The Worst of the Curse

Where Does Tatis' Suspension Rank All-Time?

The Padres suffer silently. Without the privilege of yearly Cubs/Red Sox Woe is Me I can’t win despite unlimited resources puff pieces. Mercifully both of those franchises faux suffering have come to an end. No more talk about fake curses. The real curse is being forgotten in plain sight. No one to hear your laments because they do not know you exist.

The Padres just made the trade of all trades a little over a week ago. As lifelong Padres fans, we at Letters To A.J. were more jubilant and optimistic than we had been at any other time. We still are. As we were leaving Petco Park, having just watched the Padres decisively destroy the San Francisco Giants, we dared to wonder out loud what great misfortune was just around the corner. Now we know, and it is a damningly familiar source, Fernando Tatis Jr. Being just days away from returning after a long-term injury with the expectation of supercharging an already electric lineup, anticipation was running extraordinarily high in the baseball world. That will now have wait an additional 80 games.

What is a curse? It’s very hard to define. What separates a curse from mere misfortune? There is probably no bright line that defines the exact boundary between the two. At Letters to A.J. the closest definition we can devise is a curse is persistent improbable misfortune.

The most recent unfortunate event led us to think about the other unfathomable bouts of misfortune this team has been beset by. Below is a list of those events. We’ll let you decide if this constitutes a curse.

The First World Series - 1984

You don’t get to choose your opponent. As luck would have it, the plucky 92 -win Padres would be pitted against the greatest Detroit Tigers team in their history. This was no David vs Goliath parable. The 107-win Motor City juggernaut made short work of the Padres.

The 1998 Playoffs: Legendary Difficulty Mode

You don’t get to choose your opponent (reprise). The 1998 Padres very likely had the toughest playoff road in history. That year the Astros won a franchise best 102 games and acquired Randy Johnson at the trade deadline. Somehow the Padres got past the Big Unit twice and took down the Astros in the first round. The reward for doing so was to face ‘the best team to not win the World Series’, the Braves, winners of a franchise best 106 games, featuring Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine among the rest of a star studded lineup. The 1998 Padres persevered and won the pennant, facing down the Yankees in the World Series. The 1998 Yankees were an absurdly good team replete with future hall of famers and borderline hall of famers all at the peak of their powers. They won an astounding 114 games, gaudy even by the Yankees’ lofty standards, setting the franchise record. To recap, the 1998 Padres faced 3 teams that postseason that had set the franchise record for wins during the regular season. Can you think of a tougher playoff road for any team? We couldn’t. For the final boss that season to be arguably the greatest team of all time felt uniquely Padres.

The 1998 World Series

There is perhaps no single call in Padres history that evokes pain and resentment more than this one: somewhat improbably, the Padres are holding their own in a raucous Yankee stadium in Game 1. The score is tied 5-5 in the bottom of the seventh inning. The bases are loaded with Yankees. There are two outs. The count is 2-2 on slugger Tino Martinez. Padres pitcher Mark Langston throws the most important pitch in Padres history. Martinez, perhaps expecting a pitch off the plate, is left frozen when the pitch rushes past him right down the middle for a textbook strike. Umpire Rich Garcia (with previous pro-Yankees history), paralyzed by the moment, failed to raise his arm and call Martinez out to end the inning. We all know what happened next. But history could have and should have been different. We’ll never know.

The Peavy Pile

The next time the Padres made the postseason was 2005. The NL West that year was a comedy as the Padres won the division with a record of 82-80. The Padres pinned a lot of their postseason hopes on young stud pitcher Jake Peavy who had an excellent regular season. In the moment the Padres clinched their first postseason berth in the Petco Park era, the curse struck. Improbably, Peavy broke his rib during the on field celebration in which he did not seem to be overly zealous. It just happened. No one knows how. Perhaps an example of the Mandela Effect, we at Letters to A.J. remembered it as a dog pile celebration (The Peavy Pile!), but as you can see for yourself in the video below Peavy is just jumping for joy with his teammates. How that cracked a rib is beyond comprehension, save perhaps by the baseball Gods. Predictably, Peavy did not pitch well in the postseason and the Padres folded against the Cardinals.

Padres On This Day @PadresOTD

#OTD in 2005, the #Padres clinched the NL West.

Winters Is Coming

2007 was a special year for the Padres curse. The Padres acquired Milton Bradley, a player who came with plenty of baggage. Bradley was excellent for the Padres, and things were looking up. That is until a game in late September against the Rockies. Bradley was standing on first base when he appeared to take issue with something first base umpire Mike Winters had said to him. Bradley quickly became irate and the situation threatened to spiral out of control. Padres Manager Bud Black rushed in to ‘defuse’ the situation. In the heat of the moment, Black tossed Bradley unceremoniously to the ground. Bradley tore his ACL in the fall and would not play for the Padres again. Mike Winters was suspended for his role in the altercation for baiting Bradley. It should also noted that earlier in that game, Bradley had stepped on gold glove outfielder Mike Cameron’s hand causing an injury that would see Cameron miss the few critical remaining games. That’s two crucially important players down in the dying embers of the season. Sound familiar?

Photo Credit: San Diego Union Tribune

Are Ya Winning Son?

Only a few days later, the curse struck again. On the last day of the regular season the Padres just needed a win to secure a playoff berth. They took a 1 run lead into the bottom of the ninth inning against the Brewers. In almost Biblical fashion, the very son of Mr. Padre hit a 2 strike, 2 out RBI triple off of legend Trevor Hoffman to tie the game. The Brewers would go on to win in the 11th inning securing a meaningless win for Milwaukee but a hugely consequential loss for the increasingly beleaguered Padres. Had the Padres won that game, their playoff hopes would have been reality. Fate had other plans.

2007 Zapruder Film

A week after the Bradley/Winters/Black battle royale and just days after the Tony Gwynn Jr. haymaker came a moment that still stings as badly now as it did then. Due in no small measure to the loss of two major contributors, the Padres were forced to play a high stakes winner take all wild card game against, yep, the Rockies. The wild seesaw game at Coors Field would be remembered for what proved to be the last play of the game, and for the Padres, their season. After Padres Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman failed to secure the save in the 13th inning, Rockies, bench player Jamey Carroll came to the plate against Hoffman. With the score tied and Matt “the hippo (unofficial)” Holliday standing on third base, Carroll hit a sharp line drive straight at Padres right fielder Brian Giles. Giles caught the ball and the race was on. The throw wasn’t great, but neither was Holliday’s slide into home. The ball got away from from catcher Michael Barrett and the umpire reflexively called Holliday safe. Only problem was, and replays would confirm, Holliday never actually touched the plate as Barrett had successfully blocked Holliday’s hand (clearly seen when viewed slowly… back and to the left… back and to the left). When Barrett retrieved the ball and tagged Holliday, he should have been out. Don Orsillo, coincidentally the play-by-play announcer that night, observed as much. Even Denver based journalists conceded Holliday never touched home plate. This was the era before replay review. We can’t help but wonder that if such a monumental call had gone against a more respected team, would we have gotten replay review instituted right after this happened? Instead, we had to wait several more years for MLB to act, and the Rockies got to make a video about that play being one of their greatest moments. Stay classy Colorado!

14 Years In The Desert

The loss to Colorado would kick off 14 straight years of missing the playoffs. Fans reading this article will undoubtedly be familiar with more recent episodes of the curse rearing its head: untimely season ending injuries to twin aces Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet 2 weeks before the playoffs, the immediate regression of several trade acquisitions, the Max Scherzer trade deadline debacle including the Nationals demanding a king’s ransom from the Padres for Scherzer, but then giving up Scherzer AND superstar Trea Turner to the Dodgers for a song. We think Preller and Seidler exorcised that particular demon in mindblowing fashion.

Tatis Drops The Other Shoe

A November 23rd, 2021 article titled Fernando Tatis Jr. And adidas To Drop An UltraBOOST 2.0 DNA shoe starts with the line “Is there a player with a more promising pro-baseball future than Fernando Tatis Jr.?” On August 12th, 2022 that question was definitively answered as the other shoe dropped: Tatis will miss the rest of the season on a PED suspension.  To many Padres fans this news was worse than all of the events described above, because it represented extinguishing the hope so many had built up in their hearts. Other outlets will report the lurid details of the suspension.  Here we will discuss the implications for the 2022 Padres, and why hope should not be extinguished.

This Padres team didn't lose Tatis.  They never had him. This team has been playing very well without him all year.  What this team lost was a hypothetical upgrade from either Ha-Seong Kim, Trent Grisham, or Brandon Drury to Tatis when he played shortstop, centerfield, or DH respectively. Make no mistake, Tatis would have been an upgrade at all three of these positions. But Ha-Seong, Trent, and Drury are all positive WAR players this season. Yes, even Grisham (looking better recently) has been significantly above replacement level this season. So, what was lost was the upgrade on a single position, out of nine, from a positive contributor to an MVP candidate. This is nothing to sneeze at, but the loss of such an upgrade is not some kind of un-survivable event. We’ve broken down what World Series winning teams actually look like, and how solidly in the contender category the Padres plus Soto, Bell, and Drury are. There’s little doubt that this team is now solidly top 10 in pitching, offense, and defense. Now it’s a matter of fate.

Have Any Teams Triumphed Under Such Adversity?

By tomorrow the news cycle will have turned from stunned reaction to Tatis’ suspension, to the inevitable comparisons with the most recent World Series winner: the Braves, who famously survived the midseason loss of their best player, Ronald Acuna Jr., to win the World Series. Even before Tatis’ suspension the Braves were the obvious analogue for this season's Padres. The Braves, much like the Padres, were not dominant in any single aspect of the game. They were solidly top ten in pitching, offense, and defense. They did have a foundational superstar hitter in Freddie Freeman and several good to very good hitters in the lineup. The difference between last season’s Braves and this season’s Padres is that this season’s Padres have done everything without Tatis even suiting up. Every Padres victory has come in his absence. The Padres are very good team. They are significantly better than several recent World Series winners. This is the nature of baseball, the World Series winner is usually not the best team in baseball. The best team in the league only has about a 30% chance at winning the World Series historically. Winning the World Series requires making it through the short playoffs series in which anything can happen. The Padres aces Musgrove, Darvish, and Snell are good enough to beat any team on any given night. The lineup, even without Tatis, is a nightmare for opposing pitchers. Profar has been a good table setter. Soto, Machado, Bell, and Drury are a meaty heart of the order. Cronenworth, Kim, and Nola are good for a bottom half of the order. It would have been a great boon to have replaced Grisham’s bat in the lineup with Tatis. That's not going to happen. But that was never the key to the Padres being good enough to win it all. That was just a luxury, the stuff of dreams. But here in reality this Padres team with outstanding starting pitching, a deep bullpen, a punishing lineup, and excellent defenders at most positions is a team no one wants to face this postseason for good reason.

Padres fans are used to a looming sense of dread, that whenever something good happens there is another shoe waiting to drop. That 80 game suspension for long-time Padres fans felt like the familiar other shoe finally dropping. But there’s something different as well. This isn’t like losing Lamet and Clevinger 2 weeks before the playoffs, they were big contributors to the team’s success. What we’ve lost instead is the illusion that a savior is coming. Tatis’ absence for the rest of the season has instead crystalized the Padres World Series hopes: they rest on this lineup in its current iteration. In some ways the Padres can breath a sigh of relief. The roster is set. Ha-Seong is our shortstop. Grisham will get the most run at centerfield. Drury will continue to be a full time player. The clubhouse leadership will not undergo late season upheaval.

The other difference is that this time the rest of the world is seeing the Padres suffering and taking notice. The Padres curse has always been in part the silent suffering, the casual indifference shown by the greater baseball world. When news broke about Tatis’ suspension there was the expected derision from Dodgers (definitely not rival) fans, but rest of the baseball world was not so dismissive. There was a genuine sense of disappointment league wide, as if the world had missed out on something special. That is a feeling previously reserved for the ‘woe is me’ media darlings Cubs and Red Sox. The Padres curse seemed to be reaching its nadir with the news of the suspension, but with the world taking notice in this way, one could almost see it as a watershed moment: The moment in which the defining aspect of the Padres curse, the sheer irrelevancy of the team, is starting to lift.

To exercise a curse a team often must face down its darkest demons. The Red Sox couldn't win a World Series until they went down 3-0 against their personal dragon the Yankees. The Padres pursuit must necessarily include this most devastating moment of all time for Padres fans. The nadir of suffering. The taste of victory so close, turning to ash in our mouths. But when we lift up from these ashes we see that this is still a team with every ingredient to win the World Series. The offenses is gelling. Our pitching staff is deep. The players are hungry. Every player on the team tonight knows that where the team is now, in contention for the playoffs, has all been done entirely without Tatis. The team's final form has only been together for a little over a week. There's every reason to think that we haven't seen the best from the Padres yet, and that's a scary thought for the rest of the league. 

Keep The Faith

Winning in baseball is about controlling what you can, and hoping that the baseball Gods’ favor leads to victory. Belief that you will achieve that outcome is never fully rational. Holding irrational beliefs is sometimes called having faith. To win it all we have to keep the faith.

Now, and forever, go Padres.