Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Assumptions and false narratives

This morning MLB owners approved the Padres sale from John Moores to the O'Malley/Fowler/Mickelson group. Last evening Nick Canepa wrote a column called, Padres appear headed in right direction. It made me say, "Cuckoo." . . .

For the most part the column wasn't bad. Canepa advocated retaining CEO and President, Tom Garfinkel, with which I wholeheartedly agree (I'll say something about the Garfinkel Situation later). Canepa also said other stuff. I hate to nitpick but I come undone when I read confounding ideas, and all it takes is one. To wit:

Byrnes reminds me a bit of former GM Kevin Towers. After former boss Jeff Moorad fired Towers, I wrote Moorad’s first major decision would be the worst he would make as an owner. I wasn’t wrong. Moores, who still had controlling interest in the team, shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.

Oh yes Nick, I remember. I believe it was October of 2011 when you last referenced this sentiment and I skewered your column for it.

But there wasn't just one confounding idea. There were at least two! Canepa would go on to write his next puzzling tidbit in the subsequent paragraph:

But that’s baseball. Towers is doing fine in Arizona. And, after making the decision to replace KT with Jed Hoyer — another mistake, not because Hoyer was ill-equipped, just a bad fit here — Moorad made it right in naming Byrnes GM after Hoyer bailed to take on the unenviable (but more lucrative) task of trying to put the Cubs back together again.  

Cuckoo. I'm going to try and work this one out. Here it goes . . .

Jed Hoyer was not ill-equipped to take a job as GM of the Padres. This means that he was equipped to take a job as GM of the Padres. Yet another way to say it would be to write that he was qualified, prepared or ready.

So if Jed Hoyer was qualified for the job of general manager then why on earth was he a bad fit in San Diego?

I'm relying on a thesaurus now.

If you are fit then one could say that you are competent. Or, qualified. Or, prepared. Or even, ready.

But if you are a bad fit then you are the opposite of fit, which means you are incapable. At least that's what the thesaurus says: Incapable is the antonym for fit. And since Jed Hoyer was a bad fit in San Diego I am left to assume that Nick Canepa believes that Jed was simultaneously incapable and qualified. 'Tis a conundrum we have here.

The reader is left to assume what Nick Canepa is talking about. Since I am someone who is dialed in to the local baseball scene I am going to make an assumption which may be totally off-base.

I think Canepa is trying to convey that while Jed Hoyer was qualified and ready to become a GM in major league baseball he was not suited for the job in San Diego. Jed came from large market Boston where the pockets were deep and perhaps Canepa feels that he didn't have the proper mindset to operate on a shoestring budget in small market San Diego. Does that sound reasonable?

It doesn't sound reasonable when you consider that Jed Hoyer focused heavily on the draft (a place where small market teams can exploit available talent at relatively modest cost) and also emphasized building a club that could use PETCO Park to its advantage. Using PETCO to its advantage means building a strong rotation and bullpen along with defense and speed which are all relatively inexpensive attributes when juxtaposed with free-agent power hitters. It kind of sounds like Jed Hoyer understood what it meant to build a club in small market San Diego and maybe he was . . . a good fit?

This isn't a defense of Jed Hoyer. He's gone. Whatever.

I wrote this because Nick Canepa makes no sense. When I write things I always re-read them to see if it makes sense. Sometimes my ideas are not coherent. So I go back and fix what I wrote. Sometimes it still doesn't make sense and I say, "Too bad, you're reading this for free!"

I tried to figure out what Nick said. I offered an idea. And then I debunked myself and quite possibly Nick. I'm pretty sure it's what Nick Canepa meant and all I can think is: He sure displays an amazing commitment to a false narrative.

Where art thou, Tim Sullivan?

Peter O'Malley, on the record

With MLB owners set to meet this week, Padres fans will be able to definitively claim that their team has owners and they are led by the family O'Malley.

With this scenario a virtual lock I thought I would share with you some thoughts from Peter O'Malley, a primer of sorts as Padres fans transition into an era of unabashed hope:

"I believe salaries are at their peak. It's quite possible some owners will trade away, or even drop entirely, players who expect $200,000 salaries. There is no way clubs can continue to increase salaries to the level some players are talking about."

Huh, wut?

Just kidding. Well I'm not kidding about the quote -- Peter O'Malley did share those words on the record. But he did so in 1971 as President of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

How do I know this? It's written on page 242 of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Takes a swing at Baseball. True Story. I bought this book for my brother a few years back, a Christmas present perhaps. You place it next to your toilet and you read it while your system regains regularity.

You see, I'm house sitting and taking care of his crazy little dog. In an effort to regulate myself during the AM hours, I took a seat and began to read. The first page I opened to was about Dock Ellis' LSD induced no hitter thrown against the Padres back in 1970. The next page I flipped to was a quote from Peter O'Malley. I'm hesitant to do it, but poor form be damned, here it goes: That Peter O'Malley sure didn't know crap about the future.

Let's hope that the O'Malley group spends in 2012 and beyond and that they do it wisely.

Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Subjective payroll analysis

Nick Canepa wrote a column about Phil Mickelson's role in the new Padres ownership group. And if you can imagine, I took umbrage with a small part:

Many San Diegans who voted for the building of Petco Park feel they were victims of a bait-and-switch by Padres ownership, believing Moores and management had not delivered on their promise of a solid, contending franchise. The Padres never said they were going to spend like the Yankees, but player payroll has been among the lowest in baseball for some time and the results haven’t always been pleasant.

In many ways I agree with the first part of this excerpt. Proposition 98 passed after the Padres' World Series appearance against the Yankees and then Moores packed it in until 2004. This (in)action was horribly unfair to Padres fans.

My issue is with Canepa's last sentence. It feels lazy. Canepa writes:

 ...player payroll has been among the lowest in baseball for some time...

When Canepa writes this I feel it's lazy because it is written in a way that says, "I don't really care to do any research."


Payroll has been the lowest for "sometime"? It's such a subjective frame of reference, what does that even mean? And what defines "lowest"? This is also subjective. Are we talking bottom half, third, or quarter of the league in payroll? With 30 teams in MLB, one could say that team number 15 is part of the lowest.

What do Padres fans know right now? We know that payroll has been brutally low since John Moores decided to put a mistress on the books. His subsequent divorce diminished the product on the field from 2009-2012. But the Moores divorce is not the entire story of payroll history in the East Village. PETCO Park existed from 2004-2008 and if my memory serves correctly I don't think that payroll was among the lowest in MLB at that time.

Let's define "lowest" payroll. It's completely subjective but I'm going to say that it is defined by being in the bottom 3rd of the league. So:

Teams 1-10 are the top third -- Well-to-do types.
Teams 11-20 are middle third -- Floating along, accidental like on the wind.
Teams 21-30 are the bottom third -- Living off revenue sharing.

I have yet to research this so I run the risk of making Nick Canepa look like he was correct but I think the exercise is valid regardless.

Let's take a  look at opening day payroll and where the Padres ranked amongst their competitors. (Here is a second source, and probably a more reliable one, which shows nearly identical dollar amounts).

2004 -- 18th place -- Middle Third -- $54, 639, 503
2005 -- 17th place -- Middle Third -- $62, 888, 192
2006 -- 17th place -- Middle Third -- $69, 896, 141
2007 -- 24th place -- Bottom Third -- $58, 110, 567
2008 -- 19th place -- Middle Third -- $73, 677, 616
2009 -- 29th place -- Bottom Third -- $42, 796, 700
2010 -- 29th place -- Bottom Third -- $37, 799, 300
2011 -- 28th place -- Bottom Third -- $45, 869, 140
2012 -- 30th place -- Bottom Third -- $55, 244, 700

So what does this information tell us?

During the PETCO Park era, payroll has fluctuated between the bottom middle third of MLB teams and the absolute bottom of the bottom third.

The first 5 years in PETCO Park (almost first 5 years . . . damn you 2007 for ruining my narrative!) the Padres were in the middle third of payroll. I believe this is where payroll should be*.

*A run of sustained success where attendance is thriving and people in San Diego actually care could allow the Padres to push the upper threshold of the middle third in payroll. Merely an opinion, thinking out loud.

We see that the dramatic shift in payroll occurs in 2009 at the time when John Moores began going through a divorce and sold the team on layaway to the Jeffrey Moorad group.

This all comes down to the use of subjective reasoning to shape narratives. Padres fans have the right to be perturbed at the team and for their thrifty ways in a new ball park but a newspaper's job is to provide adequate information to illuminate its readership.

I think Canepa fails here by using what I've termed "lazy" language. The type of language that says, "I don't care to do any research because it takes too long and god damn it, I have a narrative that I'm sticking too and for cripes sake this whole article is about Phil Mickelson, who is not Mike Schmidt, anyways! Geez! Don't you people have a sense of humor?"