Nick Canepa: With puppeteer as GM, Padres must hire manager who has no strings attached
Marion Ette. Remember the name.
Ette is the rumor mill’s latest leader in the clubhouse to become the Padres’ — what, 21st? — manager in A.J. “Gepetto” Preller’s decade as puppeteer.
Let us hope this is not the case. Let us hope that owner Peter Seidler, who has not been well and is said to be slowly recovering, still has the strength to order his GM to hire a replacement for Bob Melvin who comes with no strings attached.
For reasons known only to him and the lamppost, Peter has the power but not the strength to remove Preller’s seat from the captain’s table, where A.J. continues to order expensive-but-unfulfilling meals without paying the tab.
Pretty foo-foo food with very little taste. The bland leading the bland.
I do not understand it. I never will understand it. Because Seidler is such a shrewd businessman. And, while he’s kind and generous, he has to know when something he’s deeply involved in isn’t working.
And this isn’t working. It simply is not. Not close. I see a team in chaos. I see lying. I see discombobulation. An organization unorganized.
Why should we believe bringing in another manager is going to mop up a mess that cannot be explained? Who? Harry Hazmat? This puzzle was missing pieces. Expensive replacements were brought in. They didn’t fit.
Melvin appeared to have it solved in 2022, but then he suddenly became a bad manager, because his Billion Dollar Babies couldn’t come through when it mattered, and failed to make the playoffs despite bad baseball being played by nearly everyone else.
At the end of the most disastrous season in franchise history, Preller had a press conference. Melvin, more adversary than employee, was going to return as the manager going forward, A.J. cooed. Which was a crock.
Bob, with the deadly one year left on his contract, Melvin was told he could look for other employment, which he (conveniently) found last week with the Giants.
Bob Melvin was fired. Not officially, maybe, but canned for using players on the roster given him — by Preller, who can play many roles except fall guy.
We’ve already broken all-time naivete records regarding this franchise. Fans have flocked to Petco, which is not cut-rate. How long can this continue?
I have no idea who the next manager will be, and I can’t say I care much. Melvin, who managed to make some chicken salad out of the crap scooped off the floor of Oakland’s coop, seemed perfect.
The favorite now is Mike Shildt, who is in-house as a senior adviser. Mike had a .559 winning percentage in St. Louis and was Manager of the Year. Supposedly, he was fired for “philosophical differences” with his GM. Interesting. Can anyone other than Seidler not have philosophical differences with Preller?
Critics say you can’t hire a novice to run this spoiled rich kid prep school. Will an asskicking taskmaster do any good?
What happened here in 2023 was one of the more extraordinary things I’ve seen since I started learning baseball from Dizzy Dean. It couldn’t happen to a team with good pitching and defense. In a word, pathetic.
Maybe the solution is to have their four richest players manage one game at a time. Maybe they would listen to themselves. For more money, of course. …
Oh, how I would have loved to see Kevin Towers with this much dough to bake with. …
Best manager available? Dusty Baker. …
Current Arizona skipper Torey Lovullo was in charge in 2021 when the Snakes went 52-110. At one point they lost 17 games in a row. And yet he managed to avoid philosophical differences. …
It’s as tired as I am. It’s a shame Fox isn’t getting big boys in the World Series. Sob. Do they not know Dallas is the nation’s fifth-largest TV market and Phoenix is No. 11? It’s not sexy? …
What exactly in baseball is sexy anymore? Nine MLB players batted .300. One more than eight. Runners and movement make baseball. …
My advice to the networks: Don’t pay for it and you won’t get upset. …
Brandon Staley, the defensive master, somehow has found a way to make a phenomenal talent such as Derwin James look ordinary. …
Staley made good halftime adjustments vs. the Chiefs. But the great defensive coordinators don’t wait until the break or the postgame press conference to make changes. They do it on the fly, when the problem is at hand. …
The very physical Eagles dominated the physically gifted track team that is Miami. Somehow, they were not penalized. To quote Samuel Goldwyn: “In two words, Im. Possible.” Shameful. …
What happens when you don’t get a chance to see Lamar Jackson very often? He’s 16-1 vs. the NFC. …
Mike Tomlin is a warlock. A marvel with mirrors and a whole lot of smoke. …
The NFL is planning to use bags of silver dollars to beat the holy hell out of players who fight before and after games. Not a good look, you know. On-field violence while playing a violent game isn’t preferred, either. …
I hate the quarterback slide and the tush push. Not football. I know the slide isn’t going away, but the push is bush and has to leave us. Not becoming. …
A week ago, ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” spent several minutes on Princess Di’s Eagles jacket and its current whereabouts. What a waste. Great investigative journalism. Harry told me long ago his dad got it in the divorce. …
Nor have I seen worse tackling and officiating. How can you not review a terrible, game-changing spot, as field officials did in screwing Houston in its game vs. Texas? …
It should be OK for the famous teams not to get a break. …
The Aztecs couldn’t score on winless Nevada (OK, I won’t say State’s offense is putrid and boring anymore). But they did pass for 47 yards on perhaps the nation’s worst defense, so I’m already breaking my promise. 911 doesn’t work in football. …
SDSU’s football program is broken. A shame Bob Melvin has another job. Even Kansas is good. …
Meanwhile, USC’s horrific defense couldn’t control a Utah offense playing scout team scrubs at skill positions. …
If Lincoln Riley expects his light defensive fronts to work in the Big Ten and against more powerful SEC teams and play for a national championship, he easily should find a USC-friendly studio that will hire him as an actor. …
UCLA, with that defense, gets it. …
Oklahoma’s four starting defensive linemen combine for 21 years of college experience. The most veteran is John Blutarsky. …
Bartolo Colon has been drafted by the Monarch team in the new Dubai baseball league. Going just before Bartolo were Lefty Grove and Grover Cleveland Alexander. …
Virginia has a quarterback named Muskett, whose great, great, grandfather fired the first pass in the Blue-Gray Game. …
What are the odds? UNLV now has a better football program than SDSU. And that should never, ever, be. …
Ham & Eggers: Take the bumpy ride down unpaved Morena Boulevard. If your wheels are out of alignment, they’ll get knocked straight. …
Know why teams and games can be bad without consequence? Because gamblers don’t care about aesthetics. They do care about winning. Bets.
