This All-Star game infused with San Diego flavor
What a San Diego All-Star game.
Only because we grow baseball players like we have sunny days and ocean waves are we spoiled enough to be left wincing over how close we were to this Midsummer Classic in our town being even more about the players from our town.
The only way this could have been more perfect – besides Tony Gwynn being here to be de facto mayor for these couple days – would have been for Stephen Strasburg to have not been on the shelf in June and Cole Hamels to have had a better July.
The Washington Nationals wanted to protect Strasburg, whose 12-0 record is the best start to a season by a National League pitcher in 104 years but who is also just two starts removed from the disabled list, so he is not participating. And Hamels’ ERA was greatly inflated by the 10 runs he allowed in his past two starts. Otherwise, we might’ve had two local high school products as the game’s starting pitchers.
It’s the All-Star game’s first time at Petco Park and first time in San Diego in 24 years. But the All-Star game – almost any one of them in recent memory, for sure – wouldn’t have been as bright without our town.
You don’t have to go back to Hoover High’s Ted Williams, but you can. You don’t have to bring Gwynn into the conversation, even if it is requisite to pay deference to Mr. Padre when talking baseball in these parts.
Fact is, there has not been an All-Star game played since 2005 in which at least one alumnus of a San Diego high school was not a participant.
State of baseball
Adam Jones (Morse), Adrian Gonzalez (Eastlake), Hamels (Rancho Bernardo) and Strasburg (West Hills) of late. Barry Zito (USDHS) and Troy Glaus (Carlsbad) before them.
And that’s just since ‘05. Reaching back just a little further to consider San Diego All-Stars in this millennium we can claim Rancho Bernardo’s Hank Blalock, Christian’s Tony Clark, Granite Hills’ Brian Giles, USD High’s Mark Prior and Point Loma’s David Wells.
“If you’re getting the right type of coaching and you’re playing year-round, you’re going to get better,” said Hamels, who is an All-Star for the fourth time. “It’s just kind of that hotbed of being available to play year-round. When you have that access, you’re going to get better. And when you go up against best, you’re going to get better. Excellence breeds excellence.”
Strasburg also played at San Diego State, so he joins the Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant, who played at the University of San Diego, as former local collegians here this week.
Add in current Padres Wil Myers and Drew Pomeranz, former Padres Brad Brach, Craig Kimbrel, Anthony Rizzo and Fernando Rodney plus former Padre minor-leaguer Corey Kluber, and it’s difficult to imagine too many All-Star games that have had a more well-rounded local flavor.
“Really?” a wide-eyed Brach said when informed of the preponderance of local infusion. “That’s a lot. That’s crazy.”
It’s awesome. And a little sad.
Certainly, this circumstance brings to mind both the overwhelming talent and the lack of triumph in these parts.
But lamentations about our major-league team having been to the playoffs five times in 47 seasons and neither of our two Division I programs having been to the College World Series are well-worn and can be set aside for now. This is a time to celebrate what we bring to this game.
That San Diegans have been All-Star staples for so long is almost a natural derivative.
La Costa Canyon’s Mickey Moniak last month became the fifth product of a San Diego County high school to be the No.1 selection in the amateur draft in the past 17 years.
No other county in the nation has had more than one player go first overall in that span. The rest of California had a total of three. Georgia had two.
“It is a special area,” Hamels said. “… The competition (youth players) always face in San Diego is very similar to minor-league competition and eventually big-league competition. You know a guy is going to go up the ranks very quickly because he’s already started at 15-, 16-, 17-years-old.”
Still, we can’t deny that as good as San Diego is at nurturing amateur ballplayers, it has been negligent with those it acquires as professionals.
That Brach, Kimbrel, Rizzo and Rodney are All-Stars post-Padre doesn’t prove you must leave San Diego to blossom. But neither does it do anything to refute that familiar dirge of Padres fans.
The four former Padres here as members of other teams is surpassed only by the seven former Oakland A’s, five former Boston Red Sox and five former Tampa Bay Rays.
That number doesn’t include Kluber, a member of the Padres Double-A team when he was sent to Cleveland as part of the three-team trade that brought Ryan Ludwick to the Padres at the trade deadline in 2010. Kluber won 18 games and the American League Cy Young award in 2014. Ludwick batted .228 in the 160 games he played for the Padres.
Brach learned how to be a pro here before being traded in 2013. He has flourished as an Oriole.
“I played my first five or six years here,” he said. “Maybe the same eyes didn’t see things. … It’s having new eyes on you.”
Kimbrel, who instead of coming to San Diego underwent knee surgery on Monday, was part of the Padres’ rent-a-contender foray last season. He brought in a haul of prospects over the winter via trade with the Boston Red Sox.
Rodney was a 2016 experiment that paid off when the Padres got one of the Miami Marlins’ top pitching prospects in a trade last month.
Then there is Rizzo. Even if Andrew Cashner ever becomes what we briefly thought he would – and that appears unlikely – the 2012 swap that sent Rizzo to the Chicago Cubs, for whom he is playing in his third All-Star game, will be forever bemoaned by Padres fans.
Rizzo joked with Bryant as they rode from the airport here on Sunday that he might still call San Diego home if he’d hit better in his short time here.
“Obviously, I didn’t do as well as I’d like,” Rizzo, who batted .141 (.173 at Petco Park) with one home run in 153 plate appearances with the Padres in 2011, said Monday. “But looking back, being where I am now, it couldn’t have worked out any better. … I’m really happy with where I’m at, and I couldn’t be any more thankful.”
For a night, for this game in this place with these players, we can be happy how it’s worked out as well.
