I was also looking at pitching prospects, for obvious reasons, and was pleased to see what appear to be good young arms at Low A, High A and AA. Other than Leblanc, who we already know about, there is not much which looks to be ready to help next season, but there were a whole bunch of guys in the lower minors with excellent K rates and several of them had good K/BB rates to go along with the high K rate.

Hopefully this signals a recognition on the organizations part that soft tossing guys with command are not the only sort of pitcher out there worth developing. More guys like Matt Latos who have power and an ability to strike out the side are important to big league success!

Headley and Kouz were so brutal early on, not to mention Giles and various other positions struggling, that it took them over half the season to get to average, but they finally did. And the pitching has been horrendous (with some bright spots, admittedly .

I’m really looking forward to next year and seeing an OF of Blanks, Gwynn (I know, Geoff, not so much looking forward to Gwynn, but we’ll see what plays out and Venable. Heck, maybe we’ll see Headley, Venable and Blanks in RF. Who knows?

But those young guys are exciting and Cabrera is more than exciting! How many 22 year old SS make the jump from A ball to the bigs and put up league average offense, steal a bunch of bags at a high success rate and play solid to plus D? Not many!!!

As an ardent defender of Trevor Hoffman (and obviously as a Padre fan), it’s great to see his success with the Brewers this year. He’s got 49 IP and a 229 ERA+, with 35 saves in 38 opportunities.

Hm, if I weren’t an old USD English major, I would have just said, “I agree.”

Corey Koskie is my current fave comp. He was consistently in the 115-120 OPS+ range in the AL, against a league average of 100; Chase looks to be headed for the 110 range against a league average of 94.

There’s been plenty of talk about deciding between Headley and Kouzmanoff, and I’m of the opinion that you move Kouz this winter. The Hardball Times puts Headley second among NL left fielders in both RZR and OOZ plays, but….everybody else thinks he stinks in LF, and there’s a selection bias when you’re being ranked against Soriano, Lee, Ibanez, Anderson, et al. Kouz winning the Gold Glove would be patently unfair, but if it helps us net a better return….I’ll get over it.

On Headley, I’d guess/predict he’ll never develop power in Petco, which is to say any power he does develop will be masked by the park he plays most of his games in. He’s not going to be Adrian Gonzalez and hit 30-40 HR with fantastic opposite field power.

That being said, he is only 25 and in just his first full season this year and should improve over the next few years. He is hitting 2B at a good clip. I’d say he’s more likely to be a guy who hits a high number of 2B without great HR power. A gap hitter, if you will.

If he can add about 20 points to his BA, hit betweeen 30-40 2B and between 10-20 HR, I’d be very, very happy. Given he’s hit between 30-40 2B and 10-20 HR already, I’m pretty happy right now. I guess my final answer is, I don’t expect much of an increase in power from him, but I would hope that he hits for higher average as he matures and gains big league experience.

Oh yeah, and I’d be really, really pumped if he could draw a few more BB. It could happen.

The only point I noticed you missed is that Blanks hit that crazy Miami home run and swung a lot easier than Ruben Rivera ever did.

I know it means nothing, but I hold a secret hope that Adrian will hit 40 this year. That will hopefully help eclipse the knowledge that Phil Nevin was the last Padre to reach that plateau, and all reminiscence of his latter-day implosion.

And as for the title, well… it’s bittersweet to end a year like this. Bitter because it’s hard to let go of baseball, even though it’s the right thing to do. Sweet because, unless the season lasts another month or two, the Padres won’t see the north side of .500 until (we hope) next April.

It’s at this point that I’ll admit that a week ago, I counted up games remaining, and found that if the Pads went a Rockies-esque 18-3 to end the season, they could finish at .500. There went that dream, like so much smoke. On to better things.