SAN DIEGO (AP) — Chris Paddack walked into the San Diego Padres‘ clubhouse Sunday “suited and booted” and wearing a cowboy hat Wil Myers Jersey , as the Texan does for all of his starts.Paddack was impressive in his major league debut, retiring his first 10 batters and striking out seven in five innings in the Padres’ 3-1 victory against the San Francisco Giants. Manny Machado brought in the go-ahead run with a bases-loaded grounder, and the Padres won three of four against the Giants.Paddack didn’t get the win and he was kicking himself after getting thrown out at first after hitting a line drive to right in his first at-bat. Everything else was memorable in making the jump from Double-A to the majors in front of about 40 family members in the crowd of nearly 40,000 at Petco Park.“I don’t know if you all saw them, but they were the ones in the cowboy hats and boots and all that,” said Paddack, who’s from Austin. “It was a special moment. I worked my whole life for this moment. I’ve had some setbacks with Tommy John, I’ve been through a lot and I’m very blessed to be in this moment.”Relying on a fastball and changeup, Paddack retired his first 10 batters, six by strikeout, including the fanning the side in the second. He walked Joe Panik with one out in the fourth and got out of the inning when he struck out Yangervis Solarte and Panik was thrown out trying to steal second.“I envisioned retiring the first 27. That’s just our mindset as starting pitchers,” said Paddack, who pitched his way into the rotation with a stellar spring and is the Padres’ only right-handed starter. “I’m very blessed to be a part of this organization, very thankful that the Padres gave me an opportunity to show them that I belong and it’s going to be a fun year.”The Giants broke through against the tall Texan in the fifth when Crawford singled to right with one out and scored on Pablo Sandoval’s double to center.The Padres got that run back in the bottom of the inning. Franchy Cordero walked while pinch-hitting for Paddack, advanced on Sandoval’s throwing error and scored on Eric Hosmer’s single to right.Paddack poked a line drive into right with the bases loaded in his first career plate appearance in the second, but outfielder Gerardo Parra threw him out at first base.“All the guys are going to give me a hard time about that tomorrow,” he said.Paddack “threw well Rickey Henderson Jersey ,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “It took us a while to get a hit. That’s a nice debut for that kid.“We just didn’t play our cleanest baseball and we’re not hitting much. There’s no margin of error when you’re not scoring a lot of runs and it caught up with us today.”Bochy had Nick Vincent (0-1) walk Hosmer to load the bases with one in the seventh to bring up Machado. Sam Dyson came on, and Machado grounded to shortstop Brandon Crawford. He got the force at second, but Machado beat Panik’s relay to first as Hunter Renfroe scored.It was Machado’s first RBI with San Diego, who signed the All-Star slugger to a $300 million, 10-year contract early in spring training.Austin Hedges added an RBI single in the eighth.Vincent, who grew up in nearby Ramona, allowed one run and three hits in 1 1/3 innings in relief of Jeff Samardzija.Adam Warren (1-0) pitched two hitless innings for his first win with San Diego. Kirby Yates pitched the ninth for his third save in three chances.Samardzija, coming off an injury-marred season, allowed an unearned run and three hits in five innings while striking out two and walking four.DEFENSEMachado continued to look smooth at third base and rookie shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. not only made a sliding, backhanded stop of Erik Kratz’s grounder in the third, but he caught a throwdown from catcher Hedges and spun to tag Brandon Belt.“We came out of this series winning this series because of defense,” manager Andy Green said. “Plays we’re not accustomed to seeing made, Manny makes a few of those look easy at third base that didn’t look so easy in the past for us.”FINAL FOUR HUMORGreen, whose Kentucky Wildcats lost in the NCAA Midwest Region final Sunday to Auburn, had a little fun with reliever Trey Wingenter, who pitched for the Tigers. “You’ll never pitch again,” Green hollered across the clubhouse at Wingenter. “See me in my office. And you were almost two seconds late for the anthem.”TRAINER’S ROOMGiants: 3B Evan Longoria was off Sunday after fouling a ball off his left calf during his second at-bat in Saturday night’s victory.UP NEXTGiants: LHP Drew Pomeranz makes his season debut vs. LHP Julio Urias in the opener of a three-game series at the Los Angeles Dodgers.Padres: LHP Matt Strahm makes his season debut for San Diego. He made five starts as an opener last year as he was eased back from surgery on his torn left patellar tendon the previous season while with Kansas City. He threw 61 1/3 innings in 41 appearances last year. Somehow the front offices keep coming to all of the same conclusions at the exact same time when it comes to paying players and nothing else..."So here we are again. Another incredibly slow baseball off-season. The excuse of last year doesn’t hold up, anymore. What was that excuse? That this off-season would have guys like Manny Machado and Bryce Harper and everyone wanted to save their money for those two guys. Only http://www.padresfanproshop.com/authentic-brad-hand-jersey , oddly enough, neither of those guys has signed and there aren’t any rumors indicating they’re particularly close to signing. Funny thing that.The latest rumor we actually have for either player is that the White Sox offered Manny Machado $175M over seven years. Those numbers are stunningly similar to Eric Hosmer’s deal with the San Diego Padres. Hosmer, of course, got paid $144 over 8 years. Hosmer got an opt-out in his deal after the fifth season. Which means he has a $100M contract for 5 years with an insurance policy of $44M for 3 years after that if he stinks (Spoiler alert: He has so far). The opportunity to leave his deal at age 32 if he was producing highly and thought he could earn more carries with it some monetary value. The value of an opt-out varies from contract to contract but according to MLB Trade Rumors most opt-outs are worth somewhere around $20M. You add that to Hosmer and he’s only getting $11M less than Machado on a contract that lasts a year longer. So by that math, yeah, Machado is getting more money and a better Annual Average Value but unless he’s getting his own opt-out he’s getting greatly short-changed compared to Hosmer. By far Hosmer’s best season was in 2017 when he was worth 4.1 fWAR according to FanGraphs. Machado, on the other hand, plays a more difficult position - whether that’s shortstop or third base, is two years younger, and has never been worth less than 2.6 fWAR over a full season. More often than not he’s been worth more than 6 fWAR. If Hosmer was somehow worth the money he was paid than Machado should be paid considerably more. It doesn’t seem like a good thing when values and profits are skyrocketing around the league but the player salaries are going the other direction.Is it really not collusion, though?We went over the reasons why it looked like collusion last year and most of you fell on the side of it not being collusion but just front offices using analytics more effectively than ever before. This year, as reported by Ken Rosenthal($), Jeff Passan, and Craig Calcaterra - three names you can usually trust to be pretty accurate in the world of baseball - all 30 teams have decided to go file-and-trial with their arbitration-eligible players, this year. If you are not familiar with what that means, I recommend reading Calcaterra’s article, he explains it pretty succinctly. But all you really need to know is that because of the way it’s structured the process intrinsically favors teams over players.2018 already saw more arbitration cases go to trial than any year since 1990. Maybe teams all pretty much simultaneously realized that going to trial favored them more than players or maybe all three of those knowledgeable, connected baseball writers will end up being wrong and one or more of the players who didn’t have deals at the filing deadline will end up signing before they go to trial. I suppose it’s worth noting that not as many players will have hearing this year as last year. But maybe that’s because they knew the truth of the matter and felt compelled to get their deals done before the filing deadline.Maybe it’s collusion. Maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out and it’s possible that the owners and front offices all just finally reached the same conclusions at the same time in regards to player value Cory Spangenberg Jersey , the best way to maximize immediate profits, or both.It’s still bad for baseballKyler Murray created an interesting situation in baseball, recently. He was originally drafted by the Oakland Athletics and signed a $4.66M deal with them. However, after a Heisman-trophy winning campaign with the Oklahoma Sooners he decided to declare for the NFL draft rather than fully commit to pursuing a career in baseball. Baseball was apparently prepared to waive or bend some rules in order to allow the Athletics to give him more money to give up any thought of playing football but none of it was enough to convince him to stick with the team that drafted him first.Why?If you were a young two-sport, stud athlete you would have quite the decision to make. Yes, football is seriously dangerous and the salary cap essentially means that at every level of the sport you are likely to earn less than you would at a comparable level in baseball. But football doesn’t make you ride buses and play games for pennies for years before you get to start playing under the brightest lights. Without the salary cap a baseball player has an opportunity for more career earnings than a football player, but a football player who gets drafted earns more money immediately than a baseball player. For example, Patrick Mahomes II is making $16.4M for the team across the street over the next four years. He will likely negotiate a contract extension before the deal ends that will guarantee him even more money. The nearly $5M the Athletics initially signed Murray to is nothing compared to that. The situation looks even graver for a baseball player when you consider that his earnings are strictly limited for the first six seasons after he reaches the big leagues. Murray would probably reach them sooner than many others 2018 MLB draft picks, he received an invitation to big league spring training, but even so the way MLB contracts are currently structured you have to give away a lot of time before the dividends for choosing that sport over football or basketball pay off for a player.How does this apply to any alleged collusion or collusion-like activities? The risk-reward analysis is getting worse and worse. All else being equal choosing baseball over football is a bet on your athletic ability aging well, your ability to stay healthy, and teams’ willingness to pay you once you finally finish your rookie contract. If teams seem less willing than ever to pay you after your rookie contract then why take the risk? Get the guaranteed money in another sport.MLB wonders why it seems harder and harder to get youth to join the sport. Maybe they should be concerned about why more and more college athletes are shying away from it, too. Baseball ownership’s rush to ensure they get as much money now as they possibly can is going to cost the sport in the long term. If they don’t figure out how to bring things back around you’ll see more Patrick Mahomeses and Kyler Murrays headed to football.Of course, maybe they don’t care. According to a Calcaterra tweet, 17 baseball teams have changed hands over the last 18+ years. Why worry about the future of the sport if it won’t ever affect you? They can make their money and get out long before it affects them personally.
