Padres Seek A Miracle

Spare a thought for the San Diego Padres this weekend - after leading the National League (NL) West Division for almost the entire season, they are 3 games behind the San Francisco Giants going into the final 3 games of the regular season. The good news is that the Padres will be playing the Giants in those 3 games, which means that if they sweep them, then the two teams will be tied for the division lead. The Atlanta Braves are most likely going to take the wild card spot, which means that if the Giants and the Padres are tied at the end of regular season they will have to play a 1-game playoff to decide the division winner.
It is somewhat poignant that the Padres find themselves in this difficult situation - this was a season that began with zero promise: Almost every baseball "expert" had picked the Padres to finish dead last in their division and indeed, 28th out of the 30 MLB teams. Baseball with its lack of a salary cap tends to favor the teams that spend the most - typically teams such as the Yankees and the Red Sox. The Yankees started the 2010 season with a payroll that was upwards of $250 million while the Padres had a payroll of just under $30 million (second lowest in the league). With their long regular season (each team plays 162 games over a 6-month period from April to Oct), top tier talent will usually win out and it is very difficult to for a low payroll team to sustain a lead for long periods of time. This is what made the Padres' dominance in the NL West so remarkable this year and indeed, for a period of time they owned the best record in all of MLB. And they did so with limited community support and pretty much the entire sporting world constantly forecasting their demise. Of course, stumble they did coming down the stretch and despite going beyond the most rosy predictions for the season, it still feels like a let down.
For a team with almost no superstars, it seemed like a different (previously unknown) hero would rise up each night to save the game. Now, the question is whether all the magic is spent or is there a little something left? We'll know soon since they need to win today, tomorrow, and on Sunday to keep their postseason hopes alive.