The San Diego Padres came to camp with fingers crossed about their starting rotation, but now things look really bad.
Hope is not a plan.
The San Diego Padres spent a quiet offseason hoping their starting rotation would somehow come together in spring training, but now it looks like they’re in genuine trouble. MLB.com did a piece about what each team learned during spring training, and the conclusion they reached about the Padres was an obvious one: The rotation is on shaky ground.
Indeed, you can make the argument that the Padres barely have a rotation right now. As the piece pointed out, starters Joe Musgrove and newly-signed Griffin Canning will miss the start of the season due to injuries. Michael King had one decent start this spring, but he doesn’t look anything close to a pitcher who can throw 100+ innings and win games. Nick Pivetta has barely thrown at all this season due to “arm fatigue,” so this is close to a worst-case given what the Padres were hoping for when they came to camp.
Even worse, most of the options behind the frontline starter are just plain bad. Walker Buehler is a two-time failure with the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies whose best days are long in the rear view, and German Marquez is a former Colorado Rockies failure who also struggled in the spring. Randy Vazquez has looked somewhat better, but he’s the only pitcher out of this veteran group who looks like he can pitch decently once the regular season starts.
The question now is how much the Padres bullpen can bail these guys out. They’ll be called on early and often, which raises the wear-and-tear question right out of the gate. Most of the preseason projections have the Padres landing at or just below the .500 mark, and that was before the rotation started to fall apart in spring training.
The good news is that the Padres can hit, and they have veteran talent at nearly every position on the field. It’s not a thunderous lineup, but the Padres will score runs, and they’ll win some games early based on that and the ability of the bullpen to hold leads, at least early in the season.
Given that the rotation is already close to a worst-case scenario going into the season, it’s fair to ask what happens going forward. Pivetta was the subject of a lot of offseason trade rumors given the fact that he has a player option at the end of this season, and while this seemed absurd early on, the idea of trading Pivetta for a couple of pitching prospects who are reasonably close to the majors no longer seems like such a ridiculous idea.