10% of the season gone...
Are we where we expected to be?
As of today we’ve completed over 10% of the season. The Padres sit in second place in the NL West tied with the Dodgers with an underwhelming 8-9 record. 10% of the season is still a fairly small sample, but large enough that there are some trends worth discussing in detail.
Offense is underperforming relative to last season
Through 17 games the Padres have scored 71 runs for an average of 4.18 R/G. In 2022 they managed 4.35 R/G. How likely is it that this year’s offense is actually worse than last year’s? We would say it’s pretty unlikely that this year’s offense is truly worse than last year’s. We have Juan Soto for a full season, we’ve replaced Hosmer’s bat with Xander Bogaerts, we will hopefully get about 85% of a season from Fernando Tatis Jr., and we added the platoon of Nelson Cruz and Matt Carpenter. While it’s not impossible that this lineup could underperform last year’s, we feel that’s not a likely outcome.
So which individual performances underpin the lackluster performance to date?
Xander Bogaerts has been a revelation since joining the Padres, reaching base in every game thus far and sporting a 1.012 OPS in the Brown and Gold. Nelson Cruz has shown he has something left in the tank with a .942 OPS. Jake Cronenworth started a little slow but has raked his way to a .783 OPS in line with his career average. Ha-Seong Kim has performed well above his career OPS sitting at .760 after going 2-4 on Sunday. Trent Grisham has been quite productive with a .795 OPS while splitting time between the top and the bottom of the order. The team’s offensive struggles largely come down to 3 players: 2 misfiring superstars and an unfathomably bad start of the season for a role player.
Manny Machado is struggling
Manny’s OPS on the season is .635. A look at his Baseball Savant page suggests he hasn’t been the victim of bad luck so much as bad performance. His whiff%, chase rate, hard hit %, and expected batting average are all in the bottom third of the league. There is almost certainly positive regression coming, but a hard hit % in the 15th percentile is alarming. He started the season with a 50 at bat home run drought, not exactly an ideal start to an 11 year contract.
Verdict: Positive performance regression is very likely.
Juan Soto is underperforming, but may also be experiencing bad luck
Juan Soto’s performance analytics have been stellar. His hard hit %, barrel %, and expected slugging percentage are all in the top quintile of the league.
Yet he carries a batting average of .172 and a pedestrian .731 OPS. At first glance Soto’s season seems to embody the “Bad Break” from the Process/Outcome matrix
Still, something feels off here. We’ve watched every game this season, and while Soto is definitely hitting the ball hard, it’s frequently right into the ground resulting in, by casual observation, routine groundouts. His launch angle is 7.1, compared to 9.1 last season. Is this the Hosmerification of Juan Soto? It’s too early to say, but we do suspect that something is not right with Soto. Almost without doubt some of his poor outcomes are due to bad luck, and here we should look for some positive regression during the remaining 90% of the season. But in no way has his season portended a return to the lofty 1.000 OPS heights he reached in his early career.
He’s also been a different player at home than on the road since arriving in San Diego as noted by @TooMuchMortons_
Soto is 24, with a career OPS of .945, but his struggles this year are certainly part of the story of the Padres’ underwhelming offense.
Verdict: Positive regression almost certain and (we hope) soon.
Austin Nola may be a problem
Austin Nola has had the lion’s share of playtime at catcher, and while he’s not expected to be a major part of the lineup’s firepower, his struggles have been so dire as to have nearly the same impact as the struggles of Soto and Machado. Even accounting for the double he hit Sunday afternoon, his expected slugging percentage, barrel %, and expected batting average are the worst in MLB.
Nola has been severely value destructive at the plate and his contributions are the third head of the dragon of the Padres offensive woes. Nola’s offense had already started to dip below his career averages before this season. In 2022 Nola’s OPS was .649 over the 110 games he played, and his statcast analytics suggested he didn’t suffer adverse BABIP luck, his barrel % was in the 5th percentile in MLB. Unlike Machado and Soto, the concern with Nola is that his struggles are reflective of deteriorating ability, and there is less reason to think he’ll ever return to his career averages before this season. His backup, Luis Campusano, has long been touted as a future offensive star and had a great spring training and promising start to the season in his limited at bats before being sidelined this week with a freak left thumb injury. It’s fair to ask if the Padres can afford to keep Nola batting over Campusano if the latter can recover from injury quickly
Verdict: Likely that Nola will continue to struggle, and the Padres need to find out what they have in Campusano.
Fernando Tatis Jr. should improve the offense significantly
While completing a rehab assignment in El Paso this week Tatis has laid waste to AAA competition and appears as ready for a return to form as anyone ever has.
Over the first 20 games of the season the Padres have platooned the likes of Rougned Odor, David Dahl, and Jose Azocar in right field. Replacing this spot in the order with Tatis will likely represent a significant improvement. Anytime a player has a hiatus from competitive baseball as long as Tatis’ it is cause for concern, but it is fair to say that there is literally nothing more he can do to demonstrate he’s poised for a return to form. We’ll find out this Thursday.
The roadmap for a dominant offense remains intact
Positive regression from Soto and Machado seem likely, as does a return to form for Tatis. If the rest of the lineup performs as expected the Padres should field an elite offense for the remaining 90% of the season.
The Padres have a glaring weakness on defense
Not to pile on Nola, but Nola’s throwing arm, which has been charitably described as al dente, is a well established deficiency that has always been tempered to some degree by his ability at the plate. Indeed, an utter inability to throw out (or in some cases even attempt to throw out) would be base stealers has already played a large and direct role in at least a quarter of the Padres’ losses this year. The playbook is well and truly out on how to manufacture critical runs against the Padres, especially in the late innings of tight games. To say the least, it is disconcerting that the Padres do not have an obvious solution to this problem. Luis Campusano is shelved for the at least the immediate future due to the aforementioned freak thumb injury sustained during routine warm-ups, and it is fair to ask, can Brett Sullivan throw anyone out? We may very well have the answer to that soon.
The good news is that outside of catcher the Padres defense appears to be a genuine strong point. The bad news is that if they do not fix the inability to hold runners, late game leads will never feel safe.
The schedule has been brutal
The Padres have faced one of the toughest schedules in baseball and amassed an 8-9 record at the 10% mark through the season. While that’s not a satisfying result, it could be argued that it’s encouraging to see such results despite the aforementioned hibernation of the team’s two most important stars, and the extreme degree of difficulty of the opponents. The opening series saw the Rockies play like their lives depended on it, and since then every series has been against a viable playoff contender. The Diamondbacks are leading the NL West, and the Mets, Braves, and Brewers are all poised to win >90 games. In fact, the top team on most power rankings is the Atlanta Braves. The Braves sport a 12-4 record, and 3 of those losses came at home against the Padres. The schedule continues to be absolutely brutal for the near future with the Braves returning to face the Padres at Petco Park on Monday night. But at some point this must end. The Padres will have plenty of stretches against lesser competition along with more scheduled off days as the remaining 90% of the season unfolds.
Verdict: The Padres’ record is very likely to improve
Pitching help is on the way
Yu Darvish has continued to be stellar, and Seth Lugo appears to be a nice addition to the starting rotation. Blake Snell has had his third straight rocky start to the season, business as usual for “Second half Snell”. Nick Martinez has performed in line with how he appeared as a starter last season. Ryan Weathers has been better than expected but in a very limited sample. But the Padres have so far seen nothing of Joe Musgrove, Robert Suarez, and Drew Pomeranz. Musgrove and Suarez in particular represent a sizeable amount of missing firepower from last year’s NLCS team. Reports are that Musgrove will make his debut soon, while Suarez continues to be without a timeline for return. Between the three injured pitchers it is almost certain the Padres are going to get some injection of production over the remaining 90% of the season and that is real reason for optimism as the pitching performance to date has been competitive.
10% of the way through the season we’re not where we hoped to be
Leading the NL west at this point in the season was not a pipe dream, but it nevertheless has not come to pass. We’ve seen enormous underperformance from our two most important offensive stars, the expected absence of Tatis, and the unexpected absence of our top of the rotation starter in Musgrove and high leverage reliever Suarez, coupled with a league wide return of the stolen base and a complete inability for the Padres to counter this weapon. Yet we’re in contention. We are not where we hoped we would be at this point, but we have every reason to think our fortunes will improve over the coming 90% of the season. None of the misfortune to date portends the need for wholesale roster changes, and we’ve already shown we can dominate a series against the best team in baseball (on the road no less). Keep the faith and LFGSD.