Padres buy their annual lottery tickets
It's that time of the year when the Padres are offering hope to MLB players that need it, but is the roster good enough now that it's complete?
When you look at a baseball team’s front office, you can start to pick up patterns about how they like to operate in different situations.
A.J. Preller’s San Diego Padres, for instance, used to give the final few spots on the active roster to Rule V draft picks when the team wasn’t very good. It was a smart use of those roster spots, although it never really paid off with a huge win anywhere.
The Padres over the last few seasons, when they have been in their “championship contender” era, have almost always used those last few roster spots on formerly very good players or prospects. The hope being that, in the right situation, they might be able to tap into a little bit of what used to make them very good.
Usually, these players choose to come to the Padres because they’re the only team willing to even entertain the notion of that player winning a starting job in MLB. That was the case last year with Gavin Sheets, Yuli Gurriel, Matín Maldonado, Jason Heyward and (to a lesser extent) Connor Joe.
None of these players cost much of anything, relative to the salaries of other similarly aged MLB players, and each one of them holds the potential to be the kind of low-cost starter that really helps with roster building. More often than not, they end up being replaced and released mid-season.
Following a flurry of news yesterday, it’s pretty easy to see who the lottery tickets will be on this year’s roster:
Miguel Andújar
Nick Castellanos
Griffin Canning
Germán Márquez
Triston McKenzie
I believe all of these players have been signed to one-year contracts for (probably) below market-value for a chance to become a starter for the San Diego Padres. McKenzie is a non-roster invitee, which means he doesn’t even technically have a contract. The chances of all of them making the team, starting for the team or making a positive impact for the 2026 Padres is incredibly low.
That being said, we can now predict a 25-man roster for the 2026 Padres with pretty good accuracy. I don’t think there are any more major roster moves coming before Opening Day.
Let’s take a crack at making the numbers work and see how it looks…
CATCHERS
Freddy Fermin
Luis Campusano
INFIELDERS
Manny Machado
Xander Bogaerts
Jake Cronenworth
Gavin Sheets
Miguel Andújar
Sung Mun Song
OUTFIELDERS
Ramón Laureano
Jackson Merrill
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Bryce Johnson
DESIGNATED HITTER
Nick Castellanos
STARTING PITCHERS
Michael King
Joe Musgrove
Nick Pivetta
Griffin Canning
Germán Márquez
BULLPEN
Mason Miller
Jason Adam
Adrian Morejon
Jeremiah Estrada
David Morgan
Wandy Peralta
Bradgley Rodriguez
Yuki Matsui
I can’t say I look at that roster and see a World Series in this team’s future. The bullpen is starting to feel a little top-heavy, the starting rotation is running on an awful lot of hopium, the team still somehow can’t find a power hitter to play 1B for them (it’s been over 15 years), and last year’s bad vibes need to be fixed by a former relief pitcher who has never managed before.
That being said, if they end up being tremendously lucky, there’s a high ceiling team in here somewhere. It would require the top-heavy bullpen to be lights out. It would require the most positive outcomes for King and Musgrove, if not also Pivetta. And, as always, the offense would need to be good and consistent (which can only happen if Tatis, Merrill, Machado and Bogaerts all have good years).
Can it happen? Absolutely. Would I bet on it? Probably not. Is there a reasonable backup plan for success already on this roster or in this organization? I don’t see one.
That being said, playing the lottery is fun. Part of the fun of playing the lottery is dreaming about how it would feel if your numbers were picked. Who would you call first? What would be your first big purchase? Lottery tickets cost money but pay out dreams, if not an an actual improvement over reality.
Maybe, like Gavin Sheets last year, one of this year’s lottery tickets will pay out for A.J. Preller and the Padres.
Reasonable people can disagree of course. So, being reasonable, I’ll disagree with your take…to an extent.
First of all, you’ve left Morejon off the roster and I believe they can keep 26 on the active roster. Morejon makes the roster significantly better.
Yes, the four vet signings are lottery tickets. But they are different, especially the hitters. My take- based on memory only, not an exhaustive analysis- is that the bets on Andjuar and Nicky C are better bets than prior ones like Carpenter and Cruz, let alone Heyward, Joe, etc.
Nick and Miguel are just coming off their primes, not way past it. They had a modicum of success recently at least in certain situations (i.e., vs LHP) that have been weak spots for the Padres.
They are cheap. (Cough, Matt Carpenter, cough.)
Lots rides on health and effectiveness of the top 3 pitchers for sure. And of course, FTJ, JM, MM, and X need to have good to great years.
I posit that the bets made on the fringe roster spots (Nick, Andujar, Moon) this year are better than last year’s by a wide margin.
As for the pitchers, at least Canning and Marquez have had some success in the past and, depending upon their contract, seem like reasonable lottery tickets. Certainly better than Kyle Hart and others.
This team is better in Opening Day than they were on Opening Day in 2025…on paper.
Left field, catcher, DH, and closer all better in 2026. Good case that 1B will be better too.
Better bullpen depth (Morgan + Rodriguez replace Omar Cruz and Alex Jacob) and have some other guys too (Acosta, Adcock, Marinaccio) for depth.
Better bench:
Potential 2026: Andujar, Nick C, Moon (maybe), Lockridge, Wagner, Miranda, Campy.
2025 OD: Heyward, Gurriel, Iglesias, Lockridge, Maldonado, Sheets. So awful.
Only question in my mind is starting pitching. But remember, it was King, Cease, hoping for good things from Pivetta, Vasquez and Hart.
Now it’s King, Pivetta, hoping for good things from Joe M, and some combo of Vasquez, Canning, Marquez, McKenzie, Gonzalez, and Hart.
No room for injury at the top end but some decent depth for the 4-5 spots.
2025 had a higher ceiling but once King was injured, Yu never really made it back, and Cease struggled with inconsistency, the starting pitching was anchored by Pivetta…and Vasquez. Vasquez was the 2 or 3 in the rotation.
And here’s the elephant in the room. Hopefully Stammen won’t manage like Shildt when it comes to bunting and lineup construction (Arraez, grrr). That could be worth a win or two on its own.
Now the team won’t be adding like they did at the deadline since they don’t appear to have assets to do it. So, the end of year roster comparison might be very different.
Net / Net: I agree, it’s likely not a World Series team. It would require catching lightning in a bottle, multiple times. But it’s a better team than 2025, at least on Opening Day.