San Diego Padres not residing as much as World Sequence aspirations

“If he’s a superb hitter how come he doesn’t hit good?”

One among my favourite traces from Moneyball, and it applies a bit to the San Diego Padres to this point this season. They’ve extra issues than simply the lineup, however that appears to be the primary one. The Padres have gained the Winter World Sequence the previous couple seasons, and but they haven’t grow to be an ungodly pressure on the sphere. So what’s happening?

It’s most likely essential to remind ourselves that for all of the headlines and buzz and pleasure the Padres have generated since they went into their full “FUCK IT” part, they haven’t been all that good in any season. They have been below .500 in 2021, and so they gained 89 video games final yr earlier than going 5-2 within the first two rounds of the playoffs, after which just about getting smoked within the NLCS. Reaching the NLCS had satisfied lots of people that they had arrived. However once more, the playoffs have been simply seven video games. That they had the fifth-best cause within the NL. This hasn’t been an all-conquering horde working over the Nationwide League, a minimum of not but.

Presently, they’re one sport below at 12-13 and having simply gotten tossed into Lake Michigan by Justin Steele final night time (no disgrace in that, as Steele is proving to be a stealth ace for the Cubs). The Padres rank twenty fourth in runs scored to this point in MLB, dead-ass final in batting common, twenty seventh in on-base share, and twenty fifth in slugging. For a workforce that has precipitated a few of their fellow house owners to shit a hen over their spending, you’d count on a bit higher.

How’d they get right here? For one, Manny Machado is taking a fish as much as the plate as a substitute of a bat to this point this season. He’s obtained a 48 wRC+ with an OPS of .522. His stroll price has been minimize in half from final yr, and he’s watching much more strikes simply go him by (68 p.c swing price at pitches within the zone versus 77 final yr). Extra worryingly, his contact kind has utterly cratered. His hard-hit price has dropped virtually 20 share factors. His common exit velocity has sunk three MPH in a yr the place the baseball is inflicting most hitters’ to rise. He’s not this unhealthy, however his anticipated numbers primarily based on the noise stage of the contact he’s making counsel he’s not a lot worse off than he must be to this point this season.

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Speaking of hitters whose power has taken a vacation to Narnia, Juan Soto come on down! Soto at least has a normal OBP at .355, but he’s hitting an interstate-based .188 and slugging .365. He still walks a ton, but his K-rate has nearly doubled since 2022. Much like Machado, he’s watching a lot of pitches just go by, and sometimes it feels like he’s just hoping for a walk. It kind of mirrors what happened last year after his trade from the Nats. Unlike Machado, when Soto does hit the ball he’s absolutely pulverizing it, with a 55 percent hard-hit rate, and an average exit velocity of 92 MPH. That doesn’t mean as much though when most of it is on the ground, as Soto is carrying a 57.8 ground-ball rate. That can kill a lot of gophers but it doesn’t mean a lot of extra-base hits, which the Padres would be more interested in getting.

Farther down the lineup, Jake Cronenworth can’t stop swinging at everything. Ha-Seong Kim can’t stop chasing change-ups out of the zone (45 percent chase rate). Kim and Trent Grisham aren’t really counted on to be huge weapons on offense so much as for their gloves, but that gives the Padres a couple of glove-only positions along with the black hole the catcher spot has been offensively.

The Padres will be hoping that the return of Fernando Tatís Jr. smooths some of this out, and he hasn’t even been back in the lineup a week. He missed a whole season and is coming off a 2-for-1 sale on surgeries to go along with his suspension, so it might take some time. If it wasn’t for Xander Bogaerts and Matt Carpenter, the Padres might score at a Beavis-like rate.

It’s more than the lineup though. Blake Snell, Nick Martinez, and Yu Darvish have been causing a conga line to first base with their walks. Darvish has been able to dance around them, the other two very much have not. Joe Musgrove has returned but they’ll have to get Snell and Darvish back into the strike zone.

If this is the part of the story where Ed Harris lights up a cigarette and asks his guys, “What do we got on the ship that’s good?,” then the weird little guy with glasses would say, “The bullpen.” The Pads have four guys with ERAs under 3.00, but that hasn’t stopped them from having the 7th highest bullpen ERA in the majors. But the pen will gain Ryan Weathers and Martinez from the rotation with Musgrove’s return, which should bolster it.

Machado will ramp up. Tatis probably will. But how much? Will Soto remember he is allowed to hit the ball in the air? How good is Cronenworth really? Matt Carpenter has been trash for a few years except for a one-month binge in the Bronx last year, so is his hot start a turnaround, or just noise?

Luckily for the Padres, the rest of the division hasn’t gotten away from them. The Dodgers have had lineup issues too, and the Diamondbacks wasted enough time on Madison Bumgarner to not go anywhere yet either. The Padres are only a game and a half from first in the NL West.

But winning a middling division, if the NL West turns out to be that, wasn’t exactly what everyone had in mind for the outlay the Padres have made. Unless you’re a direct rival, most fans don’t want to see them toss up an 87-win season to justify more owners pointing at them to prove spending doesn’t mean winning and they can keep the wallets closed even more. So let’s kick this pig, Padres, huh?

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate and he’s positively not laughing on the White Sox. For certain not.