San Diego

It appears San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller is back to his old tricks.

There's less than three months remaining until Opening Day, and the Los Angeles Dodgers look decidedly different than they did at the beginning of the offseason.

For starters, the front office was stripped down and replaced with a new regime headed by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi.

Major League Baseball mourned an all-time great player and person on June 16 when San Diego Padres icon Tony Gwynn died. More than a week has gone by and Gwynn's death is still impacting others around baseball, particularly those who use smokeless or chewing tobacco.

Since getting swept by Joe Torre and the New York Yankees in the 1998 World Series, the San Diego Padres have only played playoff ball twice.

Even on those two occasions that they managed to take an underpaid club and over-perform enough to swing the bats in October, they’ve only been victorious once.

The San Diego Padres and GM Josh Byrnes have left much to be desired this offseason.

They have spent most of their assets on keeping their roster from last season and maintaining their farm system. This may be the best strategy for the Padres considering that they finished with a respectable 42-33 record after the All-Star break.

As recently as 2008, the National League West was considered a sub-par division and filled with mediocre teams barely breaking the .500 mark.  

In 2005, for instance, the Giants, Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks all finished the season with losing records, while the San Diego Padres won the division with a mere 82-80 mark.

Mediocrity aside, 2013 looks to be an exciting year for the National League West and its fans.  

As the San Diego Padres continue their search for an additional starting pitcher, one name that has stuck out as a potential trade candidate is Detroit Tigers' starting pitcher Rick Porcello.

The Padres ownership saga is unofficially complete.

John Moores has agreed to a deal to sell the San Diego Padres to the O'Malley group, according to The Union-Tribune San Diego. The price? A figure close to $800 million.

31 years after the Summer of Love, Major League Baseball decided to stage a little summer smoochfest of their own in 1998.

This would find full grown adults in colorful clothes who would consume illegal drugs to their hearts' desire, all under the approving eye of both the owners and the commissioner. McGwire in Cardinal red would amicably bump chests with Sosa in Cub blue, and all was right with the world.

Embarrassing, pathetic, futile. These are words that come to mind so far this season while watching my Padres become the WORST hitting team of all time. EVER.

San Diego leads all of baseball in several pitching categories, as well as being dead last in almost every offensive statistic. It might be the ballpark, it might be the players, it might be the coaching, and it might be all three of these things, brought together in the perfect storm of hopelessness.

Lets take a quick look at some Padre starters and the numbers they have compiled so far in 2011...