Thursday Links (11 Aug 11)

Despite Kyle Blanks having his string of multi-hit games snapped at five (he singled and walked), Wednesday was a good day for the Padres. Will Venable knocked four hits out of the leadoff spot, Jesus Guzman drove in his 30th run to pull within two of active team leader Jason Bartlett (Cameron Maybin also has 30, and don’t look now, but here comes Alberto Gonzalez with 25!), and the bullpen held on to a huge lead despite their best efforts. I was fully prepared for Willie Harris to hit a game-tying grand slam in the ninth, but it didn’t happen.

Speaking of which, did you notice that the Dodgers blew a six-run lead in their game against the Phillies? The Padres have pulled to within one game of their neighbors to the north in the heated battle for fourth place. Hot damn, this is exciting!

Oh, and congrats to James Darnell for collecting his first big-league hit. He singled to left off Mets right-hander Bobby Parnell in the ninth, which inspired me to make a daft comparison between Darnell/Parnell and Julia Gulia on Twitter. Hey, it’s what I do.

Anywho, we have links…

Trade Deadline

  • Trade Deadline Power Rankings: Part 2, the Victors (Grantland). Jonah Keri likes the Padres’ deadline moves. [h/t reader USMC53]
  • Big Winners (Inside the Padres). Tom Krasovic offers his thoughts on the Mike Adams trade.
  • 17 Favorite Midseason Trades (Baseball Prospectus). Old school… this one includes the trade that brought Mark Grant to San Diego.
  • Trading for prospects? No thanks! (ESPN). Howard Bryant offers interesting opinions on the Padres’ situation. He apparently likes Billy Beane’s favored approach of letting free agents walk and collecting draft picks, aka prospects, better than Jed Hoyer’s of trading soon-to-be free agents for… uh… other prospects. Bryant also manages to praise Texas for turning Mark Teixeira into unproven youngsters, while chastising the Padres for doing the same with Adrian Gonzalez. There’s actually a good discussion at Gaslamp Ball that identifies some of the flaws in Bryant’s logic.
  • Jed Hoyer: Seller (Woe, Doctor!). This sums up the Adams trade rather nicely: “Basically, our pitching just gained some much-needed depth for, hopefully, years to come while all we gave up was 100 IP from a talented yet soon-to-be expensive pitcher that doesn’t fit into our future plans.”
  • How the Padres Blew Trade of Type A Free Agent Heath Bell (Websoulsurfer). One observer wishes the Padres had traded their All-Star closer.

Minor Leagues

History

Whatever

Rise and shine, folks. Thursday’s finale of the four-game set in New York starts at 9:10 a.m. PT. Southpaws Cory Luebke and Jonathon Niese get the call. A split would be nice…