About San Diego Padres
The franchise was founded in 1969 and joined the National League as an expansion team. Despite winning its very first game, the team like many other new teams, struggled in opening years finishing last in West Division each of the first six years.
The franchise nearly was relocated to Washington due to the owners’ financial struggles but founder of McDonald stepped in and bought out the franchise thus allowing the Padres to continue enjoying the San Diego’s sunshine.
The new owner never got to see his team play in the World Series as he died in 1984, months prior to the Padres winning their very first NL Pennant. The Padres faced the Detroit Tigers who were favourites to reach World Series from the season’s start and came out defeated in five game series.
The next twenty years would become the franchise’s best years as they had won five West Division titles, to go with two NL Pennants. The second one came in 1998 and saw the Padres playing against the Yankees who unfortunately swept the San Diego based franchise leaving them with only one win in two World Series.
And that’s all what the franchise has managed to produce so far. Their last visit to post season occurred in 2006 as they remain quite contested in their West Division.
The team’s colours are blue, yellow, brown, light grey and white and their official mascot is Swinging Friar despite some people thinking that San Diego Chicken is the official mascot. The chicken does make appearances but has no official link.
San Diego Padres didn’t have a lot of team success to enjoy through the years and they haven’t fielded many stars but there was some noteworthy talent going through the franchises facility.
Randy Jones was the first player to win an award. In 1975 he won ERA Championship followed by CY Young award for best pitcher the year later.
Jake Peavy joins Jones as the only other ERA champion. He won the award twice in 2004 and 2007.
The Padres produced three more CY Young award winners since Jones and their last one was Peavy who earned in 2007.
There was only one league MVP in the history of the team, in 1996 Ken Caminiti earned that honours.
It is also worth noting that Tony Gwynn had been the leagues batting champion 8 times between 1984 and 1997.
To date the Padres have not recorded 100 win season but they were unlucky to have five 100 loss seasons in their history with their very first season in the league being the worst at 52-110.
It’s been a while since the team could enjoy some post season action and it’ll take some effort in 2016 to improve the franchise 74-88 record from last season.
