FROM BUILT WITHIN : Padres Banking Their Future on Minor Leaguers

SAN DIEGO — The time was last winter. The scene was anywhere Padre President Chub Feeney dared to open his mouth.

The questions and answers were always the same.

Feeney would be asked: “Why aren’t you signing any free agents? Why aren’t you making any blockbuster trades? Why aren’t you filling the club with experience?”

Feeney would answer: “We are building this club from within.”

Then there would be laughter. And not from Feeney.

“I heard what people were saying,” Feeney said recently. “I knew what they were thinking.”

Six months later, while Feeney is still being mocked for everything from forgetting players’ names to firing Larry Bowa, he is getting the last laugh this time.

As checks of the expenditures and the standings prove, the Padres are being “built” the way Donald Trump builds. Feeney and farm director Tom Romenesko have helped put together a minor league system that is expanding faster and performing as well as any in baseball.

The Padres, who have never pinched pennies in player development anyway, have already spent $500,000 more this season than they did last season. They have outfitted two new teams, hired three new full-time scouts and paid the highest price ever for an amateur baseball player (national top draft pick Andy Benes signed for a $230,000 bonus).

The bottom line in the standings is just as impressive. The combined first-half record of the Padres’ top four minor league teams was 151-127 (.543), with one first-place finish and two second-place finishes.

This includes the showing by what many feel is the best team in minor league baseball, the triple-A Las Vegas Stars. It wasn’t enough that the Stars won their Pacific Coast League Southern Division first-half title by four games with a 41-29 record. They also led all of baseball by placing four players--three of them starters--on the National League team in next Wednesday’s inaugural triple-A All-Star game at Buffalo, N.Y.

Joey Cora will be the starting second baseman. Mike Brumley will be the starting shortstop. Sandy Alomar Jr. will be the starting catcher. And one of the relief pitchers will be Greg Harris.

“I can’t say anything about that team being the best,” Romenesko said. “But I do know we get all kinds of calls in here from big league scouts always asking about Las Vegas’ schedule. Maybe three calls a week. You know what that means.”

At least one official in the PCL wasn’t so shy about his praise.

“They are loaded, absolutely loaded,” said John Dittrich, general manager of Calgary, the Seattle Mariners’ affiliate. “They have players I am amazed are not in the big leagues. They have three players at some positions, all three of whom could play in the big leagues. But none of them ever get called up. That’s how they are different from many other minor league teams. That’s how they stay strong. The players stay there.”

Indeed, only four players have been recalled from Las Vegas this season, and only two (Roberto Alomar and Shane Mack) have remained. Most PCL teams have had twice that much turnover.

“We’ve learned this is like baking bread,” Romenesko said. “You don’t take it out of the oven until it’s done. Part of our plan is not to rush players. Shane Mack might have been rushed. Joey Cora might have been rushed. Bip Roberts might have been rushed.”

But even Feeney, who is so worried about rushing players that he actually made Roberto Alomar spend nine games at Las Vegas this season, agrees that there may be too much of a backlog there.

“We actually have too many good players there,” Feeney said. “There’s too much competition, so not everybody is getting a chance to play.”

So what was one of the first things Feeney quietly did when he arrived as club president last year? He maneuvered to add more minor league teams, more players.

This summer, for the first time, the Padres have teams in two rookie leagues. Besides the established club at Spokane, Wash., the traditional starting point for Padre draft picks, Feeney approved the creation of a rookie-league team in Scottsdale, Ariz. Featuring the rawest of pro rookies, the team began play June 23 and will play through Sept. 1. The amenities include rented apartments for the players, and the coaching staff includes former big league pitcher Jon Matlack.

The operating cost? Nearly $200,000.

“This allows us to take more chances on high school kids,” Romenesko said, noting that 73% of the players on this year’s major league All-Star ballot were drafted as high school players. “We also get more players into the system, and ultimately better protect ourselves in the event of major league expansion, and an expansion draft, down the road.”

Once that team was formed, Feeney took it into his hands to create another team. It will play after the minor league seasons end in the established Arizona Instructional League, from Sept. 12 to Oct. 31 at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.

Established, except for the Padres, who have been a handful of baseball teams that have never been involved.

The operating cost of the new team? About $120,000.

“I want to bring the organization’s top prospects together to get to know each other and work on things and play together as Padres, not as Las Vegas or Wichita,” Feeney said.

The reason the Padres never had such a team before was that Romenesko would instead bring choice minor leaguers to spring training 23 days early and give them their extra work then. He felt that some players were too weary by September to properly accept instruction.

Feeney told him not to worry. Romenesko will still be allowed to bring players to camp early, and with the same budget.

“Spending the kind of money we’re spending, I have a difficult time swallowing anything to do with Chub being cheap,” said Romenesko, whose budget is reportedly nearly $4.5 million.

Some of this new money has also gone for the three new scouts, giving the Padres 32 guys who do nothing but watch baseball, which Feeney happens to think is very important.

“In my experience, scouts are your backbone,” Feeney said.

The scouts are also the most controversial element of the Padre player development operation, as only one of their first-round June draft picks in the last six years is currently starting for them (Jimmy Jones, 1982), and only one other is starting in the big leagues (Texas pitcher Ray Hayward, 1983).

Most recently, 1987 top pick Kevin Garner, an outfielder and pitcher who the Padres hoped would pitch, was discovered to have bone spurs in his elbow, and he may never pitch again. He is currently a .230-hitting outfielder for Class-A Riverside.

With all the relatively low draft picks who have succeeded with this club (Eric Show was an 18th rounder, for example), think of what the team would be doing with some good top picks. The extra scouts may help in this area.

If nothing else, they were useful this June as the Padres drafted about a dozen more players than they generally do. Even though the additional players all came from low rounds, Feeney approved about $120,000 more in bonuses than were given last season, making for happy kids who could later turn into productive Padres.

“From the ground up,” Feeney repeated. “That’s how I want to build this.”

Even the tools the Padres use are expensive, although this was going on long before Feeney arrived, thanks to an open checkbook also given Romenesko by General Manager Jack McKeon.

Example: They are baseball’s only team to allocate a daily allowance ($40) to each minor club for fruit, to supplement the diet of the underpaid and poorly fed minor league player.

Example: They are baseball’s only team that pays medical insurance for the minor leaguer and his dependents.

There are other little things. At Class-A Riverside, on short bus trips for which the rest of the California League teams will give out only one-half of the daily meal money ($5.50), the Padres pay the full $11. At Spokane, they pay to house the players in a college dorm.

Said Bobby Brett, who, with his brothers Ken and Kansas City star George, owns the Padre clubs in Spokane and Riverside: “The philosophy of the Bretts has always been, if you’re involved in something, do it first class. That’s the feeling we get with the Padres. In travel, in quality of uniforms, in all the little things. It seems like the Padres are willing to go the extra yard make them look good and develop well.”

And for what? Here’s the funny part. Feeney admits that the Padre farm system may be so loaded with talent, it may be forced to lose some of its best players this winter in trades that will give the big league Padres more of a chance to win now.

“This winter we could be in a different situation than before,” Feeney said. “We have so many players, so many duplications, I can certainly see trades where we use some of them to get the one little addition I think our big league club needs.”

In other words, the Padres may suddenly turn their player development into pennant development. It has happened before. When was that, four years ago?