Not enough people talk about how upsettingly hot and cold the Padres can be. In 2022 and 2024, the Padres had pennant-contending teams that, given slightly different rolls of the dice, could have gone all the way. Last year down the stretch the Padres were scarily good. Just this year, the Padres had this unstoppable home record for a month or so. On May 14th they were 27-15, and in a truly great position with a chance at sliding past the Dodgers. And since then they've been embarrassingly mediocre. They're 42-35 in that time, meaning things have evened out while still staying above .500. The Giants have lapped them, and now they have Rafael Devers joining the fun. The Padres, though, despite having two of the best hitters in the majors, have regressed in the past month. Which is not a good look.
It's somewhat more nuanced than 'beyond Tatis and Machado there's not much going on', but that's how it looks. Michael King, their best pitcher of the first two months, is hurt and out for a little while. Nick Pivetta, who had some awesome starts in April and May, has slowed down and is having one of his bouts of patheticness. Jackson Merrill, while hitting .300, has limited his playing time thanks to injuries. A bunch of all-stars like Dylan Cease, Luis Arraez, Jake Cronenworth and Xander Bogaerts are just...playing perfectly fine. Bogie is hitting .250 with 4 homers. Where is his Boston production?? Come on now!
With all of that, a lot of replacement level guys are having to do more of the work. Randy Vazquez and his 3-4 record might be one of the more consistent pitchers they've had. Rookies Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert have had more success keeping runs down than Cease at times. Jason Adam, even in his least-favorite month of June, still has a 1.85 ERA and still is as dominant as he was in Tampa. One of the stars of the lineup in June has been Gavin Sheets, the former White Sox power hitter whose streakiness has given way to very impressive tears, like in May where he hit 8 homers and 22 RBIs, and already has 11 RBIs in June. And with all the veteran DH/bench guys the Padres have tried this year [Jose Iglesias, Yuli Gurriel, Jason Heyward, Martin Maldonado, Connor Joe] it's a wonder that Sheets, who's never had a positive WAR, is the one that's working.
The Padres could always turn it around, but not only have they lost a lot of nice pieces, but they've come out of the Dodgers series looking even worse. They're in third, slightly rebounding with the Royals series, and now they're trying not to fall behind with the Nationals [winning as I write this] and the Reds looking to spoil. There's a chance they catch fire like they did last year, but they need a lot more people in position to succeed, and less running in place when that happens.
Coming Tonight: It's always the ex-Yankee prospects that make us really regret it all, right?
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