Back to baseball. Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. As Ducksnorts undergoes changes, so do the Padres. I’ll briefly summarize recent activity. First, the Giants claimed southpaw Jason Pearson off waivers. Second, the Pads sent right-handers Jeremy Fikac and Dennis Tankersley to Mobile, and recalled lefty Oliver Perez and righty J.J. Trujillo from the same club (the latter was given a rather rude welcome to the Show by the Orioles’ Tony Batista last night). They also called up first baseman Kevin Barker from Portland.

Here’s what Perez has done this year:

Lake Elsinore
                                         Qmax
Date     Opp   IP  H  R ER BB SO HR PQS  S  C
04/04/02 @Stk 4.7  2  1  1  6  5  0   0  2  7
04/09/02 @Vis 5.0  4  1  1  1  8  0   4  3  3
04/14/02 SBr  4.7 10  6  6  2  3  0   0  7  4
04/20/02 @Bak 5.0  5  3  2  1  9  0   4  4  3
04/25/02 Lnc  6.3  3  0  0  1  8  0   5  2  3
05/01/02 @Lnc 5.0  3  0  0  4  5  0   3  2  5
05/06/02 Vis  6.0  2  0  0  4 10  0   5  1  4
05/11/02 @RC  5.0  3  0  0  3  9  0   4  2  4
05/16/02 SJ   7.0  4  2  1  1  9  0   5  2  2

Mobile
                                         Qmax
Date     Opp   IP  H  R ER BB SO HR PQS  S  C
05/21/02 Bir  6.0  2  0  0  3  7  0   5  1  4
05/26/02 WTe  5.0  6  3  3  4  6  1   2  5  5
05/31/02 @Hvl 7.0  2  0  0  4 12  0   5  1  4
06/06/02 Hvl  5.0  1  0  0  5  9  0   3  1  6

One fan who wrote in compares Pearson to Brian Lawrence and is pretty upset by his loss. I’m not sure about that, but I am puzzled by the decision to put Pearson on waivers in the first place. I understand that the Padres have a numbers problem when it comes to pitchers, but the guy has pitched well in the minor leagues and probably deserved a better fate.

This gentleman also takes issue with Kevin Towers’ failure to re-sign right-hander Rodrigo Lopez this past winter. He makes a good point in that Lopez wouldn’t have cost much and could have been a good sell for the Hispanic community in San Diego. Lopez’ release looks terrible right now in light of what he’s doing for Baltimore (for whom he pitches against his former team today) and what Padre pitchers are (or aren’t) doing.

But to a certain extent, hindsight is 20-20. Sure, Lopez is pitching lights out but the chances are, if history is any guide, that he won’t be able to perform anywhere near this level for a sustained period of time. Although he pitched brilliantly in the Mexican Pacific League this past winter, he was still something of an injury risk (having missed most of 2001) and at age 26, his upside isn’t as high as a lot of the young kids coming up behind him. Stepping into Towers’ shoes for a moment, without making a judgment one way or the other, I can understand why the Padres chose not to sign him. The way KT has built this club, it’s geared toward the opening of the new park in 2004. So signing a guy like Lopez, who probably wouldn’t have been an integral part of that squad, wasn’t a real big priority for the Pads.

It’s interesting. Despite the (well-deserved) reputation the Padres have for picking up guys who slip under the radar, they’ve managed to let loose a few of their own who looked, to this observer, like decent players. Immediately I think of pitchers like Shane Dennis and Buddy Carlyle, both of whom were sent to Japan before age 25. I don’t know why some of these kids stick and some don’t; I really thought Carlyle was going to be what Brian Lawrence has become. I have no idea where he is right now, but he’s only 24 years old, and I still half-expect him to surface in North America at some point and pitch in the big-leagues again.

Anyway, in relation to Lopez, the Padres had a good number of pitchers who (a) were younger, (b) threw harder, and (c) weren’t coming off a season lost to injury. I have to believe that Towers looked at Lopez, looked at what he had in the lower minors, looked at the direction of his team, and decided that Lopez wasn’t going to be a part of the next contending Padre club. It’s tough to stomach now that Lopez is pitching great and the Padres are going nowhere, but I believe Towers was thinking long term with this move. It may come back to bite him in the rear, but I’m betting that when all is said and done, Lopez will settle into a lower level of performance, and kids like Dennis Tankersley, Ben Howard, Jake Peavy, Perez, Mark Phillips, and Justin Germano will become integral parts of the Padre future. Well, not all of them, because you never know with pitchers. But chances are, at least one or two of them will be contributing.

I guess the bottom line with Lopez (and, to come full circle, with Pearson) is that the risk of signing him was greater than the potential long-term reward. It’s easy to look at his performance so far in 2002 and say the Padres should have signed him this winter. Maybe they should have signed him. But if so, it’s not because he’s pitching well right now, but rather because there was some indication that he might be capable of this kind of performance into the future. And I’m not sure that his terrific season in Mexico, in and of itself, qualifies as sufficient evidence.

Then again, it’s possible that Towers blew it with this one. I don’t think so, because he’s proven me wrong with pitchers many times before, but I think we’ll need to check back in a year or two before we make a final, definitive judgment.

Okay, that’s enough for now. My correspondent also raised some other, more global concerns having to do with player development philosophy which strike me as worthy of discussion and which I’d like to address in the coming days. But for now, I’ll leave you with a few little tidbits.

USD’s Ricky Barrett has signed with the Twins. Minnesota’s seventh-round pick has been assigned to Elizabethton in the Appalachian League.

Mark Kreidler gives his take on the Clemens-Bonds thing (ESPN.com). Actually, he uses this incident as a reason for eliminating the DH. And I think he has a good point.

Finally, there’s a fascinating piece on OPS by Length of Plate Appearance by Baseball Prospectus’ Keith Woolner.

That’s all for now…