BEHOLD THE PADRES, WHO OUT-DODGERED THE DODGERS AND ‘BEAT L.A.!’
The audacious triumph of Peter Seidler and A.J. Preller exposes many major-league franchises as frauds, proving a team in middling San Diego can do business aggressively and avoid tank/rebuild schemes
The greatest joy in sports is the disruption of classism, especially when executed with the kitsch of a silly goose and the massage of a pitcher’s ear. We spend decades determined to brand major-market teams as the industry titans, even more so in baseball, where a lopsided economic system leads the richest and most aggressive owners to lure many of the best players to Los Angeles and New York.
Who had the biggest payrolls this season? The Dodgers and Mets, natch. But look at them now, abruptly sent home, both eliminated by a franchise in a market less than one-fifth the size of their metro populations. San Diego — or “Sahn Di-Ah-go,’’ as Ron Burgundy pronounced it, claiming the city was named for a “whale’s vagina” — has been abandoned once by the NFL and twice by the NBA. It’s a sun-bronzed, surf-and-snorkel playland tucked away in a remote American corner bordered by Mexico to the south, an ocean to the west, a desert to the east …
And Los Angeles to the north.
As in, “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!” As in, the chant that echoed for two of the most memorable nights in recent postseason history. No city ever has felt more inferior to another, though, as an L.A. guy, I can provide many reasons San Diego is more desirable as an address, including the recorded conversations of Los Angeles City Council members who engaged in racist insults and slurs that set back a melting-pot culture a thousand years. In L.A., drivers blow through red lights and stop signs and kill people. In L.A., you might walk into a drug store to buy toothpaste and encounter a homeless person wielding a pick-axe. But because L.A. is known as the world’s glamour capital and San Diego is known for fish tacos, yeah, there was genuine enmity in Petco Park, reflected by these pre-series cracks from L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke: “San Diego thinks Los Angeles is evil. Los Angeles thinks San Diego is cute. … Padres fans see the Dodgers and immediately break into passionate boos. Dodgers fans see the Padres and immediately think, ‘Hey, we should plan our next weekend trip to Del Mar!’ ” Such is the pompous mentality despite the fact the Dodgers, last we looked, haven’t won a full-season championship since 1988.
Also driving the haughtiness was a soundbite that echoed through the season, from the March morning when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts appeared on Dan Patrick’s radio show and predicted a championship. “We are winning the World Series in 2022. We are winning the World Series this year, put it on record. That’s our focus, that’s our goal,” he said.
Six months later, Roberts is hearing familiar calls for his head, not that the critics — myself included — will get their wish.
So if you thought the decibels Saturday night were louder than anything you’ve heard, just short of a volcanic eruption and a space shuttle launch, now you know why. The meek not only inherited the sporting earth but crushed a superiority complex. The Hollywood cyclops with the Dodger Blue mantra, the dreamy ravine ballpark, too many legends to count and an ownership group worth more than $300 billion in assets — that dragon went down in four games in the National League Division Series, with the Fightin’ Friars ousting the giant that won an astounding 111 games and posted the highest run differential (plus-334) since the 1939 Yankees. This is, quite obviously, one of the mightiest upsets in baseball history, an indictment of one team’s shallow arrogance and flawed postseason approach and a testimony to the other team’s passion and purpose. It was Padres owner Peter Seidler, remember, who invoked the dragon this summer in daring to publicly voice what most San Diegans assumed was a psychedelic trip, believing that a team in a fair-to-middling market could do business like a large-market behemoth if megamillions were spent wisely and urgently.
“They’re the dragon up the freeway we’re trying to slay,” Seidler said famously, an all-time quote that should be draped across Interstate 5 in both directions.
He spoke the mission into existence, then killed the beast, while altering the way we should think about the sport’s so-called caste system. How did he describe beating the rival that lapped the Padres in the NL West by 22 games? “My heart was pumping out of my chest,” Seidler said of his Game 4 joyride.
Having slayed the dragon, with the symbolic help of a disoriented goose that dropped into Dodger Stadium as the home team was losing Game 2, the Padres have toppled the cheap, lazy MLB assumption that mid/small-market teams can’t play the same money game as the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees. With the help of maniacal general manager A.J. Preller, whose initials must stand for Always Jacked, the Padres announced their intentions at the trade deadline by winning the historic Juan Soto sweepstakes and, in the same audacious swoop, acquiring closer Josh Hader. Never let it be said again in a bigger place — say, Chicago — that a team doesn’t possess the budget to make bold, expensive moves. Never let it be said that 80 percent of teams must endure rebuilds that span way too many years. Rather than tank and pretend, Seidler and Preller chose to attack the Dodgers empire.
And when they succeeded, the skies emptied inside the ballpark by the bay, letting the fans party in a rare but mystical downpour. They might still be dancing to rock songs in their soaked clothes, waving their plastic “rally geese” and wearing t-shirts mocking Mets manager Buck Showalter, who six days earlier had demanded umpires check the ears of homegrown-hero pitcher Joe Musgrove for substances when the opponents couldn’t muster offense if thrown wiffle balls. How loud was it? “A concert broke out, basically,” Preller said. “It was Blink-182, the rain was coming down. It’s like, is this real? It was a lot of fun.”
It should be a lot of fun for more teams. Why must so many towns wait eons for such moments when the Padres have provided a spend-and-hustle blueprint to achieve immediate contention? Basically, Seidler grew tired of terminal losing with a franchise that, in 54 years of existence, has been to the World Series twice and lost both times and hadn’t won a postseason series in front of fans since 2006. As the controlling owner, he understood the dominance of the Dodgers. Rather than deal with more sand-kickings, he knew he had to emulate the dragon and spend. He’s a private-equity investor, after all, launching the new philosophy by signing Manny Machado to a 10-year, $300 million deal before the 2019 season. Two years later, big-money pitching ace Yu Darvish arrived. Then came the summer that rocked front offices everywhere — a deal for generational talent Soto, who rejected a 15-year, $450 million offer in Washington and will command at least that much after the 2024 season, though Seidler says he’s ready to outbid all comers. By comparison, Hader was a bargain with $15 million owed him next season, but you didn’t see other contenders chasing an established dominant closer. All of this crazy activity was going down while showman Fernando Tatis Jr., rewarded $340 million for 14 years, was making the investment look ill-advised with a winter motorcycle wreck and a positive PED test that landed him an 80-game suspension.
Still, the dragon was ripe to be slayed. Seidler had committed largely to his own soaring payroll of $233 million. Curiously, Dodgers baseball boss Andrew Friedman was quiet at the trade deadline, though it was clear his trade for closer Craig Kimbrel was failing. It also had been his brilliant idea to sign problematic pitcher Trevor Bauer for $102 million, which proved disastrous when he was banned two seasons for violating MLB’s domestic violence policy. With Clayton Kershaw still vulnerable to eroding health and ace Walker Buehler out until 2024 after Tommy John surgery, the rotation was thin. Yet the Dodgers, despite the fortunes they throw at Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and other stars-on-demand, did little to improve at the deadline. Friedman thought his roster, loaded with talent, was good enough to win after so many heartbreaks in recent years, softened only by a 2020 Series title in a pandemic bubble that doesn’t seem real.
Here is where the Dodgers are mesmerized by their own b.s. After so many near-misses in a supposed decade of dominance, they should have realized better than anyone that the regular season is meaningless beyond playoff qualification. Yet, once again, they hopped on their usual April-thru-September cruise, and two weeks ago, Roberts went on an oddly timed rant about spoiled Dodgers fans. “Fans are fans for a reason, they’ve never put on a big league uniform,” he said. “Unfortunately, the world has gone very cynical, which is sad. ... Are certain fans, not all, jaded? Absolutely. And (they) don't realize what it takes, what this team, in particular, has had to overcome, to get to this point. The sense of gratitude and joy is many times lost in our society, and certainly in sports, it's at the forefront. I wish they certainly would enjoy the ride and know and appreciate what we do, regardless of ultimately if we're the last team standing.”
WTF? Did Roberts sense what was about to happen? Again? Didn’t the playoff format, with the Divisional Series still a best-of-five set, allow a hot team to chase the Dodgers from another October in a matter of days?
Sure enough, that’s what happened. The Padres produced the big hits, while the Dodgers choked with runners in scoring position. The Padres had the better relievers, including Robert Suarez, who was pursued by Preller for years in leagues in Mexico and Japan. And in the seventh inning of Game 4, to be recalled fondly in San Diego and dreadfully in L.A, the Padres shrunk Friedman and Roberts to their usual October-fool selves. Rather than stick with starter Tyler Anderson, who was at his best and looking strong, the manager pulled him because pre-game analytics had determined that he shouldn’t pitch the third time around the Padres lineup. Don’t blame that move completely on Roberts, who was listening to his laptop-engrossed boss. But the subsequent roulette wheel of relievers as the Padres scored five runs … how much longer will Guggenheim Baseball stand by this manager when so many playoff opportunities have been wasted?
For now, Roberts is spewing the same October bunk. “The shock factor is very high. Disappointment, very high. It’s crushing,” he said. “Each guy gave everything they had all year long and a tremendous season. The great thing about baseball is the unpredictability, and the tough thing about it is the same thing.”
At least Kershaw and Justin Turner have come to realize the regular season is irrelevant. “It’s just abrupt. It just ends when you don’t expect it to,” said Kershaw, who wiped tears in the dugout. “I don’t think any of us expected to lose and to be going home. It’s a weird feeling.”
“They all suck. To fall short of a championship, it hurts every time,” said Turner, who could be leaving if the club opts out of a $16 million option. “Point your fingers to whatever you want. Bottom line is, we got beat. The playoffs in baseball are tough. Short series, best-of-five series, it’s always a flip of the coin. We didn’t accomplish our goal. Whatever happens in the regular season doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter if we win 111 or 88. In a short series, it matters if you win three games. They accomplished that.”
Said Betts: “Yeah, it’s super cool to win that many games, but if means nothing if you don’t win in the postseason. … We just didn’t hit, man. That’s on us. We did not execute any type of plan. We didn’t do anything that we did throughout the season. Like I said, it sucks, but nothing we can do now.”
All of which should point to the end of Roberts, but he only shares in the blame. The billionaire Guggenheim moguls were out-invested by Seidler, who, curiously, is the grandson of longtime Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who brought the franchise to L.A. in 1958 despite their enduring popularity in Brooklyn. And Friedman was outperformed by Preller. And Roberts was out-managed by Bob Melvin, who lit into his players in the final days of the regular season while Roberts was lighting into fans.
What we do know is, the Guggenheimers must open up their bank again and spend more judiciously this offseason. The Dodgers need another big rotation arm to complement Julio Urias. Would Jacob deGrom consider Chavez Ravine? Kershaw is a free agent, and this time, he might opt to finish his career with his hometown Texas Rangers. Anderson and Andrew Heaney also could leave. They still don’t have a reliable closer. Trea Turner, usually an elite offensive catalyst but sometimes a saboteur, is a free agent and likely heading elsewhere. He could be replaced by Xander Bogaerts or Carlos Correa — wait, he was one of those cheatin’ Astros, who are back in the American League championship series, much to L.A.’s chagrin. Would Aaron Judge consider the Dodgers? Probably not, seeing how he was a fan of the rival Giants as a kid and likely is staying in Yankees pinstripes for $300-million plus. Cody Bellinger is a mysterious, stick-skinny bust and craves a change of scenery. Massive decisions will be made, including whether it’s time to blow up the clubhouse culture and replace Roberts.
The team down south isn’t going away, you see. “This is something that needs to be celebrated,” said Musgrove, whose ears were still wet, from sweat, during his starting stint in the clincher. “Because for a long time those guys up north have beaten us down and were knocking us out of playoff contention and taking the division from us every year. So these fans deserve to celebrate at the moment of the changing of the tide.”
“No better feeling than this, man,” Machado said. “We beat one of the best teams in baseball. We beat the Mets as well. We’re on our way to something special here, something San Diego has never seen.”
So much for imperial rule. The Padres have beaten the Mets, whose payroll was $273.9 million. They have beaten the Dodgers, whose payroll was $267.2 million. Now favored to win the NL championship series over the equally adorable Philadelphia Phillies, whose payroll came in at $243 million, the Padres could face the Yankees and their $254.4 payroll in the World Series. In the wildest scenario, they would upend four teams with a collective 2022 payroll of more than $1 billion. And if the Yankees lose Game 5 to Cleveland in the ALDS, a bigger point will be made about the end of traditional and financial entitlement. A team of kids, 17 of whom made their major-league debuts this season, can ride the old-school sorcery of Terry Francona, solid pitching and airtight fundamentals to the AL championship series … with a $66 million payroll?
Until Tuesday night, when San Diego will explode again, a visual on the Petco Park scoreboard will remain with us all. A fan held a sign, “How The Mighty Have Fallen,” followed by yet another “Beat L.A.!” chant. A minute later, on the Dodgers’ cable station, an infomercial offered baseball bats commemorating “the 111-win season” for $249.
They should yank the ad. Yanking Dave Roberts would be easier, but even if they did, it won’t solve the problem when his successor loses in October to the new dragon down the freeway.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.