Hope
By now, you’ve heard all the reasons for hope: the Padres aren’t mathematically eliminated, they’ve been unlucky, the 2021 Braves didn’t break .500 until after they won the World Series, etc. But nothing brings hope like winning. Tuesday was another glimpse into what this team should have been: a high-powered offense paired with elite starting pitching. A 9-1 trouncing of a very good Blue Jays team. In a normal season, that’s a feel-good win; this season, it’s a feel-like-the-other-shoe-is-about-to-drop win. But this type of season makes it feel like one must walk on egg shells. Pointing out that the Padres hit four home runs for the second time in five games feels like inviting a jinx. It always feels like there’s another shoe to drop. The Padres have 22 lives left. They avoided wasting one Tuesday against the Blue Jays.
The Padres are 45-50, 7.5 games back of the Wild Card. There are 12 remaining games until the August 1st trade deadline.
Buy Or Sell
Some people – understandably – feel that this Padres team is incapable of winning; they’re ready to look towards the future. But Padres GM A.J. Preller does not appear to be one of these people. On Sunday, he said this about his trade deadline plans:
“make some good deals that can take (the) team and continue to put us in the spot where we play better in the second half. That’s the main goal. But you always got to be ready to adjust and adapt depending on what’s out there.”
It sounds silly to say, but this is the correct answer at this time. The Padres should hedge. There is not a lot of opportunity cost to continuing to compete through the next 12 games. If they lose all 12, then it’s clearly time to sell whatever pieces can’t help the team in 2024. Preller would probably get the same price for Snell and Hader as he would today. On the other hand, if the Padres win the next 12 games and find themselves in the thick of the Wild Card race, they’ll be glad they have Snell and Hader on the team. It seems clear that A.J. is rooting for the second scenario; he wants to see this project through. That also seems to be what the players want to do, and at least one player thinks they don’t need to add pieces to make a run – here’s what Juan Soto said when he was asked what the team needed:
Source: AverageTakes
“We don’t need anything. We have everything that we need. We have the pitching, we have the hitting, we have the defense – we have everything.“
-Juan Soto on what the Padres need to add at the trade deadline
What we’d really like to see A.J. do is try to improve without committing fully to the buy or sell strategy quite yet. 12 games doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s enough that a very hot or very cold streak could inform an obvious preferred strategy. In the meantime, there are plenty of things that can be done without committing to being buyers or sellers. And they did some of those things on Tuesday:
When reflecting on this season we’re sure to remember the scandalous performance in clutch situations, the ice cold slumps from the middle of the order. But underperformance by role players and the team’s handling of those players has mattered, too. For much of the season, Padres lineups did not appear to be meritocratic; Austin Nola was given far more at-bats than his production warranted. In the deepest of ironies, the player who should have replaced him, Luis Campusano, was injured catching warm up tosses between innings of a game that he should have started. Campusano hasn’t played since April 14th, and one has to wonder where the Padres would be if Campusano had taken some of Nola’s 154 plate appearances. On Tuesday, Nola was sent down; error partially corrected. Whether you believe in the 2023 Padres or have set your sights on 2024, it’s important to find out what we do or don’t have in Campusano. If he fulfills his projection as an offensively gifted catcher with outstanding pitch framing, then he’ll solve one of the critical failure modes that has dragged the season down. Austin Nola is not being DFA’d, he’s still in the organization if the Padres need him and his .452 OPS… this is the correct choice. It’s humbling for a 33 year-old to be sent down to AAA, but Nola is being given a chance to salvage his career. That is meritocratic roster management.
The Padres also parted ways with Rougned Odor. Odor provided three-position versatility, and his power tool added some volatile win probability as a hitter. DFA’ing Odor was a surprising move. There seem to be more likely candidates to be let go, namely Matt Carpenter. Carpenter has spent 2023 making 2022 look like a total fluke:
Perhaps the Padres have taken some splash damage from the juiced balls that the Yankee hitters allegedly benefitted from last year.
It’s sad to see Odor go. He largely lived up to his reputation as a weirdly clutch player, prone to subpar performance in lower leverage moments. He gave us at least one great win, and this is a season looking like a single win might really matter. We’ll share this tribute from Devine Sports Gospel:
Echoing words surely uttered by Rangers, Yankees, and Orioles fans in the past: Farewell, you infuriatingly clutch enigma.
Another interesting development was on display in the blowout win against the Blue Jays. Fresh off a devastating series against the Phillies punctuated by bullpen disintegration, we were treated to this Tuesday night:
Source: the excellent @TooMuchMortons_
That’s Alek Jacob making some extremely good hitters look foolish. Jacob was stretched to two innings in relief and gave up no runs, one hit, one walk, and struck out three. He made the rare leap from AA to MLB. In San Antonio, he'd struck out 32 across 27.1 innings with a 1.32 ERA. That feels like…something. Jacob isn’t racking up strikeouts thanks to velocity; it looks like hitters have a hard time picking up his delivery. It’s received wisdom at this point that A.J. Preller is terrible at player development, but Steven Wilson, Tom Cosgrove, and now Alek Jacob appear poised to be the bedrock of the Padres bullpen for the rest of the year. Preller would be the first to point out that his prior player development is why we have Joe Musgrove, Blake Snell, Juan Soto, Yu Darvish, and Josh Hader... that’s not a meritless argument. Preller has at least been able to develop players to the point other teams are will to send us elite major league talent for them. The received wisdom might garner a second look at this point. We’re not planting our flag on this hill, just noting that the book might not be closed.
One non-trade move we’ve been hoping to see is the recall of Jose Azocar to take fielding duties from Juan Soto, who could then move to DH. It’s unlikely that Azocar will perform worse than Carpenter, and he brings more defense to LF than Soto. He also brings speed that Soto and Carpenter don’t have. Calling up Azocar is the type of improvement you can make while you’re trying to decide whether to become buyers or sellers. But, Azocar wasn’t called up on Tuesday; instead, Alfonso Rivas came back and Taylor Kohlwey joined the team. Rivas has already had a stint with the team this year and can play both first base and outfield, while Kohlwey can play all three outfield positions. We shouldn’t expect fireworks, but both of these players could realistically perform better than what we’ve been getting from our DH and bench hitters all year. These moves create the possibility of marginal improvements. If Rivas or Kohlwey do hit with anything similar to their minor league production, their contributions should be more than marginal. This is unlikely (El Paso is essentially like hitting on the surface of the moon) but still appears more likely than Matt Carpenter’s resurgence.
Changes
No matter how these roster moves turn out, changes of this type were the right thing to do. If the team wants to preserve any chance at the postseason they need to be laser focused on winning. As we wrote back in June:
“the Padresing must stop and be replaced by meritocracy, dynamism, and accountability. If that means shuffling pitching roles around, adjusting the batting order commensurate with production, and making hard roster choices, then so be it.”
The Phillies series was rough, but there was less Padresing than usual. The Weathers/Musgrove decision was questionable, but Musgrove shoved on Tuesday, and the Padres won an important game. Weathers is back in AAA. That’s meritocracy. The slew of roster moves represented vigorous activity in the pursuit of progress. Bogaerts is hitting fifth. Nola is in AAA. That’s accountability. It’s late in the season, but these are winning changes.
The deal you’d do right now
Though we believe that the best thing for A.J. to do right now is look for internal improvements and keep the powder dry until the trade deadline, there is – at least theoretically – a prospect package out there big enough for an immediate trade to make sense. And we know what that prospect package would look like: It’s one where the present value of the prospects the Padres are receiving exceeds the present value of the players they are sending out. The present value, not the future value. This is the type of deal where the incoming prospect package is so good, A.J. could immediately flip most of it for a veteran player just as good as whoever was sent out, while keeping a prospect or two as a premium. This type of trade is very rare for good reason; giving up more value than you’re getting is a sure way to get fired as a GM. But that should be the asking price for Blake Snell, Josh Hader, and/or Seth Lugo right now. This is an asking price that covers the opportunity cost of either strategy. And if another team values the production they’d receive in the intervening days so much that they’d be willing to meet that asking price, then A.J. should pull the trigger. But that is realistically the only deal he should consider until we know a bit more about the fate of this bedeviling team.