First off, I want to rectify a statement I made yesterday. I misspoke in saying that Rodrigo Lopez missed most of the season due to injury; in fact, he spent half the year on the DL and actually worked 65 innings.

Moving on, how about that pitching matchup last night, Lopez vs Brian Lawrence? Two pitchers definitely cut from the same cloth. Throw strikes, move the ball around, let your defense work for you. Lopez yielded a two-run single to Ray Lankford in the third, and that was the game.

Lawrence, meantime, had it going. He threw 103 pitches, 74 for strikes. He’s one of the better kept secrets in the NL, and a case could be made for him to be an All-Star. It won’t happen, but it wouldn’t be too unreasonable if it did.

Shifting gears, let’s return to our discussion on Padre player development, particularly their handling of the young pitchers. There has been some concern that the kids who are coming up and getting pounded (Ben Howard, Dennis Tankersley in particular) have had their confidence ruined by the experience.

This really needs to be attacked on several levels, and it could get messy. Here is my personal, non-expert opinion of the situation.

Let’s work with the following assumptions:

1. The Padres are not going to contend in 2002
2. The Padres may or may not contend in 2003
3. The Padres expect to contend in 2004
4. In order for the Padres to contend in 2004, they need to find out right now which of the players currently in the organization are best suited to help them achieve that goal

So, clearly the focus is on the future here. The question now becomes, if you’re running the club, "What is the short-term course of action that will have the most desirable long-term effects?"

Here we have a few choices when it comes to replacing guys who go on the DL (and this primarily is what we’re talking about anyway). We can:

1. bring up a veteran who has no upside but who has big-league experience and won’t embarrass the big club while buying time for the prospects (John Snyder, for example);
2. bring up a mid-level prospect who has played against more experienced competition but who doesn’t have the huge ceiling of some of the greener kids (say, Jason Middlebrook);
3. bring up one of the prize prospects who has big upside but who may not be as polished as some other guys (Tankersley, Howard).

Which option do you choose? Option #1 doesn’t make a lot of sense if the team isn’t going anywhere unless you have a barren system, in which case you’re in big trouble anyway. The second option sort of brings together the best of both worlds; you get to take a look at some kids with promise while "protecting" those with even more promise. Option #3 is the most aggressive approach. By following this path, the organization is making a commitment to the young players who presumably will be able to help in a year or two.

Thus far, the Padres have gone with a mixture of the latter two options. Because of significant injuries to Adam Eaton, Kevin Jarvis, Jose Nunez, Brian Tollberg, and Kevin Walker, they’ve probably dipped into the pool of prize prospects a bit more than they’d have liked at this point in the season. (The injuries to Eaton and Walker, incidentally, are good fodder for those who would have re-signed Rodrigo Lopez; unfortunately, nobody could have foreseen what would happen to Jarvis and Tollberg.)

And how have these young pitchers fared? Well, Howard showed flashes but really didn’t get much of a chance before his inconsistent command forced a return to the minors. Tankersley was given more of an opportunity and pitched even worse, although even he looked great at times (he reminds me more of Matt Clement with each passing day). Middlebrook has pitched very well out of the bullpen and horribly when thrown into the rotation. Oliver Perez? We’ll see.

In order to discern which of these guys will be a part of next year’s squad, each needs to be "auditioned" at the highest level. Whether now, in the middle of the season, or next spring, they need to be given the chance to show what they can or cannot accomplish in the Show.

Here’s where things get tricky. These young men are pitching prospects, but they’re also young men. And even though this is their chosen profession, and you can make educated guesses based on information such as statistics, scouting reports, etc., you never really know how a particular kid is going to respond to a particular challenge. For some, the transition may be effortless; for others, it may take a few tries before they get it right. And some never do quite figure it out.

But the problem is, you’ll never know how they respond unless you’re willing, at some point, to place them in a situation where they can succeed or fail based on their ability (among other factors). So the key is to find an equilibrium between giving someone a shot and throwing him to the wolves. To use Tankersley as an example, he had a brilliant 2001 campaign and had gotten off to a pretty good start at Mobile this year. When a need arose, he was summoned and did his best to help the club. He didn’t do very well and was sent back to the minors to improve areas of his game (e.g., pitching out of the stretch) that were exposed as weaknesses in the hope that the next time he is called upon, he is able to succeed.

I don’t want to dwell too much on an individual case, because there are bigger issues at hand, but to continue with Tankersley, he’s 23 years old and he has more than 350 minor-league innings under his belt. I don’t know what the magic numbers are that say a kid is ready, but those seem reasonable to me. And I don’t have a real problem with the Padres’ judgment that he was ready for a shot. Not ready to succeed, necessarily. But ready for a shot. This isn’t like calling up Mark Phillips and saying, "Good luck, kid." This was a guy who had worked his way up the ladder and proven himself at every level (well, except Triple-A, but that’s another story for another day).

It didn’t work — this time. Meantime, the Padres learned something about Tankersley, he learned something about himself, and hopefully both he and the club will benefit from the knowledge gained. The potential downside, of course, is that the experience could shatter the young man’s confidence.

The rebuttal to this line of thinking is that if seven bad starts at the big-league level are enough to shatter the confidence of someone who has spent years preparing for that opportunity, then maybe he wasn’t that great of a prospect after all. And I specifically am not talking about Tankersley in this instance. I don’t know the man, I don’t know anything about him except that his slider can be filthy when he’s on. But on principle, if such a small setback is enough to undermine years of preparation, then how good was he, really? And isn’t everyone better off finding out sooner rather than later?

Personally, I’m more concerned about the command issues of Howard and Tankersley than I am about any potential confidence issues. They’re both old enough and experienced enough to be able to use their brief stay with the Padres as the foundation for something greater in the future. Whether they actually do remains to be seen. But they’ve seen what it’s like in the Show. They’ve pitched in big-league parks. They know what that’s about. And I have to believe that this will leave them better prepared the next time, which theoretically increases their chances of success, which in turn should help the team.

I hope I haven’t rambled on too long about all this and that my logic isn’t too flawed. If I have or if it is, please drop me a line. I appreciate knowing when I’ve made a complete ass of myself.

One final note: Congrats to the Lakers on their third consecutive NBA championship. I’m not a rabid basketball fan, and I haven’t followed the team closely since Kareem and Magic were playing just minutes from the house I grew up in, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for the hometown team and I’m happy to see them do well.