The second half of the Padres 2017 season has started and the guys got together to take the temperature of where they’re at as fans, especially when it comes to the development of the rebuilding organization. Even though the Friars lost the series against Colorado, they’ve been playing well lately and the players are overachieving. Is this a positive that fans should be excited about, or is it dangerously jeopardizing the team’s chances of reloading with top level talent through the draft? They discuss the upcoming trade deadline and the chances of the team getting the haul they want for the players that are catching the eyes of the contending clubs. Then they call AJ Cassavell from mlb.com and talk about the pressure the team is under to come away with good prospects during this complicated period in the schedule, the future of Wil Myers and his contract, and the health of Austin Hedges. SPOILER ALERT: They close out the episode with some dragon chat and talk about the season seven premiere of Game of Thrones.

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As feelings go, few are better than when you’re naked with someone for the first time and become pleasantly surprised that they’re bringing more to the table than what was expected. Your initial assessment was slightly off. Their clothes were a lie. When our expectations are exceeded and attached to the possibility of a future, it’s exciting. Austin Hedges emerged through the ranks of the Padres organization with the promise that he would always be a wizard behind the plate. Even though AJ Preller didn’t draft him, his loud tool was always clear. Compounded with his devastating good looks, no matter what happened he would at least be an elite defender. Everything Hedges has done offensively this year beyond that simple baseline of expectation has been thrilling and Padres fans are swooning. It’s not that we merely want to have sex with our new starting catcher. That would be too easy. We want to believe he will stand up to our past with his burgeoning skill set and grow the future that’s been promised.

We want Austin inside us. #SWOON

Last week, Cubs first basemen and former Padre Anthony Rizzo knocked Hedges out of a game in what was clearly an avoidable home plate collision. This sparked a huge debate about old baseball rules, the toughness of Padres manager Andy Green, and overall masculinity on the field and online. The Padres didn’t retaliate and lost the series in Chicago 1-2. Regardless of what the team’s response was, Padres fans felt something that was uniquely heightened in those few days. Anthony Rizzo was traded away from San Diego shortly after coming over from Boston in the Adrian Gonzalez deal during a time of great uncertainty for the franchise. As it turns out, Rizzo is on his way to having a better career than the player he replaced. When he illegally crashed into Hedges, we lost our minds and wanted blood. The Cubs are who we want the Padres to be and the anchor of their undeniably successful rebuild tried to take out the beginning of our foundation.

The ideal narrative for Hedges is that he refines his skills as a major league catcher with this short term veteran staff. Then when Adrian Morejon, Anderson Espinoza, Cal Quantril, and the other waves of pitching talent come to the major league level, their seasoned battery mate will be ready to take them through the maturation process. A confidence-gaining Austin now will make the rebuild go smoothly later. It’s not the same for other young Padres finding their way this year. Hunter Renfroe might be a nice piece in the outfield, but he’s just a baseball player. With the tank in full swing, Austin is a bridge that provides safe passage to somewhere we as fans need to go.

When Careless Whisper, the greatest musical choice a Padre has made since Trevor Hoffman with ACDC’s Hells Bells, pours through the speakers at Petco Park the feeling that it brings is that of knowing there’s hope. Sure, it’s exciting because it’s Austin’s time to hit, but it’s also comforting because he knew it was the perfect walk up song to pick. That was his choice. He saw that we needed a sensual ‘80s sax line to ease us through this process. Austin’s growing connection with fans has always felt very direct. However, recently the team has become keenly aware of the feeling he provides. They’ve pinpointed a response from the public and they’re playing with it. When Hedges returned to the lineup in the Detroit series, the Padres put out a video that was well produced and came from a place of confidence that it was in on the romance. This is all fine if the Padres become the Cubs. If they don’t, this video will be held against us.

As feelings go, few are worse than realizing you’ve seen the person you’re naked with for too long. Their body is exactly what you expect and their jokes aren’t funny anymore. To get through the day you have to focus on whatever good qualities you can make yourself believe they still have and swoon towards them. Austin Hedges is the clearest example that the system the San Diego Padres have in place can do something right. If the organization wants to be in on the fun they should be careful. Even though Austin is dreamy, they can still destroy the Hedges dream. Where it goes from here is up to them.

Follow on Twitter @Nicholas_McCann

Other 2017 Posts:

Tanking Fun

Margot Leading Off

This week the guys weigh in on “The Rizzo Slide”, an unfortunate play that happened last week and tore a hole through every facet of media and fan attention surrounding the Padres. Last Monday, Austin Hedges was taken out by a collision at the plate in a dirty play by the Chicago Cubs First basemen (and former Padre) Anthony Rizzo and a week later fans are questioning the hardness of Padres second year manager Andy Green’s character because he didn’t retaliate with an equal level of baseball violence. Is this crazy? Sure, but there isn’t a whole lot else to talk about with the team in 2017. To help hash out the different sides of the controversy, the guys get soft with friend of the pod David Marver from gwynntelligence.com, who wrote a piece shortly after everything played out. They talk about whether or not the Green criticism is fair or if it even matters if he is or is not a traditional baseball tough guy. Then they look at the overall direction of the franchise and whether or not the tanking philosophy is being implemented correctly.

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By Nicholas McCann

My earliest experience with tanking was for a brief period in the early ‘90s at Boomers (Family Fun Center) in Clairemont. If you didn’t feel like playing mini-golf or riding the go-carts, there was an attraction available that allowed patrons to simulate a war scenario involving slow moving tanks that shot hard plastic balls. You and a partner had to climb into these puke green non-death machines and decide who would be the gunner and who would drive. If a ball was shot and hit a target censor on the body of your tank, it would stop moving. If a ball struck the censor on the gun cage above, you would lose the ability to shoot. There was no score to keep. The entire object of the game was to force other participants to have less fun.

You just had to keep tanking.

Usually, rooting for a major league baseball team is about wanting them to win from opening day through the last game of their season. Despite whatever the team has said publicly, in the clearest form of communication to their fans, the 2017 San Diego Padres have made it obvious with their roster they aren’t trying to win. Yet this year is different from past seasons that sadly started in the same direction. It’s the first time where the team has made clear its intentions and managed to create a sizable group of people who are embracing it.

For these folks who are all in on the current tank (we’ll call them Tankers), there’s an element of joy that comes out when they talk about it. It’s fun for them to bask in their own patience and rescue non-Tankers from “traditional” fandom. Is purposely bottoming out the right way for the organization to go? In baseball and in life, there are no guarantees. However, you can’t say that to a Tanker. Even though they might not express it directly, they declare with their inner glow that it’s a foregone conclusion everything will be worked out by 2020. And when pressed on this point, Tankers often will fall back on this general statement: I’m just glad the Padres finally have a direction.

With this season, the current ownership group is beginning the third act of a horrible play that could still have a happy ending. The first act started with the Seidlers and Ron Fowler buying the team. They said all the right things, but didn’t do much. The second act started with the Matt Kemp trade and ended the moment he filed his blog on the Players Tribune. In this third act of losing-now-to-win-later, the team has rebranded itself as modern and smart, but the benefit of doing it is broader than just being disciplined and seeing the long view. The team can hide behind the mistakes they made in the second act by allowing people to believe the direction of building fast and spending money was the wrong way to go on a conceptual level. There is a version of the second act that could’ve worked, but if we trash that period and dismiss it as even being a direction at all, the organization gets a pass from the mistakes they made within that frame work. Winning fast is a way to go, but the Padres were bad at it. They failed at trying to be good, and now they’re taking control of their badness. For people unabashedly on board with the new philosophy, they aren’t just adopting something that has worked for the Astros and Cubs; they are also buying a few years of not being upset at the Padres.

Back at Boomers in the early ‘90s, the tank attraction had a third party element. If you didn’t want to participate and ride a tank with a friend, you could buy a bucket of balls and shoot at the tanks from outside the netted playing zone. For a small fee you could snipe from a position of protection and contribute to ruining fun for other people. With the Padres not intending to be competitive for the foreseeable future, fans have to deal with the Tank regardless if they embrace it or not. Our rivals will be able to take shots at us. This being the case, I’ve resorted to rooting for Bud Black’s Rockies to win the NL West. This is my bit. Besides not being in LA or San Francisco, if Black is more successful outside of the Padres universe, it will support my belief that the dismal results of his era in San Diego were more complicated than who was managing the team. People laugh when I say this out loud. They know I’m deep in a tank, taking shots from all sides, and waiting for the fun to begin.

Follow on Twitter @Nicholas_McCann