The All-Star break is the unofficial halfway point of the season. But the reality is the Padres only have 63 games remaining to put up enough wins to survive into the post season. It’s looking likely that they’ll need 85 wins to secure a playoff berth. At 50-49 that means they need an additional 35 wins across the remaining 63 games to survive. That requires a .556 win percentage. Essentially they need to play as well after the All-Star break as the Braves did before the All-Star Break. That’s not impossible. But make no mistake, it’s an uphill battle.
To reach the .556 win percentage before the All-Star break they would have needed to win 5 more games. That sounds like a lot, and it is. Some standout losses from the first 99 games make you wonder what could have been:
April 25th: Leading 9-4 in the bottom of the eighth against the Rockies, Yuki Matsui, Wandy Peralta, and Stephen Kolek combined gave up 6 runs to eventually lose 10-9
May 7th: Leading 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth against the Cubs, Matsui gave up a walk, single, and sac fly to tie. Enyel De Los Santos gave up a first pitch walk off home run to Michael Busch in bottom of the ninth to lose 3-2
Robert Suarez was unavailable having been used for a five out save the night before
May 13th-15th: 3 game home sweep by the Rockies
June 2nd: Leading 3-1 in bottom of the ninth against the Royals, Yuki Matsui gave up a single, walk, triple, and sac fly to lose 4-3
Robert Suarez was unavailable after having been used the previous two games, including needing to close out a game the Padres led by 8 runs in the bottom of the ninth after Stephen Kolek imploded
June 3rd-5th: 3 game road sweep by Angels
There are others but those losses loom large.
It’s also fair to wonder what might have materialized in the 20 games that Randy Vasquez and Adam Mazur started had the Padres not incurred injury to Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove. The Padres went 8-12 in starts made by Randy Vasquez and Adam Mazur, that might easily have been worse, but certainly could have been better if Darvish and Musgrove had been healthy.
That’s one side of the ledger. The Padres also pulled off some incredible, and improbable, wins this season that easily could have been losses.
The bottom line is that a 63 game season starts today, and the Padres are one game out of the playoff race:
Sources of Hope
Source: @Traaang via @sdutKevinAcee
On July 12th Dennis Lin wrote that Fernando Tatis Jr ‘will miss less time than feared’ based primarily on this quote from Tatis about when he might return:
“I don’t know,” Tatis said Friday when asked for a rough estimate of when he might return. “But, I mean, they were saying in the beginning that I probably would have lost the season. … But it’s definitely not that.”
No other specifics behind the optimism were given until this Thursday when Kevin Acee reported that Tatis had undergone an MRI that showed ‘progress in healing the Padres had hoped for’. MRI evidence that the stress reaction is healing is a reliable source for optimism, though the bit about having ‘already begun playing catch and swinging a bat.’ adds nothing; this injury did not prevent Tatis from swinging a bat or playing catch, or even playing at full speed for that matter. Tatis could have kept playing on the stress reaction all the way up until it became a stress fracture at which point he might have incurred a career altering injury. He was shut down to preempt that.
If Tatis returns from a stress reaction that he played through for months before the season ends that would truly be a stroke of good fortune for the Padres. And it would be another chapter in Tatis’ remarkable ability to recover from injury. He sustained four shoulder subluxations in 2021 and still played like an MVP. Normal humans can’t do that. If that return were to be mid August it might mean that he would be with the team for about 40 of the final 63 games.
Another source of optimism might be the strength of schedule for the rest of the season:
Source: @Brooks_Gate via Fangraphs
It’s hard to feel confident in the Padres capitalizing on an easier schedule given the horrific sweeps against the Rockies and Angels in the first half, but it’s certainly not a bad thing to have it easier down the stretch.
Xander Bogaerts appears to have recovered from a shoulder fracture and will be able to play regularly. Before his injury he was mired in by far the worst year of his career. Should he find a return to form this would be enormous for the Padres lineup. Even if he’s not the Xander of old at the plate his presence in the field should allow Luis Arraez some time off in the hopes of getting healthy. It will also allow more lineup flexibility against left handed pitchers.
Manny Machado has come through in some of the most dramatic moments of the season and has posted despite playing through pain all season while recovering from offseason elbow surgery. It therefore feels unkind to critique his play this season. But a dispassionate analysis of his season suggests it’s one the worst of his career. It’s very likely this is due to injury recovery. The upside of his having missed making the All-Star team is that he was afforded several days of rest which can only help in the quest to find his form.
Very little can be said about Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove returning to help the team. There’s a non-zero chance that meaningful production could come from either or both. There are no indicators that the Padres should count on this. But the possibility of a return has not been foreclosed on.
The Padres bullpen has been the source of much consternation and indeed several of the high profile losses came due to miserable bullpen failures from the second tier arms. That’s why the debut of Sean Reynolds in the final game before the All-Star break was intriguing. Reynolds was acquired from the Marlins at the trade deadline last year as part of the deal that sent Ryan Weathers to the Marlins for Garrett Cooper. Reynolds is a converted first baseman who became a flame throwing reliever. At 6’8” he is absolutely towering and has a fastball that hit 98 MPH in his debut along with a hard slider that graded out almost a standard deviation above the MLB mean:
He also struck out the side in his major league debut getting a total of seven whiffs in one inning of work against the Braves:
Courtesy: @TooMuchMortons_
Reynolds spent this season in AAA El Paso in the Pacific Coast League. ERA’s in the PCL may as well be populated by a random number generator. But the peripheral indicators for Reynolds were favorable. He struck out 60 hitters in 45 innings for a gaudy 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Reynolds is old for a rookie at 26 but this is largely due to spending the first years of his pro career as a position player. His first big league action as a pitcher couldn’t have gone much better. One inning of work is about as small as sample sizes get, but there might be something here. If Reynolds proves able to provide quality mid-leverage innings down the stretch this would be huge for the Padres prospects of survival.
Reality Check
The Padres simply didn’t bank enough wins before the All-Star break to give themselves any wiggle room in the remaining 63 games. Through 99 games the team’s major weaknesses are pretty clear: they have real problems in the second tier of the bullpen, they have a well below average fourth starter, and they do not have a major league quality fifth starter. The interesting thing is that these weaknesses do appear addressable. There’s little doubt that in the next 10 days the team will in fact make moves to address them as the July 30th trade deadline looms. But how much should the team be willing to sacrifice?
The Scorpion And The Frog
AJ Preller’s tenure has been defined by the relentless pursuit of high-upside, dealing away blue chip prospect talent for current MLB All-Stars. Yet examining the team’s failure modes from before the All-Star break implies that a mid-leverage bullpen upgrade and a major league quality rotation arm to replace Mazur could easily add a few wins over the remainder of the season. And those types of assets should hardly break the blue chip bank. Additionally the team is constrained in its dealings by both being near the CBT threshold and by a farm system depleted from several massive trades across the past few seasons. The postseason remains very much a possibility, through probably not a likelihood since they will have to play better in the remaining games they’ve played all season to make it through. This implies that giving up significant amounts of future value for present value is poor risk management. And perhaps the confluence of these factors might push Preller to tread a more conservative path than is his nature. Or perhaps this deadline will be Preller’s Scorpion and the Frog moment.
Regardless, the season has been a rollercoaster. And this is not a pejorative. It’s been fun and nerve wracking. And it looks like it’s going to be like this all the way down the line. We can’t wait. Go Padres.