Despite aggressive trade deadline moves and a surge toward a Wild Card spot, San Diego remains stalled at tenth as division rivals climb the latest MLB ladder.
The San Diego Padres remain just a hair out of a Wild Card position heading into tonight’s matchup against the National League-leading Milwaukee Brewers. In what will be the opener of a crucial three-game series at home for the Padres, right-handed starter Casey Mize will take the mound in what he hopes will be a much better outing than his first start after being acquired just before last week’s trade deadline.
While Mize and the Padres will be focused on what’s at hand tonight, let’s zoom out a bit and look at how things have changed across the league over the past week since the deadline passed.
In Bleacher Report’s latest power rankings, San Diego stays at the No. 10 spot in baseball – no change from last week. No upward movement is a bit of a surprise considering that general manager A.J. Preller and the Padres were aggressive at the deadline and decided not to trade superstar closer Mason Miller.
Aside from that, since the previous rankings, the Padres split the series with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who remain one game ahead of them in the postseason race, and won two of three against the Houston Astros over the weekend. The only other team in the NL to win more games than San Diego in their last ten games is the Atlanta Braves with eight.
Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks have jumped up four spots in the rankings, surpassing San Diego to claim the No. 9 position. Their 2-1 series win against the Los Angeles Dodgers is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the Snakes here, as they split the previous series with the Padres, as previously mentioned.
Of course, that Dodgers series was huge and should hold some weight in power rankings, but was it enough to justify such a leap?
While the argument could be made between who deserves that No. 9 position, either the Padres or the Diamondbacks, there isn't much of an argument to be any higher than that. There are nine teams in baseball right now with a better record than San Diego, and they haven’t yet proven they are a postseason team, though they are trending closer in that direction.
No big leap was expected, but no movement after the valuable additions of two starting pitchers and their recent play is a bit of a surprise. Of course, the power rankings don’t have any effect on how the games play out on the diamond, and the Padres are sure to take care of that in the days to come.
The Brewers matchup will be important in seeing how competitive this new-look Padres roster can be, and it starts tonight. A win for Mize and the Friars would be tremendously valuable in their journey towards a Wild Card spot.
