Idiots Write About Sports

So the Giants, who have now clinched a losing record for the season, are still alive in the season’s final week. Talk about an amazing run — even in a meaningless, lost season, there are still a glut of meaningful games. It’s crazy.

But really, this is all due to the ineptitude of the entire National League West, a division whose players should be relegated to AAA — not the minor league, the auto club — for 2006. The Dodgers have sunk like a stone. The Giants have fought back from a terrible start to become merely mediocre.

And the Padres, oh the Padres. Still flirting with a sub-.500 record, and eyeing that first-round series with St. Louis straight in the face. It’s almost impossible that the Giants will sweep the Padres at home this week, but still, this should have been over a month ago. Instead, the Padres are stumbling horribly. When they finally clinch — which I think they’ll probably do in the next four games against the Giants — I don’t think they should break out the champagne. Instead, how about a nice thermos of coffee?

I was wondering when you were going to post something -- anything -- about the Giants' odd playoff run ;-)

Wonder no more, faithful reader!

I'm telling you, the Padres are going to lose this thing. They've been working on it since they pulled into first place at the tail end of May.

Basically, they've determined -- consciously or otherwise -- that losing the division in the final week of the season would be more humiliating than losing in the first round of the playoffs. So they're going with that.

See my post from May 24 for a full explanation. Note, in particular, the phrase, "pronounced, embarrassing, and unavoidable."

While it is possible for the Padres to "lose this thing", I don't think that they will.

(Though they are trying......)

You may be right. Jason has pointed out to me that blowing the lead in our already-dismissed little division is nowhere near as humiliating as being spanked mercilessly in the first round of the nationally televised playoffs. (As the first sub-.500 playoff entrant, no less.)

If there are two roads to travel, the Padres will nearly always choose the more ignominious one.

The A's are eliminated, while the Giants are still in it.

Life ain't fair.

Worse, Kenny: THE PADRES WILL BE IN THE PLAYOFFS.

Depending on how things shake out this week, EVERY team in the NL East may have a better record than the Padres. That's obscene. But such are the vagaries of divisional play. Otherwise they'd just have all the teams in the league in a single table and pick out the top four records at the end.

On the bright side, I finally have a reason to like the unbalanced schedule. If the West had been forced to play more games outside their division, the Padres would probably have taken the division with a .350 record.

As miserable a division as the NL West has been this year, I'd still rather see five (crappy) teams of approximately equal(ly crappy) skill battle it out than watch the same one or two teams run away with the division every single year.

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