Brad Hawpe

Rating a team ten games into the season often seems like a lost cause. 

Imagine, for instance, critics panning a movie after watching ten minutes. 

What if a teacher wrote you off two weeks into the new semester? 

How about rating the Chargers after one game?

Yet ten games of the baseball season still represent more than five percent of the season, and Padres fans can explain firsthand about the difference a few games can make, let alone ten. For further references, I suggest googling the 2010 season.

Adrian Gonzalez? Gone. David Eckstein? History. The Hairstons? Adios.

Miguel Tejada? Auf Weidersehen. Yorvit Torrealba? Movin on..

You get the picture. The Padres will be a different team in 2011.

The question becomes "Is different better?" I know that what I see on paper right now looks much better than the last two seasons teams did at this same point. Lets take a look at what should be the Padres starting line up for opening day.

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With spring training around the corner, coupled with being snowed in here in Little Rock, Arkansas, I thought it’d be a perfect time for my take on the Padres in 2011.

The 2011 opening day lineup will most likely look similar to this:

1.     Jason Bartlett – SS

2.     Orlando Hudson – 2B

Brad Hawpe has found a new home in San Diego, though it isn’t to man the outfield. 

Hawpe has been tabbed by the Padres to help fill the gaping hole left by the trade that sent Adrian Gonzalez to Boston. At the major league level, he’s appeared in just nine games at the position, though he did log 215 games there while in the minors.

His glove will be a question, at least early on, but the bigger issue for fantasy owners will be his bat. 

Don’t fret about the loss of Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego Padres fans, you now have Brad Hawpe to replace him and play first base.

That was my poor attempt at humor and an unfair shot at Padre fans, but they really do have Hawpe to replace Gonzalez at first in 2011.

It didn’t take long for RF Brad Hawpe to find some work.  Hawpe, who cleared waivers on Thursday after being designated for assignment by the Colorado Rockies last week, signed with the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.

The Colorado Rockies defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday in LA, 3-2 in extra innings.

The Rockies are reeling.

Eight straight losses in July will do that to a team. While the Rockies aren’t officially out of anything right now, they will have to have another miracle turn around and play-off run like they had in 2007 to make the playoffs.

But this team isn’t 2007. The 2007 Rockies had better starting pitching and one of the best defenses in the history of major league baseball. Where this team features base-running errors, fielding errors and a high strike out rate for its hitters.

The Rockies have been disappointing this season. There. I said it.

Colorado has been average, mediocre, maybe even boring.

Some guys have been on fire from the start while others can’t seem to figure it out, ruining the party for everybody.

Read on to find out who’s been carrying his weight and who’s looked awful so far in 2010.

30. Jason Hammel (SP) – That 7.52 ERA isn’t going to cut it. Even for a fifth starter, Hammel has been nothing short of abysmal this season.

Trying to make accurate predictions in sports is nearly impossible. Nobody really knows how the season is going to play out no matter how well informed.

Injuries, slumps and surges are going to happen to every player on every team and even the most well educated fans and analysts won’t be able to predict more than a handful of outcomes.

This, after all, is why we love sports. We simply don’t know what’s going to happen and that’s where all the excitement comes from.