Good news about the Padres schedule

The schedule has not been kind to the San Diego Padres, especially lately, but it's about to become a whole lot easier for the team to get back to winning ways.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about the current brutal stretch of games for the San Diego Padres. The goal was to survive and, while it’s not entirely over, 18-11 over the first 29 games of it is definitely surviving.

That’s good news! And there’s a lot more where that came from, because the Padres schedule for the next 3 months or so could correctly be described as a cakewalk.

I’m going to give you some stats about it and then I’ll literally show it to you. Hold on.

Tough outs

The San Diego Padres have played 39 of their 64 games so far against teams with winning records. Without context, that number is meaningless. Is it high? Is it low?

Well, the NL West-leading San Francisco Giants have played just 20 games against teams with winning records. That is half as many as the Padres and is a big reason why I expect them to fall apart later this season when they eventually have to face stiffer competition.

The Dodgers (I know you were about to ask) have played 29 games against teams with winning records, nowhere close to the level of competition the Padres have been dealing with.

In years past, when stats like these popped up, it was easy to say “Well, those teams have winning records because they’re beating the Padres.” However, this year the Padres are 37-27 and just 1 game behind the Dodgers and 2.5 games behind the Giants. This is simply showing that they’ve had the hardest schedule of those 3 teams.

Actually, amongst the ten best teams in MLB right now (by record), the Padres have played the most games against teams with winning records. The next closest is Tampa Bay, who have played 36.

(Shoutout to djames041 for pointing this out to me in the Padres Hot Tub Discord server.)

It’s here! Right now!

A tough schedule in the past means an easy schedule in the future, but I didn’t realize how easy the schedule was going to get or when it was going to get easy. The answer? Right now.

There are 29 Padres games between right now and the all-star break, and all but 6 of them are against teams with losing records. Or, a more fun way to put it, the Padres should be heavily favored in 23 of their next 29 games. That’s how winning streaks happen.

Starting today, the Padres play 13 games in 13 days. It kicks off with a road series against the New York Mets and Jacob deGrom, that’s not great! It ends in San Diego with a series against the Dodgers that couldn’t possibly live up to the first couple of series the teams played this season (could it??).

And those are all of the tough games remaining this month for the Padres. Seriously.

In between those two series the Padres play the not good Cincinnati Reds and the very bad Colorado Rockies. YEAH!

Remember, the Padres just played five consecutive series against teams with winning records. You’ll forgive me for getting excited for some easy ones.

Here’s the full list of teams the Padres play between now and the all-star break. Teams with winning records are bolded:

Mets
Rockies
Reds
Dodgers
Diamondbacks
Reds
Phillies
Nationals
Rockies

Now, the Reds and Phillies are hovering around .500, but the Rockies and Nationals and Diamondbacks just plain stink. Let’s play more games against then!

Hot Boy Summer

After (most of) the team gets off five days for the all-star break, the rested and relaxed Padres return to action against a schedule that I would’ve made for them if I could.

Here are the opponents between all-star break and September. Again, teams with winning records are bolded.

Nationals
Braves
Marlins
Athletics
Rockies
Athletics
Diamondbacks
Marlins
Diamondbacks
Rockies
Phillies
Dodgers
Angels
Diamondbacks

That is objectively hilarious. Even the Athletics should really just be on here once because that’s two 2-game series instead of a normal 3-game or 4-game series.

September has games against the Giants, Dodgers, Braves, Astros and Cardinals. Depending on how the Giants and Braves look by then, it could be tough sledding, but it will be a nice warm-up to playoff baseball.

The next test

The Padres are surviving the toughest part of their schedule right now. I said that would be their biggest test of the season and I stand by that.

The next test, and it’s a different kind of one, will be the team taking care of business against lesser opponents. They need to keep themselves from relaxing and keep the intensity high.

Remember, the Padres should be heavily favored in 23 of their next 29 games. If they end up going 15-14 over the stretch, it will be an abject failure that will be difficult to overcome in a tight NL West race later.

They’re here. They made it. Now is the time to make hay. Now is the time to stack up winning streak after winning streak, while the Giants and Dodgers start facing the more difficult parts of their own schedules.