Tipsheet: Massive Padres payroll produces diminishing returns in San Diego
The San Diego Padres spent a fortune trying to build a juggernaut, but they got a pricey also-ran instead.
The Padres fell further off the pace while suffering a sweep against the Seattle Mariners. This team with a plus-56 run differential somehow has a 55-60 record.
This team has an explosive offensive, but it keeps finding ways to lose key games. That failure ha left their various millionaires exasperated.
“It’s never too late, man,” infielder Xander Bogaerts told reporters after a 6-1 loss to the Mariners. “We’ve all been preaching that we’re going to get on a run, and we haven’t so far. All of the guys in this room still deeply believe that it’s going to happen.
“Sometimes you just need a reset button. We get close to that .500 mark and [stuff] goes the other way. It’s rolling in that great direction, and then just as soon as you get one game from .500 it just goes.”
Actually, it doesn’t sound like all the players believe a turnaround is coming.
“We've got to play as a team,” outfielder Juan Soto told reporters. “We've got to go out there grind every day. Grind every at-bat . . .
“It's been really inconsistent. Some days we do, some days we don't. We gotta do it every day. Days like this series, we just give up. Like literally, we just give up instead of keep grinding, keep pushing. We've got to forget about yesterday and keep moving.”
Writing for ESPN.com, Alden Gonzalez summed up their plight:
The Padres have basically spent the entire season flirting with a .500 record before falling off, only to inevitably circle back -- a constant tease from a star-studded team that should be so much better. It happened again recently. The Padres had a chance to get to .500 for the first time since May 11 on Sunday, then they lost back-to-back games to the Dodgers and Mariners to put together a four-game losing streak. The Padres' uphill climb continues. And it will get significantly harder now that one of their best pitchers, Joe Musgrove, will be out until at least the middle of September -- or perhaps for the rest of this season -- because of shoulder inflammation.
The Padres hope to get injured pitcher Michael Wacha back in the rotation next week. That should give them a lift, but will it come too late?
“Whenever you talk amongst each other is when you figure things out,” slugger Manny Machado said. “Ultimately, it’s all up to us. There’s 26 guys that are in here we believe in. It’ll take all 26 of us to get to where we want to get to. Everyone in here has confidence in each other, we’ve been pulling the same rope. We’ve just got to play better baseball.”
It will be interesting to see if the Padres’ management blows up this team, as the New York Mets did after similar failure, or if it remains fully invested in this group.
Will the Padres buck up to keep pitcher Blake Snell, a pending free agent? Will they lock Soto up for the long haul or opt to move on?
What this team decides will have a big impact on the trade market and free agency.
Here is what folks have been writing about Our National Pastime.
Ray Ratto, The Defector: “The big moment came when the Cubs beat the Reds on successive days, 20-9 and 16-6, which mostly revealed Cincinnati's crud-based pitching but also showed us something we hadn't been paying attention to, which is that Cubs are better than we thought, dreamed, or wanted them to be. They have two players who are not quite as dynamic as De La Cruz but have been more reliable, in Cody Bellinger and Christopher Morel, and one Cy Young candidate in starter Justin Steele, and unlike the Reds are spiking now rather than a month ago. Bellinger, like De La Cruz, was a dominant player (the 2019 National League MVP as a Dodger) only to crash and burn hard, and then be remainder-binned to the North Side this past offseason. Morel has been a quietly solid player on a team that has a deep need for more of those than they already have (remember Patrick Wisdom?). The rest of the Cubs are free of big names but generate runs at a division winner's clip, and might be best positioned to win the trophy of best NL team not located in Atlanta or Los Angeles, for all the good that will do them. And ultimately that is the takeaway here. None of these three teams are the Braves or Dodgers, making third place the breakoff point between the very good and the merely representative. Today, the Cubs are the liveliest members of the six-team clot that includes Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Miami, but the rule of regression to the mean suggests that the Phillies and Giants are more likely to survive the late September purge than, say, the Reds. The world caught up with Elly De La Cruz, and without him the Reds are interesting but not special, while the Cubs’ positive run differential that looked like a punchline when they were seven games below .500 is now revealing itself to be truth.”
Jesse Rogers, ESPN.com: “A six-game skid dropped Cincinnati into third place in the NL Central as the Cubs took three of four last week to top the Reds in the standings. Their pitching settled down against the Marlins after getting walloped at Wrigley Field, but it's been their normally potent offense that has struggled recently. They hit just .203 over a seven-day span ending Tuesday, fourth worst in baseball over that timeframe. Joey Votto went 4-for-21, though all four hits were home runs. Elly De La Cruz also only had four hits, compiling a .174 batting average for the week. The young Reds could be showing some cracks, but a boost on the mound is coming. If Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo can have a strong finish, the NL Central race will be very interesting. Cincinnati needs more overall consistency to make that happen.”
Will Leitch, MLB.com: “The Brewers had an ugly start to their season, but they hung in and now look like you expect a Brewers team to look like, with Corbin Burnes dealing on the mound, Christian Yelich doing everything well and the bullpen shutting teams down. This quietly could be a playoff sleeper … if they can make it.”
Ben Clemens, FanGraphs: “How in the world can you explain a team like the Rays? There are a lot of strange and seemingly magical things going on there, but let’s focus on just their starters. They churn out top-of-the-line dudes like no one’s business. Shane McClanahan is nasty. Tyler Glasnow looks unhittable at times. Jeffrey Springs went from zero to hero and stayed there. Zach Eflin is suddenly dominant. They can’t seem to take a step without tripping over a great starter. They’re also always hungry for more. Whether it’s bad luck, adverse selection, or something about their performance training methods, the Rays stack up pitching injuries like few teams in baseball history. Of that group I named up above, only Eflin hasn’t missed significant time in 2023, and both McClanahan and Springs are out for the rest of the year. The Rays not only have all these starters, but they also traded for Aaron Civale at the deadline, and they’re still short on arms. They did what anyone would do: point at a random reliever in the bullpen and tell him he’s now an excellent starter. Wait, that’s not what anyone else would do? Only the Rays do that? You’re right, at least a little bit; surely you recall the Drew Rasmussen experiment from 2021. That one was a big hit until Rasmussen tore his UCL this year. But that’s not quite the same as turning Zack Littell into a starter. Rasmussen was a starter whom the Brewers had converted to a reliever due to major league necessity in 2020, and he switched back to starting not long after joining the Rays in ‘21. Littell has been a reliever for a while now. He made two starts for the Twins in 2018, then opened for the Giants twice in 2021, but other than that, he’s been a one–to-two-inning guy since making the majors.”
Ginny Searle, Baseball Prospectus: “The Angels have caught a lot of flak over the last half-decade, from me as much as anyone. They became one of those things a sports club has no excuse ever to be, a joke, except they had the benefit of a pair of players who rightly ought to each individually excuse a franchise of such ignominy. In the same period when the Dodgers were on a historic run, the other LA club had a chance to break through and be more than a perpetual afterthought. Anyone who’s paid a scintilla of attention to the sport in recent seasons understands that the Angels have failed to make that distinction, year after year. Mike Trout and (more by the year) Shohei Ohtani were standard-bearers for MLB, but the Angels’ failure to make any collective success of their individual talents was an albatross on the franchise’s reputation. None of that has changed, or is likely to in the eventuality Ohtani leaves for a less snakebitten franchise in free agency. Los Angeles has screwed up, again and again, in recent years, generally with the weighty finger of ownership on the scale. Going all-in at the trade deadline wasn’t the latest instance of that systemic incompetence, regardless of the eight-game losing streak on which the team immediately embarked. The likelihood of a singular playoff run in the Ohtani-Trout era has become remote, but the possibilities and reputational renewal such an outcome would offer only reinforce that betting on that hope was the right move.”
“We focus on developing great players. We believe that the best player for us over time is going to be a young player that we're able to have all the way through our system and develop We will look at free agents every offseason to fill needs. From our point of view, Ohtani is the unicorn. We'll clearly look at him, we'll clearly be in the conversation. But I think we've got a great team with or without him.”
Seattle Mariners owner John Stanton, telling GeekWire that wooing Ohtani in free agency is not the team’s top priority.
