It’s Been a May Flowering in San Diego

It was late April in the National League West and the general manager of the San Diego Padres was beginning to wonder.

From fourth place in a four-team division that also allows the Colorado Rockies to tag along, Kevin Towers looked around and saw the Dodgers did not have Eric Gagne or Jayson Werth, and the San Francisco Giants were without Barry Bonds and Armando Benitez, and the Arizona Diamondbacks were overhauled and just getting to know each other.

And, yet, the Padres, his mid-market team whose life cycle tends not toward reloading but contending-dispersing-rebuilding-contending-again, already were in fourth place, five games behind the Dodgers.

Towers had constructed the Padres for these years. His pitching staff had grown to maturity, Trevor Hoffman had aged but remained reliable, his lineup had become flexible and serviceable, and his new ballpark had allowed him to add more than $25 million in payroll over four years.

A month in, however, Manager Bruce Bochy didn’t have a contract extension, owner John Moores had hired Sandy Alderson to run the baseball operations, a forgiving portion of the schedule had slipped by, and Towers had an underachieving, underwhelming ballclub on his hands.

“Maybe we started having a little doubt,” Towers said. “We all felt we were better. We knew when we put this club together two years ago this would be our best chance to win, this would be the year. But, as difficult as it was in April, we were going to ride the string out, hoping these guys would turn it around. Which they have.”

Once standing with the Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees as the season’s early disappointments, the Padres opened a three-game series in San Francisco on Friday night in first place in the West, a half-game in front of the Diamondbacks, 3 1/2 ahead of the lolling Dodgers. On the strength of a six-game winning streak in early May and an eight-game streak in mid-May, they have won 21 of 27 games, all since Bochy aired them out after a 10-3 loss the last time they were in San Francisco, on April 27.

Bochy called it “pathetic baseball,” and no one would disagree. Since then, the offense has come -- Ryan Klesko, Phil Nevin, Brian Giles and Dave Roberts have had big months -- and the pitching staff has ducked in behind starters Jake Peavy and Adam Eaton. Peavy is 20-6 since the beginning of last season, and in his last three starts, over 23 innings, has 20 strikeouts and has given up no walks and one earned run.

These things happen, Bochy said.

“What changed in New York?” he said, referring to the Yankees’ recent surge. “I don’t know. We were in a prolonged period where we weren’t doing too much right. But guys do get upset and embarrassed at their play.”

Faux, Adrian!

Those who know Adrian Beltre as a sensitive soul who prefers his environment predictable and his friends consistent aren’t entirely surprised that his first months in Seattle have been unpredictable and inconsistent.

His perception that the Dodgers weren’t all that interested in retaining him, his integration into a new clubhouse and surrounded by new teammates, all in a new -- pitchers’ -- ballpark, have led to this: the National League’s MVP runner-up was batting .239 with five home runs, 24 RBIs and a .626 OPS through Friday.

On May 29 a year ago, Beltre was batting .337 with 12 homers, 34 RBI and an .894 OPS, a product of discovering open spaces to the right of center field.

And that was two months after the Dodgers -- unbeknownst to Beltre -- pondered trading him to the Padres.

Towers said Saturday that he spoke last spring training with Dodger General Manager Paul DePodesta about a deal that would have brought Sean Burroughs and a pitcher to the Dodgers for Beltre. He said the talks were initiated by DePodesta but died because Beltre was too close to free agency and probably was going to be expensive, even before Beltre’s 48-homer, 121-RBI season.

“It wasn’t really that serious, one of those spring-training, would-there-be-any-interest things,” Towers said. “They were just putting it out there.”

Safe at Home?

The disturbances are inevitable, I suppose, when beer and sun and one’s self-worth are wed to the score of a baseball game.

Some of us are sent on fanciful gallops across the outfield, as one man was last Saturday during an Angel-Dodger game at Dodger Stadium. He was felled from behind in the vicinity of a flared single, in the grass halfway between Cesar Izturis and Ricky Ledee, then cuffed and led away by a dozen or so security officers, some of them LAPD.

Others pass through loopy, dawdle at resentment and land in outrage, typically 16 ounces at a time. There is at least as much courage in those big plastic cups as there is Bud Light, which explains the price as well as the paleness of the brew.

The Dodgers are trying to put some distance between the baseball fans and the baseball thugs; they hired uniformed police, broadcast public service announcements, hired an in-house security expert and posted a fan code of conduct.

But, as usual, there’s no accounting for the senseless and vicious among us. And so, according to one man on a website and a handful of fellow witnesses he claimed to have interviewed, an Angel fan was beaten by about 10 Dodger fans last weekend and left bleeding on the concrete.

Kevin Connelly wrote at sports-central.org and in e-mail to The Times that at the end of Saturday’s Angel victory a young adult responded to heckling by uttering the game’s final score, “3-1.” That’s what got him thumped, according to Connelly, while dozens of onlookers chanted anti-Angel sentiments. Beat L.A., indeed.

When his attackers fled the area, according to Connelly’s story, the victim was bleeding profusely from the ear. Connelly estimated the man had sustained 50 blows, most to the head. “Many minutes later,” Connelly wrote, security arrived.

Dodger spokespersons declined to say if an incident report had been filed, if the alleged victim pressed charges or if security personnel were aware of the supposed episode before Connelly brought it to their attention. The organization, by policy, does not discuss specific security-related incidents.

Bats and Pieces

Life off the Major Deegan Expressway: Not a month ago, Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman’s job security was hour to hour. By last week, there was talk of an extension. His contract runs through Oct. 31. ... After four starts, Kevin Brown was 0-4 and his ERA was 8.25. In four starts since, all during the Yankees’ 15-2 binge, Brown went 4-0 and gave up three runs in 23 innings. The Yankees have scored 30 runs in those four starts.

What I wrote in January: “By June 1, Jeff Kent will be your first baseman, Antonio Perez will be your second baseman and Hee-Seop Choi will be your 25th man. It’s how the world works outside the Matrix.” What I meant: “By June 1, Jeff Kent will have hit .188 in May, Antonio Perez will have momentarily solved the third-base problem and Hee-Seop Choi’s OPS will be at a career-best .860. Now, could somebody pull this thing out of my neck?” ... Must be

difficult for Choi being so far from home, going through han solo.

It has been a bad week for chairs in the NL Central, where one broke the left pinkie of Cub left-hander Mike Remlinger and two were hauled away by Reds’ management. The versatile Remlinger, who had a 4.97 ERA in 16 appearances, became entangled with a reclining chair last Sunday and was on the disabled list by Wednesday. “You’re smiling,” Remlinger challenged reporters in Chicago. “Here, you want to see it?” ... In Cincinnati, Ken Griffey Jr. and Adam Dunn were stripped of their Sharper Image massage chairs as the Reds fell further out of contention. This, after D’Angelo Jimenez and the very popular Danny Graves were designated for assignment. Dunn was saddened at the loss ... of the chair. “Poor little guy,” he eulogized to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t complain. He just came to play every day. ... So now we’re going to start winning. It was the chair’s fault.” He added, “We even won last night. Imagine if we would have lost. I might not have a glove.”

Say what you will about Alex Rodriguez, but he’s about to pass 400 home runs and won’t be 30 until July 27. At his current pace, he’ll complete his 10th full season with 439 homers. If he averaged 35 home runs a season thereafter, he would pass Hank Aaron’s 755 sometime in 2014. Considering Barry Bonds’ current situation, and the decline in home runs as baseball emerges from its steroid era, it doesn’t seem unlikely that Aaron’s record will still be standing if Rodriguez gets there. ... Uh-oh: Las Vegas 51’s Manager Jerry Royster in the Las Vegas Sun, after Dodger prospect Edwin Jackson gave up seven runs in two innings and then was ejected for hitting a batter: “He can never have a game like that. Ever. Ever again. Here’s a guy that’s rising, [the Dodgers] need a start here in a couple days. You’ve got to know this stuff and go out there and ... find a way to get out of the minor leagues, guys. How can you pitch in the other game if you can’t get these guys out?” With their rotation in trouble, the Dodgers passed on Jackson and gave starts to Wilson Alvarez and double-A left-hander Derek Thompson.

Awkward: Red third baseman Ryan Freel’s radio farewell to Jimenez: “I don’t have anything good to say about the guy to be personally honest with you. He is a cancer in every single clubhouse that he goes to.” Turned out, Jimenez remained in the Red organization when he accepted an assignment to double-A Chattanooga. ... Texas pitcher Ryan Drese and catcher Rod Barajas brawled on the dugout floor between innings of a game against Kansas City on Tuesday night. The disagreement apparently arose over pitch selection; Barajas wanted Drese to throw more sinkers, Drese wanted to throw more haymakers.