The Skraby Show: Padres Wild Card Race Update

Hello and welcome into this Skraby Show for August 20th, 2026. Thank you so much for joining me after the Round Table replay — hope everybody enjoyed that, it’s nice to hear everybody laughing and having fun. And I’m just left out — no, I’m just kidding. I know people are like, why is it so mean that they’re not putting you as a part of the Round Table? No, it’s okay, I have other things I have to do on Thursday mornings, but they do a great job and I get a ton of stuff to talk about whenever I am able to listen to the Round Table before the show on Thursdays, because they talked about a whole lot and I cannot stop thinking about it. And I think a lot of fans out there are the same — I cannot stop thinking about Fernando’s night on Tuesday night. Just the catch, the two home runs — just everything about his night on Tuesday was fun, and I’m hoping we’re going to see a lot more of that here in the next thirty-four games or so, because that’s how many games the Padres have left in the regular season.

They have thirty-four games. They are currently in the final wild card spot, above the Diamondbacks, who aren’t playing today. The Cardinals — the Diamondbacks are one game back of a wild card spot, the Cardinals are two and a half games back, the Marlins are four games back of a wild card spot. And I’m not comfortable at all with where the Padres are. I’m not comfortable with the third wild card spot. I’m just not. And I don’t think that anybody can actually feel comfortable in that third spot, just because of the tiebreakers that have to go their way.

The one thing I can say that’s good is that they’re going to be playing the Diamondbacks the final three games of the year, and it looks like the Padres and the Diamondbacks are going to be fighting for that last wild card spot. I almost said, hopefully Ketel Marte going missing is going to hurt them — but I don’t really want to say that, because I have no idea what the situation is. But they are down Ketel Marte right now, and that’s a big deal — he’s one of their best players, so maybe that will hurt the Diamondbacks down the stretch.

But I really need to see the Padres get to that number two spot. I don’t want to mess with a tiebreaker at the end of the season. And I said this before — this is all the Padres’ fault. They lost all six games to the Phillies, and so the Phillies easily hold that tiebreaker, and the Cardinals hold the tiebreaker over the Padres as well. When you’re looking at this, you’re really having to jump a bunch of different teams because of your own doing. And the only way to take care of this, the only way to make sure that you don’t miss out on a playoff spot because of a tiebreaker — just keep winning. As you heard on the Round Table, you just got to win today, win tomorrow, take it day by day. It’s a very simple mindset, but it’s a very difficult mindset for me and other humans to take it day by day. But that’s exactly how you’ve got to do it.

We talked yesterday about the Mets and how they weren’t playing — or their record might be worse than how they’re playing right now, it’s just about where you catch teams and the schedule and things like that. So the Padres, all they need to do is control their own destiny and win a bunch of games. Again, I don’t think they’re going to go 34-0 — probably not going to happen, most likely not going to happen. But if they put together a stretch like they have had since — I can’t even say the All-Star break — since they started playing the Marlins in Miami, that third series out of the All-Star break on the road, that is when they turned it around. And that is the Padres baseball we have been waiting for all season long.

Frustration With Mets Pitcher Robert Stock

Now on the other side — one of the things you can’t do, and I can’t get over this, I cannot get over the fact that Robert Stock looked so great against the Padres. And I didn’t realize this, and I’m glad I heard on the Round Table a little bit that Robert Stock may have been pitching off the rubber from a certain angle that gave him an advantage — so I guess I’m willing to buy that. But you still somehow, some way, have got to break through against Robert Stock. You just got to. And when you get walked as many times as they did yesterday, and you’re two-for-twelve with runners in scoring position yesterday — that’s not going to get you into the playoffs. It’s just not, and I think everybody already knows that.

The Padres have a very fine line to walk here going into the final month or so, five weeks of the season. But I’m excited — I’m very, very excited for the rest of the season. I was thinking about this on the drive down today — this is one of my favorite times of the sports year, because you have baseball heating up into the playoff races, we’re almost to September, we’ve got one month to go, and you’ve got the NFL starting with the preseason games. Monday Night Football’s on right now — things in the sports world are good, at least in my eyes.

NFL Preseason: Raiders vs. Texans and Fernando Mendoza

If you’re wondering about the NFL game that’s on right now — there’s a couple, actually, but Monday Night Football is airing Raiders and Texans, and Fernando Mendoza started the game for the Raiders. He has not done great today, which is expected from a guy who’s starting or playing in his second NFL game ever — yes, it’s a preseason game, but he threw a pick-six. He’s five-for-eight for fifty yards, but the pick-six went eighty yards. I’ll give him credit — he tried to chase down the Texans defender and gave it a good go. I always find it hilarious and fun to watch when a non-athletic quarterback is chasing down a defender who’s clearly way faster than them. It’s funny, but good for him for going after him.

Scouting the Minnesota Twins

Let’s look at the Twins. The Twins were a team that were not picked to do much of anything this year, and they are currently under .500 — they’re 63-65. They have won three in a row, they’re 5-5 in their last ten, they’re actually second in their division — that’s how bad the AL teams are right now. So they’re coming in, and they’re not a team you can look past. In the last fifteen days, Josh Bell has hit three home runs, thirteen RBIs, hitting .367 with an OPS of 1.038. Brooks Lee has two home runs, nine RBIs, hitting .277. Kody Clemens has two home runs, eight RBIs. Luke Keaschall is hitting .349, one homer, three RBIs. So you’ve got some guys who are hot.

I know the Padres aren’t looking past the Twins, but I’m going to go into basically every series the rest of the season and be a little nervous about it, because I’m a little concerned about the offense here in the last four or five games, where it’s one good game, one bad game, one good game, one bad game. I’m not ready to say which Padres team we’re going to get today, because for the most part they’ve been pretty good. But it does concern me that the offense is having these moments where they cannot score and they cannot hit with runners in scoring position. I’m hoping that was maybe a last-four-games thing, because I can’t say that they’re not the team we’ve seen the past eighteen, twenty games — because they kind of are.

But the whole thing with Robert Stock, I can’t get over it, and I’m going to get over it — I’m going to go to bed tonight and get over it. But these games, I cannot stop thinking about it, and I know I’m making a big deal about two games throughout an entire baseball season. But I think these are games that if you miss the playoffs, you’re going to look back and think, man, we should have swept the Mets, or we should have taken two out of three. These are games for the rest of the season that you have to take advantage of — you cannot lose these series, you just can’t.

When you have three guys get thrown out at the plate in the first two innings on Monday night, going into Tuesday you’re feeling good. Then Tuesday you’re feeling good because they were right there and had opportunities. And then Tuesday you’re feeling really good after the game because they won and Fernando had the game that he did. And then you get Robert Stock, and you’re thinking, okay, this is great — and then I think they only scored two runs. For the most part they didn’t get anything off their pitchers. So I don’t want to be the guy at the end of the year saying, man, one of those two games they lost to the Mets, they needed to win. I’ll get over it though — I promise I’ll get over it when I go home and go to bed tonight.

If you want to watch the show, you can go to Facebook, 97.3 The Fan, or YouTube, 97.3 The Fan — also The Skraby Show, at the Skraby Show on YouTube, S-K-R-A-B, as in boy. I’d appreciate it if you subscribed there as well. And then you’ve got X, at Matt Skraby, and at 97.3 The Fan SD.

I’ve been really trying to do a bunch of different things outside of work, like learning how to do certain coding projects and things like that. So I started a website like two years ago and then never did anything with it — Skrabinator.com — and I’ve started putting some more stuff into it, putting a little bit of effort into it. So if you want to go check out Skrabinator.com, that would be great. I just want people to see the template I filled out for WordPress — a lot of coding these days is more about templates, but I really want to get into making custom things. So, Skrabinator.com — S-K-R-A-B-I-N-A-T-O-R dot com.

San Diego Padres New Owners: Jose Feliciano and Kwanza Jones

Here’s one of the cool things that I think I’m going to like about the Padres’ new owners. Now, obviously I have not met them or talked to them — no one that I’ve talked to has met them or talked to them. But everything I’m reading and seeing about them, and the ways they have owned sports teams in the past, and the things they’ve done for the communities they’ve been in — I think they’re going to be really good people for San Diego. I hope so. I’m going out on a limb right now saying they’re going to be good people just based on what I’ve been reading, seeing, and hearing. I’m really hoping that they are the people we get.

This story that came out today shocked me — and this isn’t necessarily the new owners doing this, but I feel like it’s the type of ownership group we’re going to get. I’ve got to say, I’m a huge fan of the Seidler family, because they are rewarding their staff by paying out bonuses to both full-time and part-time employees. The gesture comes right as they’re finishing this massive sale. So they got a little bit of money, but the way the Seidler family has handled this down the stretch, I think, can make you feel good about the transfer of power. Sheel Seidler came out and said that she thinks these are the people Peter would have wanted if he were choosing new owners — so if that’s the sign-off, then I can take that. The Seidler family is showing a lot of class by paying out bonuses to both full-time and part-time Padres employees. I’m not sure how much it’s going to be — I don’t get any of it, and I shouldn’t, because I’m not a full- or part-time Padres employee. But the transfer of power has been, knock on wood, smooth. There’s been no drama — a pretty easy transition, and that’s all we could have asked for. We didn’t want this to become some sort of side story for the season, we didn’t want players getting asked about it, and it hasn’t become that.

I really wasn’t sure in the beginning — when I believe it was Sheel who filed a lawsuit against the team, I really thought it was going to get ugly back then, just because of some of the accusations being made and the mudslinging back and forth. I didn’t think we were going to be in a place where we’re talking about this awesome new future for the Padres — I thought it was going to be dark and gloomy, and it wasn’t, it hasn’t been at all. So I appreciate everyone involved for that. Now, again, they’re all making lots of money, so that’s fine — you could say, well, they got a lot of money, so that’s why they can do this. No, they don’t have to do this — we don’t see this often. So I’m going to applaud the Seidler family for giving some bonuses on their way out.

Joseph, in the chat, asked about the Buss family — you could have had a situation like that here in San Diego, where you have no idea what’s going on with your team, your owner’s in trouble with the feds, being investigated, selling the Lakers, trying to sell his shares of Chelsea, and now they’re saying he might sell some of the Dodgers.

I talked about this story last night and got one part of it wrong, and I beat myself up over it — Mark Walter, I said last night, went to Charter Communications, which I believe became Spectrum, and told them if they paid him up front they could keep their contracts. That was incorrect — he wanted a lump sum to let them out of their contracts completely. What the experts are saying — and I am not a finance expert — is that he needed cash so bad that he had to do this. And that’s the type of thing I’m just so happy the Padres didn’t have to go through here in San Diego. We’re all good — we didn’t even really think about the ownership sale until it was like, hey, whatever happened with that sale thing, everything seems to be good. And I’m looking forward to the future with these new owners. It sounds like they’re going to compete, they want to compete, they want to bring a World Series to San Diego — all the things we needed from new owners, we’re seemingly getting as of right now. We’ll see what happens as we go forward, and I reserve the right to change my opinion, but I’m going to be excited about this, and I’m going to be grateful that we did not have a bunch of Skraby Show episodes talking about legal proceedings over the ownership of the Padres — because right now, with the Lakers, you’ve got the Buss family, Jeanie Buss doesn’t want to give up the team, the other siblings are giving up the team, and there’s a big fight there. It’s ugly. Money causes really bad problems for everyone, it seems like.

Alright, where do we get back — Kevin AC dropped something in his newsletter today that I thought was pretty interesting. If you would have asked me this question three months ago, I would have said no, but now I’m going to say yes. So we’ll talk about Ethan Salas when we get back here on 97.3 The Fan.

[Music break] That’s Skraby, back here in the Bell Studios — and you know this song, everybody’s got to know this song, The Killers. I’ll tell you something about this song: when it came out, September 29, 2003, I was already graduated high school, in my first semester of college. Wow, that was a long time ago. But this song came out, and I had a girlfriend, my first girlfriend ever, and I thought we were going to get married — how wrong I was about all of that. But that song came out, and I remember when we were breaking up, that song was on in the background, and every time I heard it after that, for years, I would get very sad. Not anymore, though. I had to learn things the hard way — every lesson I’ve learned in my life has been learned the most difficult way possible. But now I love the song.

Ethan Salas Call-Up Talk and the Padres’ 40-Man Roster

All right — Ethan Salas. And then we’re actually going to talk about those football players who are going back to college, we’ll talk about them too. And it’s National Radio Day, so I can’t forget to tell my radio story at the end of the show — every year on National Radio Day I do this, and everybody says it’s nice to learn the origin story of Matt Skraby.

But Ethan Salas — we’ve been talking about him for a long time now, whether or not he’s going to join the team this year, join the team next year. And it seems like, according to Kevin AC’s newsletter, that the Padres are thinking about promoting him in September and getting him some big-league experience down the final stretch, when they’re able to expand the rosters and get more guys on the roster. My question with this is: if you’re going to bring him up, what’s the point? Are you going to give him playing time? Are you just going to have him get used to what it’s like to be in a big-league clubhouse, learn the routine before the off-season? Or are you bringing him up to play, and to start over Freddy Fermin or Luis Campusano? Are you going to carry three catchers? There’s more to think about here.

If he’s on the 40-man roster — and this is interesting, I think I heard Braden talking about it earlier — minor league players aren’t held to the same rules as major league players during a lockout. So if Salas is on the 40-man roster, he wouldn’t be able to have contact with the team during a lockout, and he wouldn’t be able to get at-bats in Triple-A if the major league season is postponed or canceled. So I don’t know what the answer is here — it depends on what you’re trying to get out of this. Are you trying to see if he’s a big leaguer? Trying to acclimate him? Trying to take a job from one of the current catchers? There’s a lot to think about. The team probably wants to keep contact with him even through a lockout, and they’re not worried about him getting out of shape — his work ethic is one of his best attributes, which is a great thing to hear about a twenty-year-old.

I think there has to be a real purpose behind bringing him up — don’t just bring him up to bring him up, especially since it starts his major league service clock. There’s a lot of decision-making behind this, but I would like to see it — I want to see Ethan Salas play at the big-league level, see if he’s worth the hype, which I think he’s shown throughout his time in the Padres’ minor leagues that he can handle. He’s been a highly touted prospect for a long time, so this isn’t all new to him — the attention is new, but he seems to have dealt with it well, and he’s got good people around him. I don’t think it would break his confidence to come up. But throwing a guy who’s never played at that level into a playoff race in September is a whole different deal — that’s a ton of pressure, especially with everybody calling you the next great Padre. I don’t know if you want to start his service clock or put him on the 40-man roster if he’s just going to sit around — so have a purpose, is what I’m saying.

David, in the chat: 40-man roster players would essentially have to go overseas and play baseball elsewhere if there’s a lockout — minor leagues would go on as normal. That’s weird that they’d have to go overseas — I wonder how many guys we’d see in Nippon Professional Baseball or the KBO. That’d be kind of crazy. If I’m a KBO team or a Japanese league team, I’d try to sign one of these guys immediately. Can you imagine if Shohei Ohtani went back to play in Japan after starting his historic career there? I don’t know if the media and the hype could handle it, I really don’t. So yes, I’m a little perturbed by the whole thing.

College Football, the NCAA, and NIL Lawsuits

Anyway — let’s talk about these kids who are going back to college after already playing in the NFL. Things have gotten so weird in college that it’s now a regular practice for college players to sue for temporary restraining orders and get them, making them eligible to play for a season. But we have crossed the line of no return. There are at least sixteen lawsuits right now to get these players back on the field — actually, I’m sorry, it was thirty-two total athletes, and it’s not just football, sixteen are football players. Some of these players have already signed an NFL contract. Some have put on the NFL uniform. They didn’t make the team, and now they want to go back to college and play. I don’t like this — this is teaching people that if you don’t get what you want, you can just go do whatever you want, that you can take the easy way out. Once you put on the NFL uniform — same goes for the NBA — I think that should be it. It’s so ridiculous to me. The career path for some of these guys isn’t the NFL, and not everyone can play in the NFL — I understand that to a degree, and if you know you’re not an NFL guy, go make all the money you can in college. Just stop floating back and forth between the professional and college ranks.

Are these kids even going to school? I know I sound like I’m about to say “back in my day,” but the overall college football experience just isn’t for me right now, and it’s a sad thing to see. What we’re really teaching everyone, in my opinion, is that if things don’t go your way, you can go to court and sue the NCAA to get back in. Like — at a certain point, don’t you have to say to yourself, I can’t play football forever, I’ve got to go start my life? A lot of people don’t play professional sports, and they have to give it up and move forward and accept they’re no longer an aspiring professional athlete. But now it’s, well, let me go sue this judge in Texas. And why is it always Texas judges? I don’t even know why they’re called restraining orders. It’s crazy.

I’m worried about our future generations, honestly — if my niece or nephew came to me and said they didn’t make the soccer team, I wouldn’t say let’s go get a court order so you can play. I’d say, let’s work, let’s get better. Not, let’s go find ourselves an attorney and sue the league. David, in the chat: I’m worried about our future generations too, and I think I’m slightly younger than you. I’m forty-one, and I feel like my generation gets it — some of us, anyway. I’d like to see more teams just say no, sorry, we’re not going to take you, but they won’t. I’ve been taught my whole life that if you work hard, do good things, and treat people right, good things will happen to you. But it seems like over the last ten or fifteen years, that’s become secondary — now it seems like the way we’re going is, if you’re okay with complaining and taking people to court, that’s the path. It’s unfortunate. I know some of the kids out there aren’t ready for what real life is going to throw at them. If I ever got to a point in radio where I needed to find another way, that’s what I’d do — look for that other way. I wouldn’t like it, but I’m not going to go suing people. It’s just ridiculous. All right, done ranting.

National Radio Day: The Matt Skraby Origin Story

When we get back, it’s National Radio Day, I’m going to tell you my radio story, we’ve got a daily gripe, might have some other stuff too.

[Music break] I’m Matt Skraby — follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Matt Skraby, M-A-T-T-S-K-R-A-B, as in boy. Also at The Skraby Show on YouTube — I need some more subscribers, please, that would be great.

All right, National Radio Day. I wanted to tell everybody why August 20th is considered National Radio Day — the reason is Detroit had a radio station, now WWJ, that broadcast the Detroit News Radiophone show. That’s why they use the 20th as National Radio Day.

But here’s the origin story of Matt Skraby. I went to high school, then college, got my degree in business administration. I got a job working downtown here in San Diego, where I was traveling a lot, doing marketing and a lot of on-site business stuff. I worked that job for about five or six years, and by the end I couldn’t stand it — I didn’t like who I worked with, I felt like I was being taken advantage of by the people who ran the company. So one day — I’d always wanted to do radio as a kid, I listened to it all the time, I had a radio I listened to when I was going to sleep, so that tells you what kind of kid I was. I was always listening to news talk and sports talk. I always wanted to get into it, but never knew how, and didn’t know if I’d ever get the opportunity.

But I was listening to my favorite radio show here in San Diego, a morning show, and they were advertising for interns — an unpaid internship. I was like, this is crazy, I can’t believe I might get the chance to do this. So I applied, came in for an interview, got the job, and started working at this radio station on their morning show. Here’s the biggest difference between me and the other interns: I actually worked the job. I was a little bit older — twenty-seven or twenty-eight — while a lot of the other interns were eighteen, nineteen, twenty, so it wasn’t as big a deal for them. For me, it was like, I’m almost thinking about a career change here, and if I could get going in this, I’d love to. So I took it really seriously, like they were paying me a bunch of money, even though it was unpaid. I learned a lot from them, and I credit a lot of what I’m doing today to them, because they were the ones who put me on the air for the first time and taught me things about radio.

I was so tired of my other job, doing all this traveling on top of the internship — I’d come home from New York on a Thursday night, get home at midnight, then get up at 5 a.m. and go do the free internship. It worked out, because eventually they ended the internship program and needed to hire one person, and because I’d worked so hard, they hired me. So I became an official, paid radio station employee, doing their phone screening for them, and things went well after I quit my other job.

I have to thank my grandpa, my grandparents, and my parents for helping me get to this point. I went to my grandpa and told him I didn’t like where life was going — I was also drinking at the time, which wasn’t great — and he encouraged me to take this route and helped me in a lot of ways, including financially in the beginning. I won’t lie about that. Without my grandpa and grandma encouraging me, I wouldn’t be here, so I credit them.

Back to the story: I was working at that morning show, and then there was an opening on a news-talk station in the same building — my first producer job, on a midday news-talk show. I worked there about two years, and then they came to me about starting a new morning show on the sports station, and I was the one they wanted to hire as the morning show producer — which was insane, because I never thought it would happen. So that’s how I got into sports: two years as a news-talk producer, then sports, and I’ve been with 97.3 The Fan ever since — I believe since 2018 or 2017, one of those two years.

I say all that to say this — if you have a dream, don’t think you can’t reach it, because you can, I’m proof of that. I’m a guy who started radio as an unpaid intern at twenty-eight and quit his job making no money, and I just followed my dream, and I’m living through some of that right now. If you want to do something with your life, tell yourself you can do it, try to get into it, and don’t take no for an answer — but don’t go suing people because you got a no. No’s are good things — I got a few no’s in my radio career. I actually really wanted to be the pregame host for the Aztecs football team back when Rashaad Penny was there, applied for the job, told my boss how much I wanted it, and then they told me I wasn’t getting it because I wasn’t good enough. And you know what? That was probably one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, because instead of going home angry, I said, let’s work this out, let’s work harder and get to where you want to be. I didn’t appreciate my boss at the time, but I appreciate him now, because I needed that kick in the butt. So again — if you want to do something, I’m not saying quit your job today, I’m saying go look into it, see if you actually like it, because maybe you think you’d like it and you don’t. Just do things that make you happy, because I worked a job for a long time that didn’t make me happy, and I feel like I wasted a lot of time being angry all the time.

Fantasy Football and Listener Questions

Joseph, in the chat, asked when the fantasy draft is. Here’s the thing with fantasy football at work — I’m the only one of the twelve who doesn’t have an iPhone, same situation as my other league I’ve been in for almost twenty years with my college friends. I’m the only guy without an iPhone, so I don’t get any texts, and all the group texting happens without me. We tried merging everything with RCS chat, and I thought they’d fixed it, but apparently one guy in our group doesn’t have a new enough phone. So I’m still on the outside. I honestly don’t know when the draft is, Joseph — I think it’s coming up next week, maybe one of the days Chris and I are in Las Vegas. By the way, we’ll be broadcasting live from Circa Resort in Las Vegas on the 27th and 28th — next Thursday and Friday. But I think the draft is one of those days. I guess I’m on a blacklist because no one wants to text with an Android person. David: there are plenty of texting apps that allow communication. I know, I know — they just want their iMessage chat, that’s it.

Joseph, in the chat: Odyssey tells me no every time I try to be an intern for Skraby. Keep trying, Joseph. Dominick, in the chat: my dream is to have a date with Charlize Theron — is that attainable? Thanks for the advice, Skraby, never give up. Okay, fine — maybe attainable dreams. I had a huge crush on Britney Spears in high school, and I would have done anything to go on a date with her.

All right, appreciate everybody — no daily gripe tonight, I ran out of time telling the story. Tomorrow, we’ve got Robbie Ray on, and Chris at 2:20 p.m. will get you set for the game between the Twins and the Padres. Have a great night, everybody — talk to you soon.