SHOVE ALL IN TIME
With loss of Clevinger, Padres must find starting pitching to continue progressing in ’21
The all-in Padres, despite bold strokes in the international market, record contracts piled three deep, an unprecedented dive into the trade deadline and more, will not be all-in-all-in unless they find a way to navigate choppy financial waters to land starting pitching.
The timing, for a club facing pandemic-fueled money losses in 2020, stinks like month-old milk. Missing a rare franchise window to cash in competitively would linger in the nostrils longer, though.
Pitching, we’re reminded season after season, is the gold Krugerrand of the playoffs.
They need a top-of-the-rotation difference maker like Lance Lynn of the Rangers, mound glue like Blake Snell of the Rays or an overseas option as starter Mike Clevinger has been pointed to the trainer’s room for all of 2021. If not, all of that investment on all those fronts over all of those years could be wasted.
Every franchise, no matter how deep or how bullish its stock, is an injury or two, a failed signing, a fumbled trade away from watching the window slam shut.
All in? We’ll find out soon enough.
That isn’t to say the Padres have not done or committed enough already with uncertain turnstile terrain parked on the horizon. Quite the opposite. They’ve been fearless trailblazers, which is the reason the timeline of this becomes all the more perplexing.
Will there be 96 games in 2021? Maybe, 120? Dare we dream, 162? Will stadiums be allowed to open at 10 percent capacity in the spring? Twenty percent? More? Will there be fans at all, when Opening Day arrives? As COVID-19 vaccines reach the public, it rightly will start with the healthcare heroes and the most vulnerable populations.
Baseball players? They, rightly again, will be much further down that list.
To stretch and strain already bruised budgets right now is fraught with risk. Plus, it’s always easy for those on the sidelines to spend other people’s money.
The fact that the Padres’ front office and baseball operations department has been so, so stellar in getting to this point only raises the current stakes during the most turbulent of times. Who wants to look back at such a successful rebuild in so many areas, undone by pitching.