Friar Watch

There’s a lot to say about last night’s game but I’m still trying to accept that our season is over so this entry will be brief.

Jake Peavy: Sadly, our ace once again let us down in a big game. Whether it’s nerves, loss of confidence, too much adrenaline or a secret injury, for whatever reason Jake always has trouble in these big games. I will give him a ton of credit for hanging tough and not letting it get completely out of hand. Unfortunately that’s the kind of praise you normally give a 4th or 5th starter, not your ace and Cy Young winner.

Heath Bell: Clearly our best reliever. It’s easy to say he should be our closer next year but don’t forget this is his first successful year in the majors and he’s pitched a lot of innings. Let’s see how he comes back next year and how the league adjusts to him.

Doug Brocail: It was good to see Brocail bounce back from that terrible outing in Milwaukee. He’s had his ups and downs but overall he was much better this year than anyone expected.

Joe Thatcher: Thatchmo was dominant, striking out 3 of the 4 batters he faced. That one outing justified the Linebrink trade, everything else from here on out is gravy.

Trevor Hoffman: Trevor remains one of the greatest closers in history and had another fine season but the fact remains that he had two chances to nail down a save to get the team into the playoffs and he blew them both. Should he retire? I don’t know but I doubt he will. He has another year on his contract, he’s not going to walk away from millions of dollars. Trevor is a unique situation because he’s just not effective outside of the closer role. He also presents unique challenges for the manager because he has such a fine margin for error but his future Hall of Fame status means the manager is going to be reluctant to pull him out in the middle of the inning.

Sometime next spring the Padres need to have a talk with Trevor and explain that he’s no longer going to get every save opportunity. He can still be the main closer but the team needs to start working Heath Bell into the mix, getting him some 9th inning experience to groom him for the closer role.

It’s really hard to accept that we lost the game on a blown call but I’m not going to dwell on that. Yes, Brady Clark misplayed some balls in center but he is what he is and he’s not Mike Cameron. Let’s not forget that Mike Cameron is not the Mike Cameron of old, he’s made some bad plays out there as well so it’s not automatic that he could have caught those balls.

I think a lot of us wrote off this team when Bradley and Cameron went down but they hung on by the thinnest of margins just to get to last night’s game and they should be congratulated for that. Anything can happen in one game, and last night we saw a lot of “anything”.

What’s next for Friar Watch? Now that the season is over we’ll be looking back at some key moments and looking forward to next year. Keep an eye on this space!