For just a few minutes, I didn't know what the Padres were going to do for a general manager. They could have found somebody who made Billy Beane look like Billy Carter. Or maybe he would have made Mr. Bean look like Billy Beane, and he'd trade players for broken lamps and make faces while rectifying the situation in an amusing, haphazard fashion. Or maybe he would have made Mr. Bean look like Butterbean, and he'd just walk around the front offices in San Diego punching things and being all huge.
Forgot what I was getting at ...
Point is, it's not a given that Jed Hoyer leaving San Diego is a good thing. A new general manager might walk in and figure out how to make a winner out of the Padres. And while I was typing this, word came out that Eric Byrnes is going to be the new GM for the Padres.
Or maybe that's Josh Byrnes. Dang. That would have been awesome on a couple of levels.
All things being equal, though, the news that Hoyer is going to the Cubs is probably a decent thing. I don't like the divisional rivals having smart GMs, and most of what Hoyer did impressed me. He was a Theo Epstein cohort in the early days of Camelaht, and the only thing that was keeping him back in San Diego was the mandate from ownership to keep the payroll around an $8.50-per-hour average.
He still built the team that harrassed the Giants throughout 2010, and he made smart deals when he traded for Cameron Maybin and traded away Mike Adams. The Padres have a pretty nifty farm system, and I wasn't looking forward to Hoyer figuring out what to do with it.
Byrnes isn't a RBI-'n'-ERA guy, though. He was also a part of the Boston front office. He could be just as good as Hoyer. Seeing as he was in the Padres' front office for a lot of the moves I liked, and considering his pedigree, the transition could be completely seamless and unnoticable.
What I know about Hoyer is that he presided over a team that built a nice farm through trades, drafting, and international free agency. What I know about Byrnes is that he traded away Carlos Quentin, and he also dealt Carlos Gonzalez and Brett Anderson for Dan Haren, then got blamed for the Diamondbacks' collapse. He was gone before the Haren-to-the-Angels trade, or else I'd really like the transition.
In my role as a Giantscentric know-nothing, I approve Jed Hoyer leaving the division. But after an hour or so thinking about the state of general managers in the National League West, there's only one possible thing to think: Welp, at least we don't have Ned Colletti.
That doesn't make me feel better. I liked it more when I thought that Butterbean was going to be the new GM for the Padres.
But at least we don't have Ned Colletti!