Perhaps the above quote is a slight exaggeration, but from the tone of the following excerpt from Mr. Chass’ blog site, it is hard to determine which he’s more offended by ;  Padres assistant GM Paul De Podesta maintaining a blog, said blog bypassing the mainstream media in reaching the public…or the brutal injustice done to the career prospects of P Jake Peavy (link lifted from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)

Assessing the wasted weeks of trade talks, Peavy’s representative Barry Axelrod said, œI don™t think it was helped by it being so public and out there, identifying the few teams they could talk to.

œYou see the spectrum of the way teams do these things, the agent continued, œSan Francisco and Boston, who play it very close to the vest, to the Padres, who are completely open with their goals, including a blog by a high-ranking executive stating their goals.

Axelrod refered to Paul DePodesta, special assistant for baseball operations, who reports not to Towers but to Sandy Alderson, the chief executive officer in the Padres™ top heavy executive echelon.

It should come as no surprise that a statistics-oriented guy has a blog. Those pursuits seem to go together these days. But a club executive writing a blog?

œIn all candor, DePodesta wrote in a recent blog about the team™s trade of shortstop Khalil Greene, œthe other part of this deal is the trade of Khalil™s contract which was due to pay him $6.5 million in 2009.

He has blogged nothing about Peavy since Oct. 16, at which point he wrote, œSo, to answer the most basic question: are we going to trade Jake Peavy? We™ll see if someone offers us a compelling deal that makes us better.

As Axelrod mentioned DePodesta™s blog, I think I could hear him shaking his head in some disbelief.

œI think the public nature was harmful, he said. œIt was hard on Jake. It was hard to be the focal point of the team wanting to get rid of you.

Will it continue to be hard on Peavy? œI imagine it will be, his agent said, œJake being the competitive guy he is, being with a club that will be hard pressed to be competitive.

Maybe the Padres are counting on Peavy™s likely frustration to prompt him to agree during the season to be traded to someone other than the Braves and the Cubs. Maybe as the July 31 trading deadline approaches, Peavy will have had enough of a team that lost 99 games in 2008 and is headed for an even worse record halfway through 2009.

Maybe we will be able to keep up with developments through DePodesta™s blog.