The Padre Post

In a very cool series at MiLB.com, Kevin Czerwinski takes a look at how the Padres prospects fared in 2007.  Chase Headley turned out to be the best position player in the system as opposed to the preseason pick of Cedric Hunter and Josh Geer walked away with pitcher of the year.  Geer finished the season with seventeen wins while Headley hit .330 and belted 2o homers.

Matt Bush is one of the guys who’s falling but they liked his move to pitcher.  He did get hurt and they’re also concerned about the development of Cesar Carrillo and Luis Cruz.  There’s also a nice run down of the 2007 draft with some bad news at the top.  Padres first round pick Nick Schmidt is going to be out for the 2008 season after he had Tommy John surgery last month.

Still, there’s some nice arms in the system and if the Padres can just fill some of their offensive gaps via free agency, they should be competing for the NL West title for years to come.

Everyone who’s watched Jake Peavy over the past few years expected a Cy Young at some point.  And while I wasn’t surprised that he won, I guess I’m a little surprised that he walked away with all 32 first place votes.  Brandon Webb took 31 of the 32 second place votes and Aaron Harang was the only other pitcher who had a first place vote.  This was a ballot where the writers at least all went in lockstep.

In the meantime, the Padres are trying to lock up Peavy with a  long term deal.  Letting him away would not just seriously hamper the team but it’d also cause a ton of fan resentment because Peavy has become the face of the franchise.  And I couldn’t think of a better guy to build a team around then a legimitate number one pitcher like Peavy.

The Padres got future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux to sign on the dotted line to a one year, $10 million deal just a day before he won his 17th gold glove award.  Maddux not provides a veteran prescence in the rotation but he also gives the Padres a solid middle of the rotation option.  Maddux is hardly his former self but he gave the Padres 198 solid innings.  With 707 career starts, Maddux should move into fourth place all time in career starts.  If he matches his fourteen wins from last year, he’ll tie Kid Nichols at seventh all time in wins with 361 and he’d need just four more then that to push all the way to fifth all time in wins.

Regardless, it’ll be another exciting season and I’m interested to see whether Maddux has one more spectacular season left in the tank.  Having a 16 win Maddux to go along with Jake Peavy and Chris Young would go a long way towards the Padres getting back into the playoffs.

Mike Cameron will miss the first 25 games of the season because of a stimulant drug suspension.  Of course now this will affect his contract because he also filed for free agency.  I’ve always been a big fan of Cameron’s and thought he was a nice guy to have roaming Petco’s centerfield but he’s now one more test away from a half year suspension, which would really hurt.

The Padres seem confident of locking up Greg Maddux for another year.  It sure would be nice having his veteran prescence in the rotation for another season.