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Bryce Miller: Jason Adam pickup solid, but Padres desperately need a starting pitcher

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Bryce Miller: Jason Adam pickup solid, but Padres desperately need a starting pitcher


BALTIMORE — The Padres shook loose the dust two days before the trade deadline. They chased down a late-innings setup arm in the Rays’ Jason Adam, someone to help bridge the gap to closer Robert Suarez.

As the clock ticks until Tuesday’s deadline, it’s still not enough.

The Padres need a starter or risk reliving 2021, when whispers about Max Scherzer and others led nowhere.

That’s when Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Chris Paddack and Ryan Weathers all finished as sub-100 ERA+ starters, meaning all were considered below-average big-leaguers that season.

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Everything imploded during a 46-game finish — the fourth worst train wreck of that length by a winning team since the 1800s — to kneecap a once-promising season.

“You want to round your team out,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said Sunday in a hallway of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. “We’re still in conversation. We feel like we have internal options that we like. (Adam) Mazur coming up the other day and battling through, getting us in a position to get a win. Jhony Brito.

“We’ve got some guys that we feel good about from that standpoint.”

Internal options?

No, they don’t. Not real, bankable ones.

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The Mazur Experiment has been a bust to this point. Preller tried to polish the pseudo-opener role he played in the first game of this series against the Orioles, holding things together.

Faint praise, that.

It was 2 2/3 innings, allowing an earned run in a game that began with back-to-back walks and an ERA that now stands at 7.49. No active arm outside of locked-in starters Dylan Cease, Michael King and Matt Waldron has thrown more than 45 2/3 innings for the Padres this season.

They now have one fewer internal option after this season, considering former first-round pick Dylan Lesko became part of the price tag for Adam.

The Padres could have been guilty of living an illusion that they had four starters because of the recent run of Randy Vásquez. That was before he coughed up six earned runs in two innings Sunday during a wild 8-6 loss to the Orioles.

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Padres starter Randy Vasquez throws Sunday against the Orioles in Baltimore. (Terrance Williams/AP)

A few weeks ago, you know the conversations in Camp Padre felt more like this: We have three starters, so we’ve really got to beat the market bushes and find another arm or two.

Then Vásquez rode the wave of historic Padres pitching on this road trip, jumping in the wipeout Conga line with Dylan Cease, Michael King and Matt Waldron.

And if you think you suddenly have four starters, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not that far from five.

Momentum math can be dangerous math.

“The starting pitching, the offense, we’re shutting teams down late in the game,” Preller said of the team, which has roared out of the gates since the All-Star break. “We’re playing good teams. You have to play well, so that’s a good test for our group.

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“I think we knew it was gonna be a test coming out of a break, and these guys have answered it.”

Now, it’s time for Preller to answer.

The Padres have done too much on the field, especially without platinum All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr., and starters Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, to watch this thing wither on the vine as innings pile up.

When Tatis returns, when Musgrove returns, if Darvish returns, patching up the rotation now could pay playoff-level dividends later. Preller is enough of a baseball junkie to understand the precarious pitching ledge his team is walking.

Adam represents a piece, but should only represent a start.

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The ex-Rays reliever fills a hole the Padres have struggled to patch beyond Jeremiah Estrada and, at times, Adrian Morejon. Adam also is not a free agent until 2027.

Lesko, outfielder Homer Bush Jr. and another prospect represent a hefty price. It also illustrates how many teams are scrambling for arms.

Wrangling a starter will require some elite needle-threading. There’s still the competitive balance tax reset the Padres have worked so hard to reach.

Creativity in the face of roadblocks is Preller’s specialty, however, as early-season deals for Cease and hitting machine Luis Arraez illustrated.

Doing nothing, though, could derail it all.

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The 2021 deadline became known for a major swing and miss on Adam Frazier of the Pirates, who promptly forgot how to hit when he arrived in San Diego after leading baseball in hits before the trade.

The year also should be known for skipping the arms and a stretch run too thin on pitching.

This team three years later has shown pop and promise, outstanding yet taxed starting pitching and an ability to fight back that recent seasons lacked.

Short-circuiting that potential now with Tatis and Musgrove waiting in the wings would be tough to swallow.

Trade partners and deals need to make sense, of course, and decisions cannot be driven by deadline panic. Preller, though, has shown the ability to make seemingly complex things happen.

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He needs to do it again.

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San Diego, CA

Robert Downey Jr. Returns! Marvel and More Live From San Diego Comic Con

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Robert Downey Jr. Returns! Marvel and More Live From San Diego Comic Con


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Jennifer Garner’s first visit to San Diego ends up with ‘adventure’

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Jennifer Garner’s first visit to San Diego ends up with ‘adventure’


Jennifer Garner’s first visit to San Diego ends up with ‘adventure’

Jennifer Garner’s Comic-Con adventure took an unexpected turn when she got trapped in an elevator at the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego.

The actress, who was in town to promote her new movie Deadpool & Wolverine, documented her ordeal on Instagram, sharing a series of videos showing her and several others stuck in the elevator.

After a tense 1 hour and 12 minutes, first responders arrived to rescue them.

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“Hey guys, um, we’re suck on this elevator,” Garner started the clip from two minutes into the ordeal.

“I could use a Wolverine, I could use a Deadpool, I could use someone,” she continued, adding that she would look for stairs in the future. “Thanks for having us here. My first Comic-Con.”

After 11 minutes, the Family Switch star, dressed in pants and a floral blouse, exclaimed, “It’s toasty, I’m sphitzy, I need to blot.”

“Don’t cut the blue wire is what we’re hearing,” she joked to the camera.

In the next video slide, Garner is seen sitting on the elevator floor, claiming she learned this technique from a TV show (either Brooklyn Nine-Nine or The Office) as the proper response when trapped in an elevator.

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Later, at the 41.5-minute mark, Garner leads her group in a sing-along of the classic song 99 Bottles of Beer.

After the lift had been running for an hour, the lights came on and Garner began to sing Madonna’s famous song Like a Prayer.

At one hour and twelve minutes into the story, Garner’s eyes widened with joy as she noticed first responders had come and everyone was clapping.



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SDCC 2024: Kamala Harris Makes Simpsons Panel Video Appearance

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SDCC 2024: Kamala Harris Makes Simpsons Panel Video Appearance


In a U.S. election year, even as one as quickly weird as this one has become in recent weeks, you expect candidates (and presumptive candidates) to appear all over the place as they launch their campaigns to help shape the impending future of the nation. Rarely are those campaigns at Comic-Con, and rarely are they related to having Simpsons brainrot.

But such was the case when Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening climaxed the SDCC Simpsons panel by teeing up a clip from none other than Vice President Kamala Harris herself. During the recording, Harris quoted a legendary quote from a skit in the classic 1996 special, “Treehouse of Horror VII”: “We must move forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” There are conflicting reports on the nature of the message, with some reports saying the audience believed the recording was made for the panel (Harris was not in San Diego today, but campaigning in Massachusetts). Others report that the clip is actually a resurfaced video from several years ago, when a group of University of Chicago students were apparently tasked with getting an elected official to recite the infamous quote.

The line comes from, of course, “Citizen Kang”, the third and final skit from “Treehouse of Horror VII”. The short saw recurring Simpsons aliens Kang and Kodos infiltrate the then-upcoming 1996 U.S. presidential election, taking the place of nominees Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. The alien duo then participated in their rival election campaigns before eventually assuming control of America, even after being exposed, due to the nature of the two-party electoral system.

But Harris’ nascent campaign has already been inextricably linked with Simpsons memes and shitposts even before her surprise SDCC appearance. In recent days, one resurgent meme around Harris’ potential to become the first female President of the United States this year has seen her contrasted with the 2000 episode “Bart to the Future” and its own vision of the near future—putting images of an adult Lisa Simpson’s purple pantsuit as the future POTUS, belaboring a budget crunch inherited from President Trump, with images of Harris in a similarly colored suit at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2020.

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Is America ready for a President with a mind as addled by Simpsons quotes as the average 30-somethings? Perhaps we’re about to find out.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.



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