Morning Coffee with Mark Whelan: Some Questions Remain for Padres After Trading Deadline

Some post trade-deadline questions…

What the hell are we going to do with Carlos Quentin? We couldn’t convince a single AL team to take on him and his salary, so are we just stuck with him now? Will the Padres pay him another $10 million through next year to sit in the trainer’s room? Will they even try to let him play the outfield if he “recovers” from his current injury? Can we just release him, eat the salary, and not have to watch his painful attempts to run, either for a ball down the line or just into second base after hitting a double? I loved watching Carlos play on those four days he was healthy, but holy schnikes, it’s time to put him out of his misery.

Is Yangervis Solarte for real? Dude has raked since he put on the Padres uni, hitting .324 with a pair of homers, a triple, and 8 RBI in 9 games. He started like this with the Yankees this year too, tearing up the league for six weeks before going into a major slump. Is he a complete streak hitter? Will he carry the team for a few weeks, then drag them down for the next few?  How will Bud Black manage a player like that?

Why Taylor Lindsey? Outside of Solarte, the biggest acquisition in July was second baseman Lindsey from the Angels, a Triple-A player presumably not very far removed from the big leagues. The Padres signed Jedd Gyorko to a five-year contract extension earlier this season, locking him up as a cornerstone of the offense. Was Lindsey just an insurance policy in case Gyorko never recovered from his slump? Will he be a utility infielder next season? Or is he likely to be used as trade bait over the winter, when the trading picks up again?

Is Abraham Almonte one of those power-speed guys we hear about on other teams? (No disrespect to Will Venable and his 20-20 season last year, but he’s at 5-6 this year.) Almonte is built like Kirby Puckett, any chance he’ll play like him? Is he our new left fielder? If so, this will be a TREMENDOUS upgrade to our outfield defense.

Will we ever see Jose Rondon, R.J. Alvarez, Elliot Morris, Rafael De Paula, and Stephen Kohlscheen in a Padres uniform? Or was this whole trading frenzy mainly an exercise in addition by subtraction?

Are the Padres going to continue to have a 10+ run game every week now? 13-3 over the Cubs and 12-1 over the Cardinals? I could get used to this. Will there still be a “30^th” in every box on ESPN’s Padres page at the end of the year?  C’mon, just give us a 29. Is that really asking too much?