Braves 4, Drinos 1

Man, I wish I would have been at that game last night. They honored the 1998 team in a ceremony before the game, and about 20 members of the team were there, including Kevin Brown, Greg Vaughn, Andy Ashby and Q Veras. That was such a good team. I still rate the '84 team as my favorite Padres team because it was the first time they made the playoffs and only the second time in franchise history they had a winning record, not to mention the drama of their come-from-behind win over the Cubs in the LCS, but the '98 team was probably better overall. Their wins over the Astros and Braves were surprising, and exhilarating. My only regret was that they didn't take a few games from that all-time Yankees squad. The Padres had late leads in both Games 1 and 3. That Series was a lot closer than the 4-0 sweep indicates.

My other feeling after seeing the '98 team last night is that, under the leadership of Alderson and DePodesta (I'm leaving KT out of this critique - it's not clear to me how involved he is in the overall strategy), it looks like the Padres won't have a dominant team like that again anytime soon. Sure, they may be more of a competitive team year in and year out, and maybe sneak into a few more playoffs and maybe catch lightning and, like the '06 Cardinals, win an unexpected World Series. And believe me, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I don't see any Alderson and DePodesta-built team winning 100 games and rolling to a National League pennant. In short, being a truly great baseball team.

Maybe that is a good trade off: sacrificing the chance to root for a truly great team one year in exchange for rooting for mostly competitive, sometimes frustrating teams year after year. I'm not saying yet that it's not. But, based on everything I'm hearing from Alderson and DePo, that's the path they have chosen so we're certainly going to find out over the next few years.

My fingers are crossed that their philosophy works.