If I could have anyone in baseball come join the Padres for next season, it certainly wouldn't be some manager. Who cares who the Padres get to be their new skipper? Joe Maddon, Joe Girardi, Mike Scioscia, Mark Loretta, Buck Showalter, Brad Ausmus. Even Bruce Bochy. It's not going to matter one bit.
What is going to matter is that the Padres get some better players, and that the ones they have now play better. Period. Simple as that.
You want to win a championship in 2020? Then open up your checkbook and sign Houston Astros star free agent pitcher Gerrit Cole. Use some of that Hot Lava young talent you have and figure out a way to trade for former MVP Mookie Betts of the Boston Red Sox. Put those guys out there with Tatis, Machado, Hosmer, Paddack, Lamet and Yates and I don't care who manages them. They're going to win.
Managers in baseball are overrated. Some are better than others, sure. Certain managers push the right buttons and get a little more out of their players, or deliver the right message at the right time. They all call for the hit-and-run, change pitchers and get applauded when it works out and screamed at when it doesn't.
Ultimately, though, baseball games and seasons are decided by the players. The teams with the best players win, if not all the time then certainly most of the time. If the Padres' young pitchers could have kept up their first-half pace after the All-Star break this season, the team would have stayed in contention longer. If Machado had hit like a $30-million man, the team would not have finished last.
Blame Andy Green for everything if you want, but you'll be missing the bigger picture. If the Padres want to deliver on their promise of a successful 2020, they'll need to either add or develop from within some better players. That last part, about doing a better job developing their own players, is perhaps most crucial of all. Look at the top two teams in the National League this season. Think of how many excellent players the Dodgers and Braves have brought along. The list almost seems endless. Acuna, Albies, Freeman and Soroka are just a few of the Braves. To list everyone the Dodgers have developed will just put Padre fans in a bad mood.
Nevertheless, here's the thing: in the end, it's still up to those players to get the job done. The manager, by compairison, has far less to do with it. An example was Thursday's playoff between the Braves and St. Louis Cardinals. Brian Snitker, previously a Manager of the Year winner for the Braves, made a pitching change in the eighth inning with his team ahead, 3-1. But Chris Martin, who was called upon to pitch, was injured while warming up. So Snitker had to go with Plan B.
Didn't work out so well. The Atlanta bullpen, after Marin's injury, allowed eight hits and six runs in the last two innings. St. Louis won, 7-6. Was it Snitker's fault? Would the Braves have won if, say, Maddon was managing the game? Of course not.
And that's the whole point. The Padres just didn't have a good enough team to win this past season. If they're going to win next season, they're going to have to be much better. In all areas.
Regardless of who the manager is.