Padres fans got a thrill this week when The Franimal, Franmil Reyes, got called up from AAA on Sunday.  Reyes is the next player that tore up the extreme hitters environment in El Paso and the Pacific Coast League that the Padres can test out in the big leagues.  In some cases, like Austin Hedges, that AAA performance was nothing but a mirage.  In others, like Hunter Renfroe, the power shown in AAA did translate.  The hope is that Franimal, a massive human being, is able to display some of the power he showed as embarked on a reign of terror through the PCL.  Of course, Franimal’s call up was only part of the story.  In a great victory for the Padres new media community and Padres Twitter in general, James Clark, founder of East Village Times, produced the scoop that Franimal was being called up.

Admirably, Dennis Lin, AJ Cassavell, and Jeff Sanders all credited James for the scoop while, to my knowledge, Acee still hasn’t.  I’ll be the first to say, scoops like this or Acee’s Hosmer scoop have very little intrinsic value.  They are basically scoops that beat official announcements by a few minutes, and end up being little more than dick measuring.  Acee famously said that breaking stories like the Hosmer signing was better than sex.  But it doesn’t diminish James’ accomplishment.  What he did was real journalism: cultivating sources over a long period of time, developing relationships, earning trust, and being rewarded with information.  And in this case, he did it better than any of the other full time beat writers in town.  James one upped old media and made all of us in the Padres blogging and podcasting community proud.

Days Since Marver Actually Wrote Something: 332 days

Marver keeps referencing how inaccurate Keith Law’s prospect evaluations and rankings are on the Tweeter, but yet, we all sit here thinking how great it would be to read an in-depth analysis supporting the assertion that Keith Law’s work doesn’t correlate with reality.  It sure would be great.

Gwynntelligence Posts:

This Week In Padres Twitter – 5/18/18: Just a reminder that the Padres, after an incredibly disappointing weekend of attendance for the ’98 reunion and four bobbleheads, have not announced any new ballpark passes, nor have they announced any new ballpark ticket deals.  I haven’t written about it much, but beyond ballpark passes, there are all kinds of family deals being offered by other teams that harken back to the golden days of Coca-Cola Family Nights at the Murph.  The Houston Astros, the defending World Series champs and in no need of juicing attendance, have the following deals going:

• 4 Sunday view deck tickets, 4 hot dogs, 4 sodas for $70
• 4 Sunday field box tickets, 4 hot dogs, 4 sodas for $148 (this isn’t far off of what it would cost to do Park At The Park for four with 4 hot dogs and sodas)
• Monday=Thurday ticket with a hot dog, popcorn, and a soda for $20
• Dollar hot dogs on Tuesdays
• Two Tuesday view deck tickets for $22

This is the tip of the iceberg of deals going on right now.  And what do we hear from Wayne Partello and the Padres marketing department?  Crickets.  It’s either laziness, incompetence, or contempt for the fans that have stuck by years of dreadful baseball (or all of the above).

Padres Blogosphere Posts:

East Village Times – Are Padres & Mariners a Fit for a Potential Trade?: Look, most of the trade suggestions here are silly at best.  If anyone thinks Carlos Asuaje is worth anything, you’re nuts.  If all Tyson Ross gets the Padres is Marco Gonzales, I’ll punch a wall.  I thought it was most interesting that it basically poo-poo’d the original idea of Jankowski being someone the Mariners could use.  Like, yeah, the Padres have a bunch of second baseman, but not sure if you’ve watched them; they totally suck.  Jankowski’s little hot streak here is exactly what the Padres need to pawn him off on somebody.  As much as I like his speed, I think what we’re seeing here is a mirage.  If he can keep this up, he seems like a classic sell high opportunity.

Fangraphs – Jordan Lyles Found Something He’s Never Had: The high point of this week in Padres baseball was clearly Jordan Lyles’ masterful performance on Tuesday afternoon.  Lyles was the latest no-hitter tease in Padres baseball.  Edinson Volquez had the best game I’ve seen pitched this decade when he threw a one hitter, with the one hit being a weak grounder to Volquez that he didn’t field that smoothly.  This game will get filed in the same Mediocre Pitchers That Almost Threw A Padres No-Hitter folder as Volquez and Chad Gaudin.  But with Lyles, he’s showing some real changes.  For one, he’s throwing a lot harder.  When Lyles was a top 100 prospect in the Astros system, he had mediocre Lauer caliber velocity.  He was basically a pitch-to-contact ground ball pitcher that wasn’t very good.  Kind of a Luis Perdomo with less swing and miss.  This season, even in the starters role, he’s found a few extra mph and has abandoned his two seam fastball.  He’s also added some oomph to his hard curveball.  No telling if the improvement is lasting.  Sometimes with big changes to stuff/pitch mix, it’s just a matter of time until advance scouting and video helps hitters adjust and attack the new repertoire (just ask Lucchesi).  Fingers crossed that Lyles can be the next post-hype top prospect pitcher that makes good in San Diego.

The Golden Age Of Padres Podcasts:

Jeff Pearlman – AJ Cassavell: I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did.  Jeff Pearlman, former SI writer, dug into just what goes on with baseball beat writers.  Cassavell, usually pretty vanilla and guarded, really came out of his shell I thought.  AJ shared a lot of insider reporting stories, and also pretty openly discussed how his role as a league paid writer differs from other journalists covering the team.  This is something we’ve talked about quite a bit here at Gwynntelligence, and the fact that Cassavell needs to avoid certain stories due to his position with MLB (he will NOT be the one to finally report on the Dee firing) isn’t surprising.  I think some of Padres Twitter gives AJ (and Corey Brock before him) a hard time for going easy on the team, but it’s just to be expected given that the league (and in turn, Ron Fowler and ownership) employ him.  It’s fine, and AJ does a great job at what he does.  After going through this whole Acee experiment at beat writer, it’s made me appreciate more the work that Lin and Cassavell do for straight news reporting.  Pearlman is blunt and direct in his questioning, creating the perfect forum to get the most out of AJ.  A great listen.  Plus there was a story about Cashner being a dickhead.

The Kept Faith – Jay Posner: I’m not going to lie, I was VERY excited about this when I heard Posner was coming on.  Nick got Posner to address EVT scooping his writers on the Franimal call-up, which led to Posner smugly playing down the importance of it, while pumping the importance of Acee’s Hosmer scoop, despite both having the same relative journalistic value.  Posner said how unimportant he believes Padres Twitter is, and how it doesn’t reflect the average fan.  Forgive me if I laugh, but maybe we shouldn’t rely on the entity bleeding subscribers and focusing on harvesting it’s market position with the 70 and older crowd that refuses to stop reading the physical paper.  Posner also slyly dropped how great it is that they have access to players, which I’ve posited has minimal and diminishing value in today’s day and age of media training and PR-ification.  After this, I kind of felt like Jay got let off the hook.  I have a million questions for Posner.  What is the U-T Sports’ competitive advantage?  Why is Canepa still writing?  How do they regain their relevance with non-senior citizens?  How worrisome is The Athletic to their business model?  Is Acee as much of a dicklick as he seems?  Why was Mike Dee fired?  Why did Mike Dee have 5 young, female assistants in only three years?  How were Garfinkel and Greupner both able to do their job only having one assistant throughout their tenures?  This might be why Posner hasn’t been on the Gwynntelligence Podcast.

Zero Chance Podcast – Can’t Go Back To San Diego: On this week’s look at The Podcasteralyzer 5000 (TM), this episode was the Rickest episode of Zero Chance Yet!  Rick clocked in at a whopping 36% of talking in this episode.  He actually was trending higher for much of the episode until Brady started his “Doctor”DavidChao story.  For the #FreeRick crowd, this was what they were waiting for.  Snark aside, this was honestly my favorite episode of Zero Chance yet.  Brady and Rick had some really interesting discussions about Dick Enberg and the folly of playing of Blink’s San Diego at the end of wins. They also discussed an issue I think I can use the #IStandWithZeroChance hashtag for: wearing team attire at a game that that team isn’t playing in.  As a DC resident for ten years, I almost certainly had a Padres hat or t-shirt on at every Nationals game I ever attended, and saw that this was a really common occurrence.  I stand firmly behind Rick’s stance of not telling people how to fan, just as I did with their discussion of the wave.  Zero Chance has always been a must listen for me, but it’s really hitting its stride with this episode.

The 5.5 Podcast – Danny To The DL, Padres Twitter Going Strong, And Kevin Charity From MadFriars: Eric and Devilish Danny Ortiz really started the episode off with a bang with their discussion of East County high school baseball, a topic all of us have been clamoring for more of.  I hope that next, they discuss exactly where places like Spring Valley, Lakeside, Lemon Grove, and Crest are so I don’t write them off as fantasy locations that don’t exist.  The 5.5 guys did a great job discussing the current state of the Padres, and it was nice to see that Hollywood Kevin Charity, fresh off of his 1090 fame, is still willing to give new media a sniff of his talents.

Hells Belles – The Nostril Diaries: The Hells Belles gals welcome on their significant others: Donovan and Roy.  The HB gang does a great job talking about the long awaited departure of Chase Headley.  They also felt the Barry Bloom blocking reign of terror.  And let’s take a moment to remember that he described this tweet as “vulgar and offensive”:

And look, I tweet a lot of vulgar and offensive stuff, but this wasn’t one of them unless  you really hate Monica’s cultural appropriation of Barbadian culture.  In turn, Bloom blocked Roy for retweeting this “vulgar and offensive” tweet.  In a shining moment for Acee, he called out Bloom’s actions as trolling (while cowardly not including @boomskie on the tweet).  Barry Bloom is not only irrelevant, he’s a thin skinned coward.  Liddy is really establishing herself as one of the top straight talkers in the Golden Age of Padres Podcasts. I also really enjoyed the story about Roy missing the 1998 Padres at the Omni Hotel bar because he went upstairs to their room to undoubtedly take a long BM.

Bluntly Padres – WE BACK! – Look.  Every podcast this week was like 90 minutes.  I couldn’t get to everyone’s.  Hopefully I go cycling this weekend or something and can catch up.  What I’m willing to bet happens in this episode, though, is that Matt and Matt smoke some dank spliffs, giggle, and break down the Jordan Lyles failed perfect game; right on brand for Bluntly Padres, and I’m sure, entertaining as always.

Express Lane Podcast – MLB Fun with SBHS: I’m initiating coverage of this podcast from @Lukelley.  It’s not always all Padres, but as long as they’re talking Padres, I’ll keep covering it here.  Of course, I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but it’s from a South Bay angle, which I thought was Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, but recently learned that people live south of downtown San Diego but north of Tijuana.  WHO KNEW?!

Padres Twitter Podcast – Sent From My iPhone – This just got released last night.  I’m sure Drunk Flannery and MiserableSDFan are great.

Tweet Of The Week:

And the Jaggy goes to…

This was masterful.

Terrible Marver Tweet Of The Week:

Dude doesn’t even get the implications of a null hypothesis, and punted on the differences between Fisher and Neyman/Pearson significance testing.  WHAT A PROPOSITIONAL AND PREDICATE LOGIC NOOB!

Nick Canepa Is An Irrelevant Out Of Touch Old Timer Or Possibly Doing A Bit:

From the Sunday column:

I love when Canepa uses “unsocial media”, it’s so clever!  WORDPLAY!  I also like how he shows his open contempt for the people that the U-T would love to actually care about the product they’re producing by calling them “uneducated, uncaring, stupid”.  Also the Rick Smith reference qualifies as a classic Canepa irrelevant to anyone under 70 reference!  Bingo!

Here’s an aviation secret: if your pilot is flying more by dead reckoning than on instruments, find the parachute and pull a DB Cooper before it’s too late.

Dunking on Acee Of The Week:

Acee put out a mailbag request.  The predictable thing happened:

And, of course there was “Sent From My iPhone”gate

And then on the professional beat writer getting scooped by a little, ol’ blogger:

And..

And the best part of the whole Sent From My iPhone saga is when Posner went on Kept Faith and said because the U-T decided to cheap out on copy editors, that it was fine that Acee publishes error-riddled articles.  After all, now they can just crowdsource their editing and fix it after the fact.  This is the local newspaper of record and they have the editing standards of a Geocities webpage.  PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY SO I CAN SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR TRASH!

Thanks for joining us for another edition of This Week In Padres Twitter.