The San Diego Padres finished the season as a dark-horse playoff team, but a lot has changed since then. The team’s up for sale and they have a new manager, but the moves the Padres have made have been underwhelming, which is why they’re ranked just 14th in this midwinter progress report from Brad Doolittle of ESPN.
It’s not that the moves they’ve made have been bad—there just haven’t been enough of them. Starter Michael King has been re-signed after ace Dylan Cease left in free agency, and the Padres have signed Korean infield star Sung-Mun Song.
As Doolittle notes, however, the roster deficiencies from last year persist. The rotation is short with King and Joe Musgrove returning from injury, and the Padres haven’t done anything to replace the 200+ strikeouts Cease provided on an annual basis.
The bullpen is still a strength, but the offense is still tilted toward aggression and contact, to use Doolittle’s description, which was followed by this recommendation: “San Diego ranks 21st in isolated power and 26th in walk rate in the current forecast. It's an outlook that screams for a take-and-rake corner player.”
That corner outfielder doesn’t fit the Padres’ budget, however. Free agent outfielder corner outfielder Cody Bellinger wants too much money and too many years, with Kyle Tucker falling into the same basic category, so Doolittle recommended taking a flier on someone like DH Marcell Ozuna of the Atlanta Braves.
Even that feels like a stretch, though, based on what’s happened to date. Reliever Mason Miller surfaced in some trade rumors with the New York Mets, but those rumors turned out to be just that. That means the Padres are a mid-pack team, and at this point it seems likely that they’ll stay that way.
One thing that might change things is some tangible news about the sale. A progress report would give Padres fans an idea of where their team stands, not to mention what to expect going forward.
The Padres did sign most of their players who are under team control, though, so that’s good news in the sense that there are no big arbitration battles coming. Beyond that, both the fan base and the team are in “wait and see” mode with the free-agent market having slowed to a crawl, so it will be interesting to see if things heat up a little in the coming weeks as spring training approaches.