Who's Your Padre?

Haven't seen much on the NL West around these parts in '06. Since I've been on undercover assignment for much of the year, I missed my big opportunity to crow about my mediocre and miserly Padres leading the division for most of the season to this point.

Similarly, Paul's been strangely silent as his re-tooled Dodgers has been riding a winning wave due to the play of new acquisitions Wilson Betemit, Greg Maddux and Julio Lugo as well as strong performances from impressive kids named Billingsley and Ethier.

When the Dodgers were officially pronounced done for '06 it was after a humiliating sweep at the hands of the then division-leading Padres. But the Dogs re-tooled and started reeling off some wins and wrested the lead from the Pads. As the Dodgers were finding new life, the Padres predictably failed to make a big splash at the trading deadline (other than acquiring a mediocre 2B to play 3B) and have been in a tailspin with the loss of Khalil Greene and pedestrian performances from Brian Giles (broken record), Adrian Gonzalez and puzzling inconsistency from pitchers Jake Peavy, Scott Linebrink and Chris Young. The injury-riddled club has also recently witnessed 40% of the starting rotation go on the DL . The last three days, the Padres have had to promote someone just to be able to field a starting pitcher.

But nothing cures the Padres' ills in recent years quite like a game against...you guessed it, the LA Dodgers. San Diego won tonight's game 1-0, pushing their lead in the season series to a commanding 10-3. Just par for the course in recent years.

It's a very medicore division but as long as the Pads can break-even against everyone else, just knowing they have several games left against their sissyboy neighbors to the north should give the Friars enough confidence to snare the divisional crown.