Pad People

There's something uniquely enjoyable about watching the Padres slide into the spotlight in the offseason. Usually that slot goes to the Red Sox and Yankees (and maybe the Dodgers and Angels), who are inevitably in on every big free agent out there; the A's and Rays' payroll contortions as detractors revel in the sell-off and supporters struggle to divine the logic; and the sad-sacks like the Phillies and the Marlins and the Mets, who only make offseason news for the wrong reasons.

Who The Good Guys Are

Once upon a time, everybody hated Bryce Harper. They hated him because he was cocky and arrogant and disrespectful (or possibly a 17 year old kid who had been told most of his life he was a transcendent talent and who was under an intense media spotlight from the age when it became possible for him to grow hair in awkward places).

This lasted for a while, until suddenly an idiot political columnist had a new idea: Bryce Harper, who didn't do underaged drinking and who went all-out on every play, even when that meant crashing into walls, was no longer Everything Wrong With Baseball.