It all comes crashing down
The 2021 San Diego Padres had one of the worst finishes to a season in recent memory, and now they're stuck with how to fight their way out of the corner they've backed themselves into.
What an absolutely disgusting end to the season for the San Diego Padres. I have watched a lot of bad Padres baseball over the last 23 years and the last month or so, honestly, may have been the worst of it.
The Padres were lauded as a real challenger to the Dodgers’ throne heading into the season. Not just by fans or crackpots, but by everyone. The San Diego baseball team was loaded. And here they lie, under .500, 27 games out of 2nd place in the division, and 11 games behind a wild card spot they thought was locked up back in July.
Words fail me when trying to explain the level of failure the Padres attained during the season, but I’ll tell you that such failure usually doesn’t come after all of the accolades they earned in the offseason preceding it.
Craig Elsten and I went back through the season to look for signals that things were going bad, trying to diagnose the problem, and came to the unfulfilling conclusion that there were many problems in all different areas of the team. Meaning there’s not one single change the organization can make this offseason to turn things around.
Even more terrifying than that is the team’s financial situation, which is laid out really well here. I’ll attempt to summarize:
The Padres are out of payroll flexibility for 2022, and that’s before finding a starting LF and a closer to replace Tommy Pham and Mark Melancon.
The easiest way to find payroll flexibility would be the trade Eric Hosmer, especially since the team wouldn’t necessarily need to replace him (sliding Jake Cronenworth over to 1B and keeping Adam Frazier at 2B), but trading Eric Hosmer will mean attaching a good prospect to him. Not only do the Padres lack a surplus of good prospects, but shipping them out to improve the 2022 team would make it more difficult to find A.J. Preller’s eventual replacement (should they need to do that in the near future).
(Author’s Note: A lot of assumptions are being made here about the CBA and whether baseball will even be played next season. There are rumors about a potential salary floor rule being implemented, which could maybe make Hosmer and Myers more enticing trade pieces for teams with tiny payrolls.)
Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, spending the same money to bring back the same team (minus Pham and Melancon) would likely not equal different results. This team is bad and needs an influx of something, most notably home run power and someone that can keep the damn pitching staff healthy.
Peter Seidler wants a championship bad, but I bet he wants to not set money on fire even more than that. Adding free agents to this team without clearing payroll is likely to be impossible, not to mention the behind the scenes investments Seidler will be asked to make this offseason.
So, while A.J. Preller’s creativity may end up making me wrong about this, here is the only path I see the Padres being able to take over the next few months.
2021 Padres Offseason To-Do List
Find an experienced manager to replace Jayce Tingler
Search for the least painful way to clear most, or all, of Hosmer’s money off the books
Find an affordable LF that can consistently hit HRs and play good defense
That may seem simple because it’s only three items, but each of them comes with lots of complications that make them difficult.
For instance, we read in The Athletic last week that A.J. Preller’s own management style has scared off any successful and experienced managers from wanting to join the team, with Bruce Bochy used as an example.
Second, as I mentioned earlier, you simply cannot let a GM that is in the position A.J. Preller is in to trade away top prospects (hurting the future of the club) to clear out payroll from the bad contracts that he himself signed (Hosmer, Myers). Not when he appears to be next in line to be fired behind Tingler if things don’t improve.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Padres will absolutely need contributions from some of their top prospects if they hope to contend next year. They’re not going anywhere with Austin Nola and Victor Caratini as the catchers on the roster. They’re going to need Luis Campusano to play in MLB in 2022. They’ll also likely need contributions from MacKenzie Gore and Ryan Weathers to keep the starting rotation from disintegrating again.
Third and finally, finding outfielders that can play good enough defense to survive in the NL West and hit home runs at the same time is not easy. At least, it’s not easy if you’re trying to stay within a modest shopping budget.
So, as good as we felt about the Padres’ championship window before the start of the season is exactly how bad we should feel about that same window now. The team was the victim of poor planning and poor management this season, and now they’re backed into a corner with no easy way out. This is when A.J. Preller has to prove his worth as the head of baseball operations. We’ll see how he does.