball fan -- loves baseball. Co-workers told me then that his intention was to move to San Diego and become part of the community. He was, in many respects, the perfect guy for the team and the town, and the Padres have had many successes under Moores' ownership, including the construction (albeit protracted) of the beautiful Petco Park.
But now it appears as if Moores will leave the Padres' baseball operations in the same condition it was when he arrived.
He is going through an ugly divorce, and as a result, the Padres' payroll is being slashed. While some club officials have tried to downplay the notion of a major budget reduction and worked to cast the changes as a shift to a sleeker, necessary business model -- their words sounding much like those of former owner Tom Werner years ago -- the end result is a cost-cutting sequel. Except, in baseball, instead of "Chainsaw Massacre VI," it's "Fire Sale II."
Jake Peavy, the franchise's best player, will be traded soon. There has been progress between the Padres and Braves in talks in recent days, with Gorkys Hernandez being added to shortstop Yunel Escobar within the proposed package of players that will likely be shipped from Atlanta to San Diego. The Padres will also continue to talk with the Cubs and Dodgers, but the expectation is a deal should go down before Thanksgiving.
The Padres exercised the $9 million option of right fielder Brian Giles for 2009 on Friday, but doing so is like spending a few extra bucks on a polish job on the fenders and hub caps before selling a used car. San Diego nearly dealt Giles to Boston and later to Oakland during the season, and it stands to reason that this winter the Padres will approach Giles about waiving his no-trade rights to facilitate a trade out of San Diego. (As of Saturday evening, they had not done this.)
It's very possible that in the days ahead, the face of the franchise, Trevor Hoffman -- who arrived in San Diego 185 months ago, in the midst of the Fire Sale -- will cut ties with the team. The Padres offered Hoffman a $4 million deal last month, which would be a $3 million reduction in salary from what he made in 2008, and friends of the pitcher wonder if San Diego is merely looking to politely nudge him out the door. Hoffman has responded by asking for a meeting with club ownership to discuss the future of the franchise.
If Hoffman ever gets his sit-down, it would be hard for him to walk away with any conclusion other than this: The Padres are being stripped down and prepared for sale, like an old battleship taken down and sold for parts.
In early October, San Diego's NBC affiliate reported that Moores would unload his share of the team; the team's response was to call that report "highly speculative." But whether you want to call it a Fire Sale or a business transformation, the fact is that the club's payroll was $74 million in 2008, and if Giles is traded and Hoffman does not return, it could be about half that in 2009.
If Peavy is traded, the No. 2 starter for the Padres will be Cha Seung Baek, who went 6-10 with a 4.79 ERA in 2008.
The Padres of next summer may well turn out to be like the Padres of 1993, a team with a couple of stars as baubles (Tony Gwynn and Andy Benes filled this role in '93) surrounded by cheap and young players, some of whom had talent that lasted: Hoffman, Brad Ausmus, Doug Brocail and Tim Worrell. Next summer's headliners will be Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young, it appears, with Hernandez, Chase Headley and others serving in the supporting actor roles, at union scale.
The NL West is mediocre and a rebound could come within a couple of years, after Moores' situation is settled. But the Padres of '93 were not competitive -- they went 61-101 -- and by summer's end, the seats of Jack Murphy Stadium were empty; attendance in San Diego went from 21,000-plus in 1992 to last in the majors in 1993, '94 and '95.
After the ugliness that the casual Padres fan is seeing now, the '09 team may be awful, and another malaise in the fan base may follow. The organization is going back to the dark ages.
It's sad, really. Moores' intention was to do great things with the franchise, and along the way, he realized a lot of that hope. The Padres, steered by general manager Kevin Towers, manager Bruce Bochy and president Larry Lucchino for most of the past 14 years, won four division championships and played in the 1998 World Series.
But the John Moores of 1994 -- bright-eyed, buoyant, radiating hope -- never would have envisioned that it would all splinter apart, and that he would depart in the same manner as Werner, who, for years, was regarded as persona non grata in San Diego. The Padres, once again, find themselves desperately in need of a white knight.
Around the majors with Buster Olney
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