Jeff Moorad kinda sorta throws Jed Hoyer under the bus

Jeff Moorad was really polite about it, but don’t these comments about the Padres passing on Pat Burrell hang Padres’ GM Jed Hoyer out to dry?

“In retrospect, I wish I’d done more than relay Pat Burrell’s interest in coming here.” Moorad said Thursday afternoon. “I’m not going to tell Jed what to do and I’m not going to push a particular player on him. (But) in retrospect, I wish I had raised the possibility to a different level.”

Hoyer was quoted in the article agreeing with his boss, saying that Moorad was right and, yeah, he wishes he would have pushed harder.

I guess the order in which the quotes were obtained matters here: if Hoyer first admitted that he blew it on Burrell, credited Moorad and then Moorad was quoted, fine. But if Moorad says it first, doesn’t that undercut Hoyer here? Isn’t it better for an organization to speak with one voice in such matters? “We made a mistake, in hindsight, in not getting Burrell. These things happen.” Moorad and Hoyer know the dynamic that went into the decision. Whose interest does it serve for the public to know that the owner and the general manager disagreed?

There’s a fine line between owner meddling and owner input, I suppose. I suppose that line is even finer when the owner has Moorad’s baseball background as opposed to the top guy being some car salesman or trial lawyer or something. I’m not sure I could restrain myself from trying to tell my GM to get this or that player if I owned a team. It’d be hard!

But I would like to think that I’d try to keep all of the sausage making in-house.