An identity in waiting

The trade for Sean Manaea seals it. The San Diego Padres are trying to win with pitching and defense, and just enough offense to get by. Let's figure out how they got here.

When it comes to baseball teams, you’ll often hear about a team’s identity. Are they a pitching-first team? A hitting-first team? If they’re a hitting-first team, do they do their damage with HRs? Speed? Walks?

Well, A.J. Preller and the San Diego Padres have been trying to build an identity for a while, and this might be the year that they finally get it. Let’s rewind to see how we got here:

2019 Padres

Everything you need to know about the 2018 Padres can be wrapped up in “They were terrible and, arguably, tanking.”

Once they got to 2019, this started to look like a baseball team. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Chris Paddack made the team out of spring training and proceeded to be Rookie of the Year contenders. In addition to Tatis, the lineup featured Eric Hosmer, Wil Myers, Manny Machado, Franmil Reyes, and Ian Kinsler.

“The lineup is ready, it’s the pitching that will need to catch up.” That’s what we thought with all of those guys together. Instead, the Padres were near dead-last in the NL in every offensive category.

Outside of a nearly perfect season from closer Kirby Yates, the pitching staff was just as bad. The starting rotation was led by Eric Lauer, Joey Lucchesi, Chris Paddack and Cal Quantrill. Someone named Nick Margevicius started 12 games in 2019.

The Padres needed to shake things up. Despite being mostly locked into an offensive lineup that had underperformed, they needed to find a way to win. Instead of focusing on just one thing, A.J. Preller tried to fix both the pitching and offense before 2020.

2020 Padres

Here are the additions that were made to the lineup:

• Jake Cronenworth, adding via trade and surprising everyone to become the starter at 2B.

• Tommy Pham, added via the same trade to be the starting LF/DH

• Trent Grisham, added via trade (bye, Luis Urias) to become the starting CF, where he would win a Gold Glove.

• Jurickson Profar, added via trade to become the platoon LF/DH with Pham

These guys were meant to replace and improve the output of those that were leaving:

• Manuel Margot

• Hunter Renfroe

• Franmil Reyes

• Ian Kinsler

Small sample sizes aside, this seemed to work. And why shouldn’t it? He got rid of four guys that struck out a ton and replaced them with on-base machines. The Padres finished top 3 in home runs and runs scored in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But I’m more interested in what they did to the pitching…

Gone were Lauer and Lucchesi and Quantrill. In came Zach Davies, Garrett Richards, and a healthy Dinelson Lamet. Kirby Yates’ injury called for a new closer, and so Drew Pomeranz got a big contract to come to town. The team also signed Pierce Johnson and traded for Emilio Pagan.

All in all, it was easy to see what the team was doing. They were shuffling out the old offensive players and bringing in some that they hoped would be a better fit. More than that, they replaced the unproven starting rotation with a bunch of veteran guys and bolstered the bullpen. Later in the year, they added Mike Clevinger to the mix before his injury.

And, you know what? It worked. The Padres finished with one of the best winning percentages in team history and had two players get MVP votes. They won their first playoff series since 1998 despite getting somewhat unlucky with major injuries to both Lamet (who got Cy Young votes) and Clevinger at the end of the season.

It seemed like the Padres had solved the puzzle. They had the right amount of offense and defense, they just needed more pitching. And the formula said veteran starting pitchers was what worked best for them.

2021 Padres

Here’s where I point out that the injuries to Clevinger and Lamet may not have been happenstance. Larry Rothschild, since fired as the team’s pitching coach, had built a reputation for getting the best performance from his pitchers but also wreaking the most havoc on the bodies of those pitchers with major injuries.

During this offseason, the goal was to add more veteran starting pitchers to create depth in the starting rotation that could withstand those injuries. As such, A.J. Preller traded for Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, and Joe Musgrove. Surely, this would be the magic formula that got it done.

Well, some things went wrong.

First, despite the team continuing to perform well offensively, their HR rate fell off a cliff. This is probably due to the games starting in the spring in 2021 vs. the summer in 2020, but it hurt the offense enough. It made them erratic and unpredictable.

Second, the depth disappeared in a hurry. Adrian Morejon faced Tommy John surgery early in the season. MacKenzie Gore never could get his mechanics together. Ryan Weathers kept things afloat until breaking his ankle. When Darvish and Paddack eventually faced injury, the depth that was supposed to plug the hole wasn’t there.

Third, and this was the real killer, Blake Snell was terrible. They had invested a lot to get him, not least of all a starting pitching prospect in Luis Patiño, and he both performed poorly and refused to eat a large number of innings. He taxed the bullpen and the rest of the starting rotation for most of the season and didn’t really turn things around until Larry Rothschild was let go, which was very late in the season.

2022 Padres: A reason to believe!

With the trade for Sean Manaea, the Padres have gone all-in. Their identity is veteran starting pitching, and lots of it. Larry Rothschild’s departure should make for some better injury luck with that group, meaning the depth they have should hold up. That’s promising!

And, while Fernando Tatis Jr. is absent following wrist surgery, the offense should still be mostly the same as the group that finished middle of the pack in the NL last season. Until he returns, they might need to ask even more from their pitching and defense.

But at least the Padres have an identity now. They’re pitching first, and hoping to get by with just enough offense. With MLB implementing humidors in every stadium this season, there’s reason to believe that there will be more HRs at Petco Park, which will definitely help guys like Luke Voit and Manny Machado to keep the offense chugging along at an average-or-better pace.

It’s been a very long time since the Padres had a team identity, but pitching and defense with some power hitters carrying the offense feels a lot like the semi-successful Padres of the early-Petco Park days. Perhaps that’s the key to consistent contention for San Diego’s baseball team.