There's a time and a place for a baseball team to goof off. The Padres chose poorly on both fronts in their latest publicity stunt. In case you haven't heard, they drafted professional football player Johnny Manziel over the weekend in the 28th round of the Major League Baseball draft.
Big thank you to the @Padres and @padresmikedee for selecting me in the MLB draft. What a great day! pic.twitter.com/MaTKVZ5JqY
— Johnny Manziel (@JManziel2) June 7, 2014I rolled my eyes so hard into the back of my head at the sight of that tweet, you would have sworn I was a Warg.
When a team, like the Padres, has a horrific draft history, they shouldn't try and get cute. So what if teams rarely reap Major League talent from the 28th round? The Padres need to prove that they know what they're doing with their top picks before they start throwing away their low picks.
If the Padres want to mess around, do it in the offseason or during Spring Training. That's a perfect time to play Pickleball or invite Garth Brooks to practice with the team. Few will fault them when it's done at the appropriate time. The wrong time to play a game of Twitter grab-ass is in season, when your team is 28-35 and 14 games out of first place. A team that sh_ts the sheets night after night doesn't get to invite Johnny Football over for a slumber party and tickle fight on a school night.
Which brings us to the character they drafted. If the Padres really felt the need to waste the draft pick and didn't feel like there was any chance that they could claim a player of value then maybe they could find a local hero or a citizen of the city to honor. Instead they chose a clown who's only connection to the Padres is a one time dinner date with Padres president Mike Dee when he was in town for a football camp.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm not as butthurt as I may sound. I get that the pick was most likely meaningless. My expectations for the draft were already at an all-time low as it was and I barely cared who they selected. It'll be years before we find out if the team successfully scavenged some Major League talent. I'll hopefully have other interests when that time comes.
For me I'm most annoyed that the Front Office doesn't seem to foresee the backlash that is sure to come with these types of stunts. How hard is it to think ahead a few steps? Let's see, we have an increasingly irate or at best a disinterested fanbase, a sh_t team on the field, let's show them that we aren't taking our job seriously.