Bonds & Hyzdu - Fo Shizzu

It’s late and I’m tired. Geoff Young, of Ducksnorts.com fame has a good write-up over at Baseball Think Factory about the Padres. (Ha! If you’ve found me, you’ve probably already seen Baseball Think Factory….)

I wrote last night that the Padres (and Dodgers too) now have significantly high likelihoods of winning the NL West. With Barry Bonds out until mid-season and contemplating retirement, the Giants are a pretty poor team. – I don’t have a link, but my friend Paul Reams told me that Baseball Prospectus is calling the Bonds-less Giants team one of the 5 worst teams in baseball… If that’s true, wow.

In other news the Padres traded reliever Blain Neal to Boston for Adam Hyzdu. Adam may be a classic 4-A player or he could be another Jason Bay (late-bloomer). He’s 33 but he did hit .301/.413/.568 with 33 2B & 29 HR in 129 AAA games (International League). He has played 190 Major League games and hasn’t faired well, but I’m willing to bet that if he gets to log significant playing time, he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

Blain on the other hand wasn’t likely to make the bullpen and he would have been exposed to waivers. With this trade, we didn’t lose him for nothing.

I’ll write more tomorrow.