The San Diego Padres don't resemble a good team right now. They've lost 11 of 13 and are 14-22 since April 27. The stretch where they won 16 of 19 is looking more and more like it was smoke and mirrors than the sign of an actual World Series contender.
Of course, the Padres are still over .500 at 33-31 and are only a half game out of playoff position. Given the dearth of actual great teams this season, they are absolutely a contender.
You know what that means, heading toward the trade deadline with one of the most aggressive club presidents in baseball, A.J. Preller: BUY!
Sure enough, The Athletic reports that the Padres are gearing up to be buyers this coming July.
Of course they should try to get better. They are right there in the playoff race. This is a team that's made the playoffs four of the last six seasons, yet hasn't advanced to the World Series since 1998. It's one of five MLB franchises to have never won the World Series. It has a very supportive fan base, ranking second in attendance behind the Dodgers.
Some could argue that the proverbial wheels are soon to fall off this thing, though.
Bad offense
As a team, the Padres are hitting .214/.289/.355. They rank dead last out of 30 MLB teams in all three of those lines (batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage). They are last in runs scored, too, averaging 3.77 runs per game. By OPS+, the only hitters with even somewhat regular playing time who have been above average are Gavin Sheets and Ty France.
The main culprits? The three biggest names:
- Jackson Merrill is hitting .202/.275/.329.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. finally hit his first home run of the season a little over a week ago. He still has just the one. He's hitting .273, but is only slugging .328. The league-average slugging percentage is .394. This is a guy on a $340 million contract. Speaking of which ...
- Manny Machado is on a $350 million deal that runs through 2033. He's turning 34 years old next month. He's been legitimately one of the worst offensive players in baseball this season, to the tune of .169/.254/.342. He's run into 11 home runs, but otherwise has been brutal.
Bad contracts
Tatis still has eight years and almost $272 million left on his deal. The player that he was before 2022 was absolutely worth this level of contract. Since then, it's arguable. From 2023-25, he hit .266/.344/.459 (122 OPS+) with an average of 23 homers and 4.6 WAR per season. It's pretty clear that the super-duper star ceiling we saw before the multiple injuries and PED suspension of 2022 is just not there anymore. He can still be very good, as he was last season at 6.1 WAR, but this year he's on pace for 1.5.
Here's an easy way to see if you think his contract is good, bad or in between: Would any other team trade for Tatis right now and take on the full contract?
No chance.
Same goes for Machado, who has seven years and nearly $275 million left on his deal after this season.
Xander Bogaerts is hitting .226/.300/.348 (83 OPS+). He's 33 years old. After this season, he's still under contract for seven more years and getting more than $178 million.
Maybe Merrill's deal ages well. He's only 23 and there's plenty of time for a turnaround. But he's been awful this season and is in the first year of a 10-year, $156 million deal.
Yu Darvish might be done for his career. He's still owed $30 million over two years after this season.
Jake Cronenworth's deal seems troublesome at this point, too (more than $12.2 million a year for the next four seasons).
Thin rotation
Michael King and Randy Vásquez are doing a lot of heavy lifting for the Padres' rotation. Walker Buehler has been mediocre, as has Lucas Giolito in his four starts, and Griffin Canning has just been bad. Joe Musgrove's return would help, but he's had multiple setbacks in his attempted return from Tommy John surgery and isn't close. Nick Pivetta is also dealing with an elbow injury and doesn't seem close to a return, either.
The Padres have a good bullpen, but that only does so much good with a paper-thin rotation and bad offense.
Poor farm system
Generally speaking, when teams buy at the deadline, they're trading away depth -- whether that's prospects or organizational pieces in the minors or even off the big-league roster -- for star big leaguers. Sometimes the players are less than stars. As an example, the Padres coughed up six prospects for Ryan O'Hearn and Ramon Laureano last season.
Preller is the king of such deals, in quantity if not quality, and as a corresponding result, the Padres ranked dead last in MLB.com's farm system rankings heading into this past spring.
One way to restock a depleted farm system is to be sellers at a trade deadline. Who could the Padres sell, though, who would land a huge prospect return? All-Everything closer Mason Miller is the easy and obvious answer and we could throw King in the mix. That's about it, though. No one would take Merrill's contract right now, and we don't need to bother discussing Machado, Tatis, Bogaerts, et al.
And again, why would the team be a seller when they're only a half-game out of a playoff spot?
So that's where things stand. The Padres are pretty well stuck with the framework of this roster. It's a very thin roster with several highly compensated, underachieving players. It'll be tough to add much of great help at the trade deadline, even though it feels like they have a ton of needs in order to look like a World Series contender.
Much like someone might say about a very old automobile, you might as well just drive it until it dies. That death seems right around the corner, but it's always possible they could have one great World Series run before the inevitable.
