The Padres are out of excuses

The Padres survived a difficult first half of the season. Now it's time for them to accept a new challenge and show the rest of the league that they're ready to be a contender.

As an optimist, at least when it comes to the 2021 San Diego Padres, I have admittedly been making excuses for the team this season.

No baseball team in their right mind tries to win every game. There’s just too many of them! The team would have no energy left to make any sort of impact in the playoffs. And the Padres’ schedule makes it look like the playoffs start about a month early for them (and the rest of the NL West). So, if the Padres want to coast a little until then, that’s fine.

No team in baseball has had a more difficult schedule than the Padres, either. They’ve played the most difficult opponents, they’ve had the longest stretches without any real rest (remember 42 games in 44 days?), and the amount of travel they’ve endured has been grueling. The Padres have been exhausted, and their .570 winning percentage is pretty great, all things considered.

It doesn’t help that the three best teams in the NL are all in the same division. That’s making the Padres look worse than they are. They might be a 3rd place team right now but they’re also the 3rd (or 4th, depending on your viewpoint) best team in the league and probably a top 5 team in all of MLB.

And the injuries! My god, the injuries. No team has lost more games due to injury than the Padres. They’ve been without their starting catcher for most of the season, and have had to slap together emergency rafts to play CF for about half of their games, not to mention their starting rotation was decimated as recently as a week ago.

Okay, are we done now? Are all of the excuses for the 2021 Padres out of the way? Good, let’s get to work.

The road trip

The Padres start a 10-game road trip today, where they will see the Nationals, Braves, and Marlins. All of those teams are currently under .500.

San Diego snuck out of a series against the Nationals with a 2-2 split despite a run differential of -8. They will have to play better this time.

As a matter of fact, they will just have to play better, period. The Padres are under .500 on the road this season (20-21) and they’re just 4-7 in the month of July. To this point, they’ve won at least 55% of their games in each month they’ve played, and this road trip makes up all but five of the games remaining in the month for San Diego.

Basically, the Padres need to at least get back to .500 for the month over these next ten games, which means making up three games. That means they need to go 7-3 over this stretch to keep the same pace that has kept them in line for the 2nd NL Wild Card spot.

It’s one thing for the Padres to be ridiculously good at home (they have been) and just okay on the road, but it’s a bigger deal when they’re headed towards a playoff run where they will never have home field advantage. They need to figure out how to win on the road and they need to start picking up wins against lesser teams to keep pace, too.

The rest / health

The further the Padres get away from those 42 games in 44 days, the less of an excuse they can make about being tired.

Most of the players on the roster just got four full days off, and the guys that went to the All-Star Game still got two or three. Fernando Tatis Jr. even skipped the Home Run Derby to give his body (specifically, his shoulder) whatever rest he could.

In a perfect world, the Padres would add some solid depth to their team at the trade deadline and make it easier for some of their starters to skip games in August and stay well-rested, but even without that it’s time for the Padres to take advantage of a cushy schedule and make hay now that they’ve finally got some rest.

Also, at least on the hitting side of the roster, everyone is healthy! Austin Nola is catching and hitting in El Paso and should be ready to join the big-league ballclub any minute now. Every other starter on the field is the starter the team started the season with.

Yu Darvish had what appeared to be a minor injury a week ago, and I imagine the time off will be enough for him to get right. Same is true of Blake Snell, who was fighting off an illness. Ryan Weathers was diagnosed yesterday with a broken bone in his foot, although it sounds like they’re going to try and have him pitch through it. This is about as healthy of a starting staff as there is in baseball.

Growing up

Yes, the Padres are a very young team and led by a very young superstar. That has helped contribute to them playing down (or up) to their competition this season.

(Random: I hear a lot of people complaining that the Padres would be in a much better position if they won their games against the Diamondbacks and Rockies. They are 12-9 against those teams, which is the same as their overall winning percentage. They are 4-12 against the Cubs, Brewers, and Phillies. That seems like the bigger deal.)

The thing about using the “young team” excuse is that they eventually age out of it. At some point, their experience and maturity catches up and they start playing to the beat of their own drum, crushing good and bad opponents alike.

A lot of people will tell you that growing up period happens after heartbreak or disappointment or during the offseason, but I say that’s nonsense. It can happen at any point. It can happen during a season, especially when the team has some veteran leaders that can help explain what it takes for the team to play up to expectations every day.

With that being said, I think the Padres are ready to grow up. And, while they’re not making excuses for themselves, they’re probably ready for us to stop making excuses for them. They just had to survive until the all-star break and they did. Now the Padres need a new goal, a new target, and I think that target is finally on the playoffs. Or, at least, I think that target is to be in a playoff position come the beginning of September.