An optimistic view of the Padres

We've spent a lot of times talking about the Padres' recent struggles or the things they can't do, but what about appreciating the season for how good it has been?

Baseball is such a weird sport to follow. Your brain doesn’t really know what to do except fight with itself. No matter where you set your long-term expectations, the short-term response never factors that in.

When we found out that Fernando Tatis Jr. needed wrist surgery back in March, there was some hope that if everything went right he might be back by late June. Most Padres fans were starting sentences with “If the Padres can just stay in the playoff hunt until Tatis returns…”

Well, here we are. Tatis is on his way back, although he’ll get here about a month later than the most optimistic timetables had him doing so, and the Padres have played roughly 100 games with about 60 left to go.

I imagine, if I could time-travel back to March, one of the questions my past self would ask me is whether the Padres were still in the playoff hunt after playing for four months without their best player.

I would tell past me that the team is 52-42, sitting in 2nd place in the NL West and trailing only the World Series defending Atlanta Braves for the top Wild Card spot. I’d also explain that Manny Machado has the 2nd best odds to win the NL MVP Award and that Joe Musgrove has the 3rd best odds to win the NL Cy Young Award.

I might even go out of my way to say that the long-term contract extension talks between Joe Musgrove and the Padres seem to be going great and should be wrapped up soon.

Are the Padres ranked 14th out of 15 NL teams in terms of home runs, slugging percentage and stolen bases? They are! It can be boring. It can be frustrating. But the results are ones that I almost assuredly would’ve taken a few months ago.

Is MacKenzie Gore broken again? Maybe! But at least we got to see what the final product will look like and, after fixing him last year, they know what they need to do and how he’ll respond to it.

Has Blake Snell been a disappointment? Undoubtedly, but Mike Clevinger and Nick Martinez and Nabil Crismatt have all been much better than anyone expected them to be.

Hell, this team has had three different managers for stretches of the season as they battled COVID and a scary prostate surgery for Bob Melvin, and still….yes, they are very much in the playoff hunt.

One of the staple of Bob Melvin’s teams in Oakland, and I’m not sure how this could possibly be attributed to him but it happened consistently, was a long winning streak sometime during the summer. 13 wins in a row, or 13 of 15, that type of thing. The Padres really haven’t had a run like that this season, and yet…still in the playoff hunt.

Now is around the time when I would, just because I enjoy watching people’s brains lock up when they’re given information they don’t know how to process, tell my past self that the Padres are heading into the trade deadline as buyers….of Juan Soto. That there is an actual chance that by August, this team that was good enough to be in the playoff hunt already, would be adding Fernando Tatis Jr. and Juan Soto to the lineup.

On a day to day basis, this team has occasionally been horrible to watch. However, the results are something that I can’t help but smile at when I’m presented with the whole picture.

I used to say that what I wanted from a Padres season was “meaningful games in September”. I feel like the 2021 season didn’t really feature that, the Padres were already 13 games out of 2nd place in the division by September 1st and had already been passed in the Wild Card race by the Cincinnati Reds.

Also, 2020 didn’t count and the Dodgers didn’t win the World Series. That was a fake season.

So, yes, the Padres are on track to play meaningful September games still. With Tatis (and maybe Soto?!?) on the horizon, that gets even more likely. It may not have happened the way that any of us would’ve expected, and it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, but the 2022 Padres are still a success until proven otherwise.