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I sure hope Towers/Alderson have Duquette on speed dial.

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We didn’t sign Estes to be a long reliever or LOOGY. He’s a starter through May, at least.

How are we getting rid of Woody? We can imagine that we have lots of leverage with Boston, but I don’t see the incentive for them to give up Wells and take Williams. It’d be a smart idea (smarter to keep Woody as the 5th starter, but we signed Estes), but I’m not optimistic.

Towers has said that Hensley is the 7th inning reliever as of now, which will determine his spring throwing program.

The Tim Stauffer experience may weigh against a rapid promotion of Carrillo.

I am concerned about the bullpen. People talk about Towers being able to find good relievers on the cheap, but there’s a lot of junk in his history too.

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In short order I think our rotation will be as follows:

Peavy
Wells*
Young
Hensley
Carillo

(And I think that’s a solid rotation.)

I think our offense is improved (though admittedly not drastically) and I have very little concerns with our bullpen.

…thus equaling an improvement over last year…

Just my $0.02…

* I don’t think he want to go to LA and I’ll think he’ll threaten to “not play nice” yet not retire, and Nobody wants to pay him to suck. You hate that type of attitude, but we’ll be perfectly willing to take advantage of the situation.

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That is a beautiful sentence, if not a beautiful sentiment. Really, I love that sentence.

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Backwards due to personnel changes: C, 2B, & probably 1B.

At least slightly backwards due to regression from a fine ‘05: Giles, the bullpen (esp. Linebrink), the bench.

Forwards due to personnel changes: 3B & CF.

Slightly forwards due to a regression (to the mean) from a poor ‘05: Greene, starting pitchers.

What could help?
- Big steps forward by one or two of these key young’uns: Barfield, C. Young, Hensley, A. Gonzalez, B. Johnson.
- A deal that gets us an upgrade at at least one of these positions: C, 2B, 3B, SP (like a WellsRoberts deal).

What might hurt?
- More than one of these past-their-primes are likely to completely crater from their established level of productivity due to age/injury and/or, for the last two, the physical demands of playing their position: Castilla, Williams, Klesko, Giles, Hoffman, Mirabelli, and Cameron.
- Peavy’s traverse of that fine edge leading to greatness always seems a substantial threat to end in the abyss of fragility.

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We may be better, but last year’s team should have finished 77-85. We needed a lot of luck to get those 5 extra wins.

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to say that the Padres’ offense last season wasn’t a problem is misleading. How many frustrating moments with MOB that the Padres’ fans endured?

The team was hitting BA/SLG: .255/.377 @ Petco versus .259/.404 while the opponents were .241/.378 and .277/.439 respectively. Yes, the pitching is apparently very much worse on the road (4.79 vs 3.52) as the Padres were outscored more on the road than at home.

The pitching was so good at home that the Padres went 46-35 at Petco despite being outscored by 10 runs for the season. I’d like to think the Padres would have been even better at home had the team managed to score 20 more runs.

In any case, the complain is whether the new lineup will produce as many runs as last year’s lineup. I don’t see much improvements since the Padres seem to upgrade at one/two positions and substract from others.

Peter:
Better? I’m not sure. Weaker starting pitchings and a possible regressing in the bullpen do not point to a better team.

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TW, how is the Texas trade a bad one (or did you mean the Camron trade - if so, how is that one bad)?

Didi, 90 losses? I think we have a BETTER team than last year’s 82-win team. I’ll be conservative and call it an 85-win team… (my real prediction will probably be in the 88-86 range).

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Klesko was at 19.7 last year as a LF. If LF hit better than 1b that number would go up at 1b, but I don’t know how to figure that and it probably wouldn’t be that much of a difference.

You’re right, it’s not that clear-cut. Nevin did get almost all the 1b at-bats for the first three months of the season, when Sweeney was doing his work as a ph, so our new 1b are an improvement there.

What we need is a RH platoon mate for Klesko.

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