Where My Team Stands: San Diego Padres

If we've learned anything about Octobers the last few years, it's that the month tests, stretches and hones every aspect of loyalty fandom. Typically, we pretty much just tell our friends that we'll see them sometime in November. It's a stressful time.

Therefore, to adequately preview the madness that is the baseball playoffs, we've invited some of our favorite bloggers for each of the eight playoff teams to write about their teams, similar to our NFL Season Previews. No sport has better individual team blogs than baseball, and these writers are some of our favorites.

These will be running all day today, and we very much hope you enjoy them.

Up right now: The San Diego Padres. Your writer is Dexter Bustarde.

Dexter Bustarde blogs about the Padres daily at Gas Lamp Ball. His words are after the jump.

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Will asked me earlier this week to write a preview for the Padres and, in doing so, effectively jinxed the living shit out of them to the point that the Dodgers just kept on winning and the Padres weren't able to clinch the division until Sunday. The jinxing and subsequent late clinching effectively made it so that I couldn't write this preview until after it was all said and done late Sunday night. No sense in screwing with karma. Now that we're here in the postseason for the second year in a row as NL West Champs, I can finally tell you how I really feel.

Unless you're a Padres fan, your favorite postseason team is fucked.

I don't mean like "made sweet gentle love to." I mean, you guys are screwed the way that Dustin Diamond goes about things. I know. That's seriously gross. But that's what's about to happen. Seriously disgusting, stomach turning things that you didn't think people actually did. But people do it. People like the Padres will do it to other baseball people, and it'll be caught on videotape.

Do you see all those used condoms strewn about your computer? The empty bottles of wine in the sink? You and your team already been taken advantage of, and you're just now realizing it while the Padres are off carving notches into their belts and bed posts.

It might be one thing if I was saying all of this stuff without being able to back it up, but speaking honestly... there's a really good chance that the Padres are going to be going to the World Series. They say that pitching and defense wins in a short series. Well, we have Jake Peavy and Chris Young. Chris Young recently took a no-hitter into the ninth recently, and another one into the eighth earlier in the year. It's a little unfair. Not to mention how sexy our bullpen is. Our bullpen is sweet creamery butter. Our bullpen is Matthew McConaughey's abs. Our bullpen is Scarlett Johansson in an American Apparel ad.

Our offense isn't very flashy, but they get the job done. It might not be pretty when half of your team gets regularly referred to as "journeyman" or "utility," but it sure keeps egos in check. Try and name somebody who's played infield for us in the last two months. Not impressed? That's OK, 'cause at least they aren't playing golf in October like some of these other chumps in the league with "names." And Ryan Klesko's back from the DL, and there's no way in hell that we're going to let him get out of this season without earning some of the $9 million he's getting this season. $9 million is a lot of money. We're going to run him into the ground before letting him leave San Diego with anything left in that tank

Is it wrong of me to feel this cocky? Maybe so. Maybe it's bad karma for me to say such things. Honestly though ... When Drunk Rick Sutcliffe gets more media coverage this season than Trevor Hoffman setting the saves record or the Padres making the postseason two years in a row, I may as well talk a little shit while I have somebody's attention. And if it all somehow turns out badly for my team, then I'll take solace in the fact that people probably weren't paying attention anyways.

Go Padres! See you dudes at the World Series!