If the Padres can manage to sweep the San Francisco Giants they’ll finish the year at 77-85. Before the season began I gave what I felt was a very generous predicted win total of 70—the SOB in me thought the realistic outlook was in line with 66 wins.
Yet here we are with an on-field player payroll of $28 million dollars, completing a season in which nearly every perceived working part failed us. Brian Giles, the $9 million dollar man, did absolutely nothing thus preventing us from a deadline salary dump to a contending team. Jake Peavy was injured early and then dealt to the Sox whereas staff #2, Chris Young clunked out in early June. Yet here we are…..essentially 10 games better than I expected.
Read more at: Avenging Jack Murphy
I am going to post more about this on my blog later, but this is the jyst of that post:
Prior to the season I projected 76 wins for this Padres team.
Well I really shouldn’t say for THIS Padres team since it is so different from the one we saw coming out of spring training.
That projection was with a full season and 31+ starts from both Jake Peavy, who was traded mid season, and Chris Young, who was injured mid season and never came back.
That projection was with a healthy Brian Giles repeating his outstanding 2008 performance.
That was before Cha Seung Baek hurt his forearm and was out for the year.
That was before the Padres traded away Scott Hairston or traded for Tony Gwynn Jr.