baseball

The Major League Baseball Winter Meetings are back in San Diego. Usually this is a week where big league ballclubs either get together and chat, laying the groundwork for free agent deals and trades that happen at a later date OR big league ballclubs go MACH 2 with their hair on fire signing players to 9-figure deals like they’re browsing…

So, Manny Machado finished 2nd in the National League MVP balloting. Did the voters get it right with Paul Goldschmidt? Or did they miss the point of the award entirely? That’s something the OnFriar Podcast tries to find some clarity on. This week NBC 7’s Derek Togerson and Todd Strain discuss the voting process and who they think should...

What is your definition of “valuable?” Is it the the player who simply put up the best numbers over the course of a season? Or is it the guy who meant the most to his team’s success? Over the years Major League Baseball voters have gone both ways. Alex Rodriguez won the award putting up ridiculous numbers for a...

Right-hander Nick Martinez has agreed to a three-year, $26 million contract with the San Diego Padres. Martinez had turned down a $6.5 million contract with San Diego last week, becoming a free agent. But the Padres made a more substantial offer after he went 4-4 with a 3.47 ERA in his return from Japanese baseball. Martinez split time between the...

It’s not often that a podcast is going to have breaking news but when it happens, it can lead to some pretty fun conversations. That’s what happened on Thursday as NBC 7’s Derek Togerson and Todd Strain were recording the latest episode of the OnFriar Podcast. This episode of On Friar the guys discuss the breaking news of Padres...

When the Padres signed Robert Suarez last off-season the only things we knew about him were he was a 31-year-old rookie who’d pitched in the top level of baseball in two different countries (neither of them being the United States of America) and he had a live arm. Now we know that live arm is one of the best...

The World Series is over. Let the business of baseball’s off-season commence. Outfielder Jurickson Profar and reliever Robert Suarez both opted out of the final years of their contracts with the Padres. The club is also declining its option on 1B/OF Wil Myers. All three players will receive a $1 million buyout and become free agents. Profar was going...

As it is with every team in every off-season the Padres will have a lot of questions to answer before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training next February. Nothing can really start to happen until after the World Series is over but it’s not hard to see what San Diego needs. The On Friar Podcast is here to...

What you are about to read is not conventional. It’s either madness or brilliance. Of course, it’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide. One of the many things on the Padres to-do list this off-season is to find a 1st baseman. In 2022, the Friars had six different players spend time at 1st base. Only one of them is...

The Padres had the 7th-highest payroll in baseball in 2022. They ended up as one of the final four teams alive in the hunt for a World Series. So, by that very simple measure San Diego got what it paid for. At the trade deadline the Friars went bonkers, blowing right through the luxury tax threshold in an attempt to…

This is the first Thursday since March that we’ve had no Padres game to break down or look forward to. Don’t worry. That empty hole in your soul can always be filled by the On Friar Podcast. NBC 7’s Derek Togerson and Darnay Tripp give some final feedback on what that NLCS in Philadelphia was really like and start...

Yu Darvish and Zack Wheeler will be back at it in a rematch of Game 1, which the Phillies took 2-0. The Padres have to win that one, then the next two on Monday and Tuesday at Petco Park, or their miracle run will be over.

The Padres scored five times in the inning, igniting Petco Park in a way Downtown SD has never seen before and leading to a series-clinching 5-3 win over the Dodgers, sending the Padres into the National League Championship Series for the first time since 1998.

Joe Musgrove, as you’re probably aware by now, grew up in San Diego’s East County and attended many a Padres game as a kid. His introduction to the Padres – Dodgers rivalry was … well, it’s very on-brand for the vitriol these fan bases feel for one another. “At Qualcomm (Stadium), Phil Nevin was hitting batting practice and I’d...

On Friday night the Padres played their first playoff game at Petco Park with fans in attendance since 2006. It doesn’t take a fool to know the place was going to be bursting with energy and awfully darn loud.

A 20-year-old Long Island native and minor league pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies has died after a battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the team’s head of player development announced Thursday. Corey Phelan, of Greenlawn, was an undrafted free agent out of Harborfields High School who signed with the squad in 2020. He gave up just one run while pitching nine...

The Padres played the Dodgers to a split to start the National League Division Series. That’s better than a lot of folks thought San Diego would do.

In the standings it means the series is tied 1-1. In reality it means the series isn’t over yet. Because had the Dodgers taken the first two games of the National League Division Series, there is about a 0.01% chance the Padres could have come back to win it. That’s not a knock of the Friars. That’s just fact....

What makes a rivalry? Is it 100 years of history? Is it proximity? Is it a mutual hatred of each other’s respective teams? The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres certainly don’t have a storied rivalry that goes back decades, but the feud between the two Southern California franchises is as intense and furious as a lion snatching...