Roster Coming Into Focus

As we get ready to pack up and head back to San Diego tomorrow, our roster is beginning to come together. It can be tough to keep track at this time of year, so I figured I should give you the latest version.

After a number of moves in the past 48 hours - acquiring RHP Edward Mujica from Cleveland, optioning OF Drew Macias, reassigning RHP Greg Burke, OF Emil Brown, 1B Kyle Blanks, and C Eliezer Alfonzo and releasing RHP J.K. Ryu and LHP Justin Hampson - we now have 13 healthy pitchers in our Major League camp:

Heath Bell
Kevin Correia
Eulogio DeLaCruz
Luke Gregerson
Shawn Hill
Arturo Lopez
Cla Meredith
Edwin Moreno
Edward Mujica
Jake Peavy
Duaner Sanchez
Walter Silva
Chris Young

We anticipate starting the year with 12 pitchers, so at least one of these guys will likely be headed to AAA. Nevertheless, this list provides a pretty good idea of what we're looking at for next week assuming that Cha Seung Baek won't be able to start the year on the active list. Amazingly, just four of the 13 (Peavy, Young, Bell, and Meredith) pitched for the 2008 Padres in the big leagues and only six were even in the Padres' organization.

As for the position players, we have 13 roster players remaining in camp (in alphabetical order by position):

C Henry Blanco
C Nick Hundley
1B Adrian Gonzalez
2B David Eckstein
2B Edgar Gonzalez
SS Everth Cabrera
SS Luis Rodriguez
3B Kevin Kouzmanoff
OF Cliff Floyd
OF Jody Gerut
OF Brian Giles
OF Scott Hairston
OF Chase Headley

This group of 13 is the mirror image of the pitching staff - just four of the 13 (Blanco, Eckstein, Cabrera, and Floyd) did NOT play for the 2008 Padres in the big leagues. Since we plan on carrying 13 position players, this could very well be the group on Monday in Petco.

There's always a flurry of roster activity in the final days leading to Opening Day, but I wouldn't be surprised if our 25-man roster came from these 26 players.