That was Friday’s headline after the game. It is basically true, but it didn’t quite capture the moment. The Padres’ win on Friday was definitive; they were the better team all night. And nothing about the performance seemed unsustainable; it was just Padres players playing the way they were supposed to have been playing all season. Then they did it again Saturday. Then again on Sunday. But as tempting as it is to imagine this weekend’s games as part of a resurgence, it’s hard to imagine this team roaring back to life. All season, resounding wins have been interspersed with deflating losses. The point at which it’s reasonable to think “the Padres have turned a corner!” has long since passed.
Or…has it?
Yes, it has.
But has it really?
Yup.
Are we one million percent sure about that?
(deflated sigh) Okay, let’s entertain the possibility that the Padres have finally, finally hit the inflection point that we’ve been expecting them to hit all season. They’ve come roaring back to life. What would that say about the rest of the season, and the season as a whole? Let’s start with how the team’s outlook changed over the weekend.
After Friday Fangraphs had their playoff odds at a number higher than zero:
The same can’t be said about the odds to win the World Series. Fangraphs was ready to foreclose on that possibility. That feels correct, although it’s a bit odd to give a team a chance to make the playoffs but no chance to win the World Series. The truth is probably that Fangraphs did give the Padres some odds of winning the World Series, but the number is so small that it rounds to zero.
After the Padres’ wins on Saturday and on Sunday Fangraphs took notice!
The Padres roared back to 2% odds to reach the playoffs, which feels a lot like “zero”. Of course, it’s not. Events with 2 percent probability happen, well…2 percent of the time. Remember that chaotic game on July 31st? Surely a number of events in that game had probabilities much lower than 2%. The World Series win probability of 0.1% can be charitably described as ‘detectable’ which, amazingly, is an improvement from Friday. The above spells out that the rest of season hopes will require a miracle. Nothing has really changed here.
We shouldn’t be expecting a miraculous end to the season, but we shouldn’t forget that for much of this season, multiple teams seemed to be charting a similar course to the Padres, outscoring their opponents yet struggling to bank wins. It wasn’t that long ago that the Cubs and Mariners were mired in similarly enigmatic seasons, consistently outscoring opponents and losing more than they won. But those teams have righted the ship; in fact, through Sunday, every team with a positive run differential also has a winning record. Except, of course, for the 2023 Black Swan Padres:
But simply achieving a winning record overall won’t be enough; making the post-season would take something wildly improbable. So let’s look at a wildly improbable event that just happened: The Mariners won 21 games in August (the most that franchise has ever won in any month). What would happen if the Padres won 21 games in September?
A 21-win September would put the Padres at 83-77 going into the last two games of the season on October 1st and 2nd. 83 wins would probably get the Padres into the playoffs and they’d have two games left to play. 84 or 85 wins – by our math – would give them an even better chance of making the playoffs. The good news in that scenario is that the Padres would likely make the playoffs. But that bad news in that scenario (what’s the opposite of a silver lining?) would be that the Padres squeaking into the playoffs would cement the “everything that came before was just bad luck” narrative. And we think that this season isn’t all bad luck. We think this season has a lot to teach us about how starpower can’t paper over serious flaws.
Just to be clear: Luck is definitely part of the story. It explains much of what’s happened this year. But when bad luck happens over and over and over again, it’s normal to wonder how much of what’s happening isn’t luck, at all. Seneca (the philosopher, not the applesauce) said: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” If he’s right – and he was pretty brainy, so let’s assume that he is – we can also infer that bad preparation can lead to bad luck.
This might be the best way to think about the Padres’ season: Bad luck has exposed all of the team’s weaknesses. Those weaknesses hid in the shadows cast by the brilliance exuding from the starpower at the top of the Padres’ lineup. Most of the bad luck has a real, non-luck element beneath the surface that was certainly a contributing factor. For example: Going 0-11 in extra innings involves some bad luck. But the bullpen outside of Hader and Cosgrove has been very bad. Maybe 0-11 is bad luck, but maybe, say 3-8 or 4-7 is what the Padres “deserve”.
A similar bad-luck-but-a-flawed-process-contributed example: The highest leverage at bat a player can have is bottom of the ninth, down by one run, two outs, bases loaded. This exact scenario has happened ten times in all of baseball this year. It’s happened twice to the Padres. Which player was at the plate both times? Which player best exemplifies the tradeoffs implicit to the “three true outcomes” all-or-nothing approach, and is least likely to provide the hit that would win the game? You can probably guess by now. Trent Grisham got both at bats, and struck out both times. And it’s bad luck for him to come to the plate in both situations. But it’s not bad luck to have a hitter that batted .184 across a full season in 2022 and is flirting with the Mendoza line for a second straight season on your roster to begin with. And it’s hard to say that there was a better option available to pinch hit in either of those at bats, and that fact clearly isn’t simply bad luck, roster construction matters.
The 2023 season has been a crucible.. It seems like every weakness has been exposed. And if they haven’t – if there are more weaknesses in this roster buried like landmines that we’re not yet aware of – God help us. It seems clear that the Padres need to make changes.
But, amazingly, hope isn’t all the way dead. That’s the piece of good luck that shouldn’t be forgotten: The 2023 NL has one of the most winnable last Wild Card spots in recent history.
Monday the Padres try once again for their first four game winning streak of the season, which will also be the start of nine straight games against the Phillies, Astros, and Dodgers. There would be perhaps nothing more on-brand for this team than getting hot during the toughest stretch of the season to date, fanning some oxygen onto the last dying embers of hope. We’re Padres fans so we’re rooting for that 2% chance, that miracle run through to the postseason. That type of run, for a team with these flaws, truly would require astounding amounts of good luck. And if that miracle happens – if the Padres tear through September and somehow grab a playoff spot – we should see that as a flawed team being delivered from catastrophe by good luck. And not the other way around.