Monday (15 Apr) - How Much Pain can I Endure?

Monday (15 Apr) - How Much Pain can I Endure?

Yes, it's Tax Day, but it's the Padres that are causing the hurt, and not to their opponents. The Padres were swept by the Rockies. They are making a name for themselves by being "almost" good enough to win, but never getting there.

Bad pitching, bad hitting, and amateur play. I'm now cringing every time a ball is hit to rookie Jedd Gyorko. Yes, he's playing in the bigs for his bat (.244, 9th on the team), and I was prepared to cut him some slack playing an unfamiliar second base. However, Gyorko has been playing mostly at his natural position, third base, and he's looked very bad. His errors have led to runs scored, and the Padres aren't good enough to survive those kind of mistakes.

Then there is Cameron Maybin. The disintegration of a once superb prospect is nearly complete. Maybin is starting his 7th season in 2013, the last six with the Padres. In 2011 he hit a respectable .264, stole a prodigious 40 bases and played superb centerfield. His continued slow but steady improvement harbored even better things to come. However, in 2012 he slipped to .244 and only 26 stolen bases. He has all the talent in the world, yet ... so far in 2013 Maybin has hit .067. That's not a typo. He has a grand total of two hits in 30 at bats. Even my inexpert eyes can see that Maybin has no clue what pitch is coming and flails at pitches with no plan or strategy. It's begun to affect his fielding as well. He sat out two of the three Rockies games. No one missed him.

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	12 Apr/010	Rockies	Loss	7-5
Reality			Loss	8-7
Promise			Loss	9-4

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	13 Apr/011	Rockies	Loss	9-5
Reality			Loss	5-4
Promise			Loss	3-2

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	14 Apr/012	Rockies	Loss	2-1
Reality			Win	4-3 (13)
Promise			Loss	2-0

Comparison	W L GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Padres 2012	76 86 18.0	.247	651	4.01
Reality Autoplay	84 78 10.0	.243	667	3.69
Promise Autoplay	80 82 10.0	.249	688	3.81
2013 Season	W L GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Actual Results	2 10 6.5	.233	39	5.24
Reality Results	7 5 1.5	.264	57	3.82
Promise Results	7 5 ---	.253	53	3.20

Don't cry, though, we've only played twelve games.

Thursday (10 Apr) - Fist Buys A Greyshadow Chestguard

Thursday (10 Apr) - Fist Buys A Greyshadow Chestguard

I'm not sure what's gotten into Fist, but she has taken to browsing the Auction House lately, and even purchased a pretty chestguard (at an admittedly fantastic price) that upgraded her gear from ilvl 439 to i442. She also checked out the Tigers card deck on display at the Darkmoon Faire and seemed interested in the +agi trinket that could be made from the cards. When asked about it, she just shrugged and said, "A girl likes to buy things." Maybe that's all there is to it. Should she become more interested, the Looking for Raid (LFR) minimum ilevel required is i460 for Mogu'shan Vaults (MSV).

"Theoretically," it's possible to acquire enough gear through the Auction House to reach ilvl 460, but it would almost certainly be very expensive. The trinket alone runs around 12,000 gold. Even if she did manage that, her post-LFR raiding opportunities aren't that good.

Should Fist really become truly interested, she should know that her likely guild for post-LFR raiding would be Meitha, where Wild and JB still reside. Meitha does raid, but progress has been very slow. MSV has been available for raiders since 9 Oct 2012, but the guild has downed only two of the six bosses so far. Happy believes his gold is still pretty safe from Fist's browsing. 

On the baseball front, I went to the Wednesday game but not the Thursday game. Our neighbors are avid Dodgers fans, so I gave them our tickets. I missed a bench clearing brawl, but the Dodgers won, so meh, I didn't miss much.

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	10 Apr/009	Dodgers	Loss	4-3
Reality			Win	6-4
Promise			Loss	1-0

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	11 Apr/010	Dodgers	Loss	3-2
Reality			Loss	5-3
Promise			Win	8-0

Comparison	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Padres 2012	76 86 18.0	.247	651	4.01
Reality Autoplay	84 78 10.0	.243	667	3.69
Promise Autoplay	80 82 10.0	.249	688	3.81
2013 Season	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Actual Results	2  7  4.5	.236	28	5.33
Reality Results	6  3  0.5	.274	42	3.62
Promise Results	7  2  ---	.269	47	2.81

Tuesday (9 Apr) - A Good Day at the Park

Tuesday (9 Apr) - A Good Day at the Park

The sun shone brightly down on a capacity crowd at sold out Petco Park for the Padres home opener against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. We arrived early to avoid a potential parking shortage since in the infinite wisdom of the city fathers, a downtown block party had been scheduled on the same day as the Padres opener. There's hardly enough parking with only one major event going on. Our usual route to the stadium was, of course, re-routed for the downtown party, but fortunately we did not have any major problems.

We made it to our seats in time for the opening ceremonies ringing in the new season. There were the usual speakers and the usual fireworks and the usual flag waving, but we enjoyed it anyway. We had sunshine, we had beer, we had ball park hot dogs, and did I mention we had beer?

In the first inning the Padres second baseman botched an easy play, there was a mixup that added another base runner, and a hit batter. Before the sounds of the National Anthem had faded the Dodgers had loaded the bases with nobody out. Well. At least there was beer.

Then a small miracle occurred. The Padres worked out of the bases loaded situation and survived the first inning without giving up a run.

In the bottom of the first inning, the Padres Will Venable smacked a solo homerun over the right field fence. That fence corner was once 360 ft from hone plate, but had been moved in a few feet this season, to 348 ft. Did Venable get that homerun just because the fences had been moved closer to the plate? Nope, Venable's drive went 381 ft, so it would have cleared the fence either way. However, a Dodgers homerun to the same spot later in the game traveled only 354 ft, and would have been caught if the fences had not been moved.

We also had a bit of a fracas in the stands. A fan returning to his seat directly behind us knocked over the beer of the man next to him, and a rather loud argument ensued over whether a new beer would be purchased to replace the lost one. No one noticed what happened to that spilled beer at first - that is, until Judi's seat back started to feel a bit wet and we saw a pool of beer-ish liquid seeping out from under her seat. Luckily the spill wasn't too bad, and we got it cleaned up, but nobody offered to buy US a beer for the inconvenience.

The Dodgers tied up the game 2-2 in the fourth inning. But after that everything went the Padres way. The Padres won, 9-3. Opening day just doesn't get any better than that.

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	9 Apr/008	Dodgers	Win	9-3
Reality			Win	3-2
Promise			Win	4-2

Comparison	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Padres 2012	76 86 18.0	.247	651	4.01
Reality Autoplay	84 78 10.0	.243	667	3.69
Promise Autoplay	80 82 10.0	.249	688	3.81
2013 Season	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Actual Results	2  5  2.5	.224	23	5.90
Reality Results	5  2  ---	.286	33	3.80
Promise Results	6  1  ---	.284	39	3.63