Bye Bye Bochy.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a very useful article today on the reasons for Bruce Bochy's departure from the San Diego Padres. (Here.) It's all about Bochy's favoring veterans over younger players.

Bochy's preference for veterans has been obvious for years. But what surely must have puzzled the front office this years was how Bochy used Todd Walker in the last part of the season. Walker was brought over to the Padres to play third base. When that experiment looked bad, Russell Branyan was brought in. Rather than going to the bench, Walker got lots of playing time as a platoon player at second base with Josh Barfield. Barfield, who was a star on this team during the season ended up sitting a lot near the end of the season.

It's doubtful that the Padres traded Mark Loretta last year to make room for Todd Walker to play second base. Loretta was dealt so that Barfield could play.

Bochy did play another rookie at a key position this year: Adrian Gonzalez at first base. Gonzalez even slumped a bit during the year and Bochy essentially stuck with him. But there was nobody on the team good enough to play first base regularly so Gonzalez's position as a starter was safe and ended up one of San Diego's most potent bats. Lucky for him Ryan Klesko was not available until the very end of the season.

This fan is not sad to see Bochy go. He's often touted as San Diego's winningest manager because he has more wins as a Padres manager than any other. But he's also the losingest manager because he has more losses than anyone else. More importantly, he's got a losing record as a manager.

In sports, winning is everything. The St. Louis Cardinals are the only real winner in Major League Baseball this year because they won the World Series. The Detroit Tigers are first among the losers for having lost the World Series. Everybody else is just a loser.

-tdr