Phil Mickelson to get involved with potential Padres ownership group

Phil Mickelson is trying to get into the ownership game. Mickelson is reportedly putting up some of his own money to get involved with a group trying to buy the San Diego Padres. The Padres are Mickelson’s hometown team.

Mickelson has joined the group headed by Kevin and Brian O’Malley and their cousins Peter and Tom Seidler, whose Top of the Third, Inc., owns the Single-A Visalia Rawhide, are one of five parties known to be exploring the purchase of John Moores’ controlling interest in the Padres. Their efforts are being guided by Peter O’Malley, the former Dodgers owner, but the senior O’Malley does not anticipate being actively involved in the Padres operation, preferring to leave that to “the next generation.”

“This was a unique opportunity with families that had done this before and know how to do it right and want to get involved in the community,” Mickelson told the newspaper. 


Padres legend Tony Gwynn has backed a different ownership group but if the O’Malley team gets the deal Mr. Padre won’t be shut out of the franchise completely.

“If we were able to get control, (Gwynn) would be the first person we’d want to get involved,” Mickelson said. “He’s such an icon with the team. Hopefully, it won’t be combative.” 


The franchise is twisting in the wind right now regarding their ownership status and they need someone to take full ownership of the team soon.

Padres thinking of moving the fences in

The San Diego Padres’ home field, Petco Park is known as a pitchers park. But when you look at the current dimensions, it’s a bit extreme. The Padres offense had been punchless the past few years and management feels that it’s almost a competitive disadvantage to play there.

So management has tinkered with the thought of moving the fences in.

“We’re open-minded and we’re seriously considering it,” Padres interim CEO Tom Garfinkel said Tuesday.


“I do believe it is too extreme right now. It will still be a pitcher’s ballpark. But a hitter should be rewarded if he crushes it. And if a team is down 4-0, they should feel there is some hope. It’s just too extreme.”


Translation: It shouldn’t be so difficult to come from behind since we don’t have to much going for us offensively.

The decision has to be made by the end of the season and the team’s plans have to be submitted to MLB.

“We’d have to submit plans by the end of the season,” said Garfinkel, who said the Padres have not decided on the distance that the fences would be shortened.


“I don’t think a final decision needs to be made until October,” said Garfinkel.


Garfinkel knows that shorter fences would mean more excitement, more ticket sales, and higher television ratings, even though what he says speaks to the welfare of both teams.


“We have to get it right. We are studying everything. There are still going to be some nights when the conditions would still be such that it’s going to be hard to hit a homer no matter what the distance is to the fences.


“But a solidly hit ball should be rewarded. Baseball is a match between the pitcher and the hitter. We’ve seen a number of times here where the hitter wins that battle and gets nothing to show for it.


“It should play fair. Four runs should not be an impossible deficit to overcome.”    

Garfinkel is probably tired of seeing long fly balls by the home team come up short. I look for the Padres to go ahead and move the fences in but I don’t know how much it’s going to help their team.

Dusty’s Decisions May Have Doomed Harang

In the world of sports it doesn’t take much for a player in any sport to lose it. Ask Jake Delhomme, Steve Blass, Jim Everett, Chuck Knoblauch, or Steve Sax. They were mental cases to say the least. Some are derailed by a strange coaching decision, like keeping a star player in a blow out game. San Diego Padres pitcher Aaron Harang was doomed by the latter.

When Harang was with the Cincinnati Reds, he says a relief appearance back in 2008 against, how ironic, the Padres, his current team. It was an extra innings game and Harang was summoned in by manager Dusty Baker, he of the weird pitching decisions. Harang pitched well in that game, but in his next outing, a start against the Pirates, he gave up six runs in four innings. You know Baker has ruined a pitcher before so this is nothing new.

Sometimes you need to conserve a pitcher for the long haul instead of using him for an early season extra inning game, especially if that pitcher is a starter that eats up a lot of innings for you. But you know Dusty, he consulted the wristbands and the wristbands told him to put in Harang.

“What it did,” Harang said of the relief appearance to the San Diego Union-Tribune, “is fatigue me beyond the point of recovery. I started to change my arm angle to compensate for the fatigue and that’s when my forearm started to bother me. I feel like I’ve never been able to get back to the consistent, repetitive mechanics that I had,” he continued. “The last couple of years have been, ‘Try this, try that. Move your arm angle out a little.’ I’ve had a couple of my old coaches call me, asking, ‘What are you doing? You had so much success before doing the same thing. Now, all of a sudden, you’re turning your back on that?’ “I got away from my main thing, which is throwing my fastball and throwing everything off that. I got to thinking I’m going to trick people and it just didn’t work.”



I know the bottom line in sports in general is wins and losses. Sometimes you have to let one go early for long term success. The short term gain wasn’t worth it for the Reds or Harang that season. Now Harang is working to get back to his old self while Dusty gets to possibly ruin Edinson Volquez or Aroldis Chapman.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/11/padres-harang-homing-return-dominance/