The San Diego Padres, perhaps predictably, have gotten off to a miserable start in 2012. Although expectations were not high coming into the season, almost nothing has gone right for the club. Between injuries and ineffectiveness, not to mention ongoing ownership/television deal issues (I live 15 minutes from Petco Park and cannot watch the team on TV in my home, which might qualify as “charmingly retro” if it weren't so annoying), the Padres are staring at their worst-case scenario only a month into the campaign.

Last week, Kevin Goldstein suggested that a “housecleaning in San Diego could be coming.” Reader pobothecat wondered what such a housecleaning might look like, and so did I.

Sometimes there is no obvious story. Sometimes there is just the beauty of the thing. Baseball's limitless capacity to surprise keeps those of us afflicted with fandom enthralled. This past week alone bore witness to three unexpected home runs, among other things. Such are the moments that define any given game, season, or lifetime of watching baseball.

Monday, April 30: Ransom vs. Buehrle
In the second inning of a scoreless game at Miami, the Diamondbacks' Cody Ransom stepped to the plate against Mark Buehrle. With Paul Goldschmidt on second and Gerardo Parra on deck, Ransom got ahead in the count, 3-0. Buehrle then grooved an 85 mph two-seam fastball down the middle, and Ransom drove it over the 386-foot sign in left-center for his second home run of the year.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

After the Angels lost at Tampa Bay last Wednesday, right fielder Torii Hunter suggested that his manager, Mike Scioscia, had not done everything possible to put the team in a position to win. This is the sort of problem that arises when you enter a season with astronomical expectations and then stumble badly out of the gate.

After losing on a walk-off homer by Oakland castoff Brandon Allen the following afternoon and on a walk-off single by Asdrubal Cabrera in Cleveland the next night, the Angels found themselves nine games behind AL West-leading Texas, the largest deficit of any team in baseball. The off-season signings of Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson were supposed to take last year's 86-win team to the proverbial next level. Instead, the Angels have skidded in the opposite direction, leading some folks to panic.

More...

Nady, Bochy, Belt
My wife and I drove from San Diego to Emeryville last weekend to make an appearance at the final stop on the BP2012 book tour. The event was a blast because, really, what beats hanging out with friends, talking about baseball? Watching a game, I suppose. Or playing. If we'd had people sign waivers, maybe we could have gotten a wiffle ball game going. But probably not.

I had prepared trivia questions in case we ran out of things to discuss. We didn't, but since I've already written the questions, here are their answers. They all have a Bay Area theme:

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Two high-profile international free agents came to the American League West this year. The two-time defending AL champion Texas Rangers won negotiating rights (with a $51.7 million bid) to Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish in December 2011 and signed him to a six-year, $56 million deal the following month. Meanwhile, the small-market Oakland A's surprised everyone in February by landing Cuban center fielder/Internet sensation Yoenis Cespedes at four years, $36 million.

Darvish was the better-known quantity, having generated buzz well in advance of his U.S. debut, and was expected to contribute right away. Cespedes came with more questions attached, and it wasn't certain that he would break camp with the big club. But he did, and he made an immediate impact, launching a home run in his big-league debut (amusingly enough, played in Japan).

More...

Every now and then, someone not from these parts makes the mistake of calling San Diego a suburb of Los Angeles. I'm not very familiar with the East Coast, but my guess based on relative proximity is that this would be like calling Philadelphia a suburb of New York. We are a gentle people, and so just as folks from Hawai'i bristle but remain silent when some guy with a comb-over nursing an umbrella-laden drink loudly proclaims his intent to “go back to the States,” we blink and smile while being offended in a manner that might cause a riot were that same guy to refer to a person from Philadelphia as a New Yorker.

That being said, when the Padres first joined the National League in 1969 they were, in many respects, an offshoot of the Dodgers to the north. Not quite “The Jeffersons” to “All in the Family,” more like “After M*A*S*H” to “M*A*S*H.”

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

There is some sentiment in the analyst community that Padres outfielder Will Venable ranks among the most underrated players in baseball. The theory is that Petco Park stifles his offensive game, while Cameron Maybin's presence in center field pushes Venable to right field, depressing his value further.

Is this a fair assessment of Venable? Is he a miscast corner outfielder whose abilities aren't being maximized due to external factors? Or is he a gifted athlete whose baseball skills never developed as well as they might have if he'd committed to the sport earlier in life?

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Kevin Millwood is 37. Bartolo Colon is 39. Jamie Moyer is 49 and coming off Tommy John surgery. Each signed this winter with a team that should be looking to rebuild with young players. What do these teams hope for—or expect to gain—by adding these old pitchers? What should they expect?

With the common and easy argument being that such pitchers block youngsters from getting a chance, why are the old guys here? Will they mentor the kids, soak up innings, or help make fans feel younger? All of the above and more?

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

With the Texas Rangers coming off their second straight World Series appearance and the Angels making a monumental splash this past offseason in signing Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, the AL West has become a two-team race, a land of the haves and have-nots. Arlington and Anaheim are the new Boston and New York.

Hyperbole aside, it is worth remembering that things weren't always this way. When the Rangers first moved to Arlington from Washington D.C. in 1972, they were coming off a 63-96 showing and didn't have much going for them. The Oakland A's, who had won 101 games the previous season, were the division's powerhouse. And although Dick Williams' A's got swept by Baltimore in the 1971 ALCS, that club laid the foundation for the 1972-1974 version that would win three consecutive World Series.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

For reasons I don't entirely comprehend, James Loney has been on my mind of late. His skill set is unusual for a first baseman, and although some players have parlayed similar skills into a successful big-league career, such players are few and far between.

In last week's light-hearted preview of the NL West, I quipped that Loney should star in a show called “Being Doug Mientkiewicz.” Marginally amusing one-liners aside, the truth is that Loney is a better hitter than Mientkiewicz, though this is hardly cause for celebration among Dodgers fans. Set the bar low enough and everything looks good.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

PECOTA Team Projections
​Record: 83-79
Team WARP: 31.4
Team TAv: .258
Runs Scored: 710
Runs Allowed: 689
Team FRAA: -8.2

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.

Random processes produce many sequences that convince people that the process is not random after all. —Daniel Kahneman

With the Oakland A's struggling recently in the wake of Moneyball and its chronicling of their success despite the odds against them, a narrative suggesting that Billy Beane's strategies no longer work has evolved. The theory is that with Beane's secrets exposed to the world, he has lost the element of surprise in attempting to defeat the big boys and their big pocketbooks. Other teams have become savvier, and Beane cannot exploit market inefficiencies the way he once did because there are fewer of them.

The remainder of this post cannot be viewed at this subscription level. Please click here to subscribe.