ESPN Buster Olney Blog

The Padres' attendance is going to plummet. The bullpen is a mess. The minor league system needs a whole lot of work. The team's second-best position player (Brian Giles) probably will be traded. The organization is estranged from a future Hall of Famer, Trevor Hoffman. And unless San Diego's starting pitching does yeoman work, the club probably will be in the running for last place in the NL West after winning just 63 games last year.

But the organization can finally move forward now that Jeff Moorad is The Man in San Diego and his purchase of the team is officially on the books. As mentioned within this story, Troy Aikman is a minority owner.

As John Moores assumed ownership of the Padres during the strike of 1994-95, he approved some dynamic moves immediately -- most notably, the blockbuster trade for Steve Finley and Ken Caminiti. Moorad probably won't do that kind of deal right away.

But now that he has the job and has been given the go-ahead to run the club's baseball operations, and now that Sandy Alderson has left the team, Moorad can resolve some of the internal issues that lingered last year. There were conflicts over instruction between the Padres' coaching staff and Grady Fuson, the club's vice president for player development. It remains to be seen whether Moorad will back Fuson, but either way, marching orders must be delivered.

Moorad is in position to say whether San Diego still will look to trade pitching ace Jake Peavy. The guess here is that the Padres will continue to listen to offers and look for a Peavy deal if they feel as though they can land a couple of prospects.

And Moorad can give clear orders about where he wants to take the Padres in the future, a stark contrast to the leadership of Moores last season. Moores, coping with a difficult divorce, was rarely seen or heard from in the Padres organization last season.

Don't expect big changes soon, Tim Sullivan writes.

Moorad had a modest start in Modesto before his days as an agent and owner, old friend Mark Zeigler writes.

Moores felt better than he thought he would, writes Jay Paris.

• Ticket sales for the Giants are lagging, Andrew Baggarly writes. The Reds will sell some tickets for $5.

• Give Skip Schumaker loads of credit: He has worked and worked and worked at improving his efficiency at second base, to the point where he has won the job. We'll see how it goes for him defensively after the season starts, but for now, the situation is at least workable in the eyes of manager Tony La Russa.

• The day after Oliver Perez's pitching coach said he is out of shape, Johan Santana talked directly with the left-handed pitcher, Marty Noble writes.

Here's the bottom line: The Mets need Perez to be what he has been -- a sometimes dominant pitcher who helps the team win a majority of the games he has pitched. If he regresses to what he was in a couple of ugly seasons with the Pirates, well, the Mets' margin for error in what figures to be a difficult NL East race will be down to almost nil.

• The Yankees are flip-flopping Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter in their lineup essentially for this reason: Jeter hits into a lot of double plays -- 45 during the past two seasons -- and Damon does not (nine double-play groundouts during the past two seasons). And given that the left-handed swinging Brett Gardner will hit ninth, the Yankees will go left-right-left in their 9-1-2 spots.

• Heard this: Mark Mulder continues to prepare for an audition for scouts and continues to make adjustments. At the outset of the offseason, his focus was on restoring the arm slot that he had when he was with the Oakland Athletics. Although Mulder believed he made great strides toward that end, he tended to repeat the delivery less than he wanted -- about 70 percent of the time. Now Mulder and a former pitching coach have discussed lowering his arm slot by four inches to increase the likelihood of Mulder's repeating his delivery.

Meanwhile, multiple spots in the Oakland rotation need to be filled, and Mulder would be a good candidate among many very good candidates if he were to sign and begin pitching in games.

• There is concern about the velocity of Toronto Blue Jays pitcher B.J. Ryan, whose fastball has been clocked as low as 84 mph, Robert MacLeod writes. It's possible he will be left in Florida when the rest of the Blue Jays break camp, Richard Griffin writes.

The rest of Buster's blog -- stories on which players are fighting for jobs, news on the latest moves and deals and which pitchers are rounding into form, among tons more -- is available exclusively to ESPN Insiders.