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Finally, Padres show off Matt Kemp

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Matt Kemp smiled widely as Bud Black slipped a freshly-minted, No. 27 Padres jersey onto the 30-year-old outfielder, the weight of decades of fan frustration not yet settled yet upon his broad shoulders.

Or those arthritic hips, for that matter.

The new face of the Padres would have had to digest a wild 48 hours of transactions to even begin to comprehend just what his arrival means to this city’s long-beleaguered baseball franchise, and who’s had time for that?

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“This is unbelievable; I was just referring to him as a rock star – a G.M. rock star,” Kemp said Friday afternoon as he sat next to General Manager A.J. Preller in his introductory press conference. “He’s doing so many things. I’ve done a couple of different interviews over the last couple of days and every day it’s something different. …

“A G.M. rock star. Making moves.”

Indeed.

Four years after packing All-Star Adrian Gonzalez’s bags for a payroll-saving trip to Boston, the Padres are finally injecting star power into their lineup instead of strip-mining it.

First came Kemp.

Now, trades for Wil Myers, Derek Norris and Justin Upton are official and another for Will Middlebrooks could be soon. With that change of course comes a whole new set of expectations for a team without a single playoff win inside its 11-year-old downtown park.

That much, Kemp has digested.

“The first conversation I had with these guys was they said they weren’t done,” Kemp said. “They were going to try to get some more bats. … These guys won 77 games and we were last in offense. That just speaks volumes of the pitching staff.

“They have a lot of young guys over there that have the ability to be successful.”

Consider Kemp the linchpin, the product of both the buzz factor he brings to Petco Park (he dated Rihanna) and the raw skills he still flashed in baseball’s most powerful second half last year (.606 slugging percentage).

By all accounts, Kemp put recent shoulder and ankle woes behind him with his production after the All-Star break last season. The arthritis in his hips, as revealed in reports Thursday as the Padres considered his medical history before completing the trade, isn’t an issue, either, Kemp said.

“That’s nothing that anybody needs to be worried about,” Kemp said, “because I’m training hard and working hard and doing all these things to prepare my body for 162 games.”

With a little levity, he added: “These hips are unbelievable, man. You all keep talking about my hips. You want to see my hips. My hips are good, man. Strong hips.”

Some 24-hours earlier, Kemp’s hips were no joking matter.

The details of the trade worked out at the Winter Meetings not a mile up the road from Petco Park last week, the Dodgers and Padres finally consummated their swap Thursday after an extensive review of Kemp’s physicals. The revelation that he had arthritic hips threatened to unravel the deal.

Because it came on top of Kemp’s recent health woes, yes. But also because of the perception that the Padres may have leaked that information to leverage the Dodgers into kicking in even more money to apply toward the $107 million owed to Kemp over the next five years.

A source told U-T San Diego this week that the Padres did not ask for anything on top of the $32 million they are receiving in the deal sending Kemp and catcher Tim Federowicz to San Diego for Yasmani Grandal, Joe Wieland and Zach Eflin. Whether or not relations are strained between the Dodgers and Padres, a source said Friday that front office executives across the game at least raised an eyebrow over the past week’s proceedings.

“Major League Baseball grants you a window to do your medical work and they give it to you for a purpose and a reason,” Preller said. “We were very straight forward. … We were going to use the window to make sure we made a good decision. It was a big call for the organization. There was a lot of speculation as far as why and what, but we didn’t view it as delay at all.

“We had a time period and a window to make a decision and we were within our window.”

With the deal finally completed and the first of several upcoming introductions out of the way, a new window appears to be opening in San Diego. In transforming the middle of the order without sacrificing much from the Padres’ deep pitching ranks, Preller has this city buzzing about baseball, of all things, this winter as the Chargers fight for a playoff spot.

And that’s at least a start as the Padres peer up at the Dodgers and World Champion Giants in the NL West.

“We said from the beginning,” Padres lead investor Peter Seidler said, “that we were going to let our actions speak for themselves. Under-promise and over-deliver.”

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