Padres need to take Dee out of decisions

The Padres’ season is almost officially finished.

Too early, again. But also, finally.

And if there can be one piece of advice to the team’s brass at the start of its next overhaul, it would be to not do it the same way this time.

Let’s actually see what general manager A.J. Preller can do now. He’s some sort of brilliant talent evaluator, right. He’s a scouting genius, huh. Let him scout. Let him draft and develop, make a trade and sign a free agent here and there. That’s why you hired him.

Let Preller hire his manager. Let Preller and his staff decide which players will be Padres and which won’t.

We can’t take back our applause for what happened last December and January. The tornado of transactions gave us hope, which is better than what we’d had in so many springs. But the higher your hopes, the bigger the splatter can be when they fall to earth.

This Padres season was like going to a Woody Allen movie. We went in believing it was going to be the one that was good again. But it was the same tired slog. Worse, even. It bombed.

Even those of us who weren’t sure the wunderkind, Preller, had been able to do enough to elevate the Padres to first place in the National League West didn’t see this. The Padres got better in one big way, yet they got worse overall. The Padres will finish with a worse record this season than last, fourth place in their division, one spot worse than ’14.

We need to talk about how they go forward, specifically how much ownership allows Preller to do and how much ownership pulls the reins on team president Mike Dee’s input into baseball decisions.

First, though, let’s take a moment to assess how 2015 went down in such a disappointing manner.

In reality, Preller didn’t overreach with what he acquired as much as he overestimated what he had. We all did.

Preller convinced Dee and ownership that a solid pitching staff was mostly in place and a quick injection of offense was needed.

The new bats were, collectively, pretty much what was expected. It would have helped had Matt Kemp played like Matt Kemp earlier and if he could somehow get younger so he didn’t keep regressing the outfield. But he is not to blame. Neither was Justin Upton a huge disappointment, even if his number were a bit off his career norms. You can nitpick on Derek Norris, but he was every bit of what he was supposed to be. Wil Myers, too, in that we knew he could hit when healthy.

For whatever else you want to lament, the fact is pitching cost the Padres. Yes, old faithful blew chunks. For years, we wondered what could have been if the Padres’ bats were anywhere near as good as their arms. Then we found out what happened when it happened the other way around.

What went wrong with the pitching and how to fix it is for the team’s brass to dissect when it gets together – both before and after it hires a new manager. But that the starters and middle relief tripped had clear ramifications.

On average, the Padres’ offense was good for more than half a run more each game in 2015, up from 3.3 runs a game in ‘14 to four runs this season. But they were outscored by almost half a run a game this season, because opponent scoring was up from 3.56 to 4.53 runs a game.

In other words, had the Padres pitched to even close to the same level they did in 2014, they would have won a lot more games. They might even have flipped their record, which probably would not have gotten them into the playoffs but would have pushed the Dodgers to the final weekend.

So what do they do about it?

We’ve got months to talk free agency and trades. Now, as they prepare to sit down and move forward in the coming weeks, primary owners Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler need to decide who is in charge. And it can’t be Dee.

Fowler and Seidler are competitive men who are committed to this team being better. Seidler stays mostly out of the day-to-day operations, and Fowler has allowed Dee too much sway.

They brought in a first-time general manager before last season. By many accounts, Dee had a lot of influence on the young G.M. in regards to pulling the trigger in the offseason transaction spree.

Dee is a brilliant man with a big plan. Ask people in Boston, where he worked under legendary Larry Lucchino preserving the historical aspect of Fenway Park while making it more modern and profitable. Ask people in Miami, where Dee made significant gains on the business side for the Dolphins. He knows business. There is no indication he knows baseball.

Preller was given his first job in charge of a personnel department based on his reputation for turning over every rock, for finding talent and taking chances that turned out well.

Let Dee and Fowler figure out how much the Padres can afford to eat on some contracts, but let Preller alone figure out which shortstop, relievers and starting pitchers to bring in, which pitchers to jettison.

Fowler, the most pragmatic person in almost any room he’s in, needs to be the one Preller reports to. Not Dee. (Have I said that enough?)

Dee has done a fine job sprucing up the Petco Park experience. He needs to keep focusing on that. Let’s see what Preller can really do, his way.