The San Deigo Padres currently have the worst record in all of baseball, at 38-62. And yet as of this writing they haven’t made any significant moves toward rebuilding the team, and are still acting as if they are trying to contend.

It’s time to get a move on that rebuilding, as the Padres are not going to be contending any time soon if they stand pat.

What the Padres need to do is build a team that can play well in their ballpark. This means building teams the way the Dodgers used to do back when Dodger Stadium was the game’s greatest pitcher’s park.

The Padres should focus on defense. They especially need to find outfielders who can cover the big gaps in the outfield at Petco, and especially in center field. Losing Mike Cameron after last season was a huge blow to the pitching staff.

On offense the Padres should focus on acquiring or developing hitters with skills that won’t be as affected by the big outfield. Hitters who draw a lot of walks, hit line drives, and hopefully have some speed. The Padres should not pay an extra premium to get hitters who hit a lot of home runs in other parks, because a lot of that value will be lost at Petco.

Similarly, when it comes to pitching the Padres should look for pitchers with who don’t walk a lot of guys. There is an opportunity here, in that the Padres can look for flyball pitchers who put up lousy numbers in other parks and can be had for cheap, but who will have a chance to succeed in cavernous Petco Park.

To acquire more of these types of players, the Padres should be prepared to trade most of their big-name veterans, as this year’s team is going nowhere but down any time soon.

In particular, the Padres should look to trade Kevin Kouzmanoff, Khalil Greene, Trevor Hoffman, Randy Wolf, and Tadahito Iguchi. These are all fairly big-name guys who other teams will want, but who are not useful to the Padres. Kouzmanoff and Greene have terrible on-base percentages, and thus have no business playing in a pitcher’s park like Petco, and Kouzmanoff is forcing up-and-coming prospect Chase Headley to left field, where his bat is not as valuable. Meanwhile, Hoffman, Wolf, and Iguchi are big-namers who are set to be free agents, so there is no need to keep them on a last-place team.

Update: The Padres have reportedly traded Randy Wolf to the Astros (!)

- What They Need Index -

The first significant trade deadline deal went down today as the Brewers panicked and shipped three well regarded pitching prospects for declining setup man Scott Linebrink.

The Brewers were feeling the pressure to make a move with the Cubs breathing down their necks in the NL Central and the bullpen weakened by the need to shift Yovani “Lamborghini” Gallardo back into the rotation to replace the ever-injured Ben Sheets.

(Amazingly, I appear to be the first person to ever make that lame Lamborghini joke, at least according to Google)

It seems like Scott Linebrink has been the subject of trade rumors since players still wore stirrups. I mean, I’m pretty sure every man on the Red Sox 40-man roster has been rumored to be involved in a trade for Linebrink by now.

But Kevin Towers and the Padres wisely held their hand until they finally got an offer they couldn’t refuse. And this offer was pretty damn nigh unrefusable.

For starters, one of the players received from the Brewers, Triple-A reliever Joe Thatcher, is probably already a better option than Linbrink, whose peripherals have been declining and who just yesterday demoted from his role as the Friar’s primary set-up man in favor of rising star Heath Bell. Thatcher will be immediately slotted into the back end of the Padres ‘pen, and deservedly so.

But the real payoff in the trade for the Padres may will be acquiring Double-A starter Will Inman, who Baseball America ranked as the third best prospect in the Brewers system this spring, behind only Ryan Braun and the aforementioned Gallardo.

Just to give you an idea how good that makes Inman, Braun will almost certainly be named NL rookie-of-the-year this season and Gallardo is regarded as a future top-of-the-rotation who one scout recently said is already better than Phil Hughes or Homer Bailey.