Padres ownership put out the bucks this year

[Caslon]

Why isn’t it paying off? Is it because you can’t buy a thrill?

[21&500]

From the Athletic:

The San Diego Padres continued a weeks-long pattern by circling the drain in their 131st game of the 2023 season. When it was over, the math did not seem to matter.

“There’s 30 games left. There’s really no reason to even look at the standings at this point in time,” manager Bob Melvin told reporters Sunday after the Padres were swept in Milwaukee for the first time in 20 years. “It’s just keep playing. Keep playing and hope something breaks that we haven’t been able to do basically the entire season.”

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The Padres, of course, actually have 31 games left. The standings say they are 61-70, the same as a rebuilding Washington Nationals team that a year ago traded superstar Juan Soto to San Diego (and that has won 23 of its last 35, with less than half of San Diego’s payroll). The game logs say the Padres are the only club this season that hasn’t strung together more than three victories, and soon, starting pitcher Joe Musgrove (shoulder capsule inflammation) and first baseman Jake Cronenworth (wrist fracture) could be ruled out until 2024.

So, going 24-7 the rest of this season would be one of the greatest rallies in major league history. And even that might not be enough for a playoff spot.

But what about 20-11? That’s what it would take to secure San Diego’s second .500 or better full season in eight full seasons under general manager A.J. Preller. It may sound doable — except the Padres’ best 31-game stretch saw them go 18-13.

And yes, finishing 81-81 wouldn’t do much for a club that now might be better served trying to improve its draft position. (Because the Padres are projected to finish above the third luxury-tax threshold, their first-round selection next summer would be moved back 10 places unless the pick falls in the top six.) Amid a bigger picture, however, such math has ultimately tended to matter for executives in Preller’s position.

Since the start of 2015, only five franchises have recorded fewer than two seasons of 81-plus wins. In that span, four of those organizations have replaced their head of baseball operations at least once. The Padres, who hired Preller in August 2014, are the outlier of the group.

CIN	1	68-64	3
DET	1	59-71	3
LAA	1	63-68	3
MIA	0	66-65	2
SDP	1	61-70	1

After a 2015 season that began with massive hype and ended with 88 losses, the Padres spent the next three years rebuilding — which helps explain their .464 winning percentage since the end of 2014. Preller’s scouting efforts, supported by unprecedented investments from ownership, produced a farm system that was ranked No. 1 by Baseball America before the 2019 season. That spring, the Padres signaled their belief that the rebuild was over, signing third baseman Manny Machado to a $300 million contract and calling up a then-20-year-old Fernando Tatis Jr. and fellow top prospect Chris Paddack on Opening Day.

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Then they lost 92 games. Preller fired Andy Green, his first handpicked manager. The Padres rebounded in a 60-game season in 2020, advancing to their first postseason in 14 years before pitching injuries and a lack of pitching depth felled them in the National League Division Series. A similar story played out on a much larger scale in 2021 when Preller oversaw a brutal second-half collapse and fired another manager, Jayce Tingler.

Undeterred, owner Peter Seidler defended Preller hours after Tingler was dismissed, saying he was more confident in Preller than ever.

“A.J.’s job is as safe as a general manager’s can be,” Seidler told The Athletic that day. “I 100 percent believe in him, 100 percent trust him. And that’s not because I’m blindly loyal. It’s because I put a professional microscope on him as an executive and I see a ton of great qualities.

“I think we’ve all got to look in the mirror and own our part in (having to fire another manager), starting with me,” Seidler added. “I could’ve pulled some levers and pushed some buttons that maybe would’ve stopped some of these molehills of problems from becoming mountains of problems. And ultimately, I think we did not have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. … To be a great organization or to have a great season, you need that.”

Almost two years later, the Padres have had what was arguably a great season — one that ended in the 2022 National League Championship Series — although a late run was required to push the team into the playoffs. Considering the franchise’s latest investments, they also are having a season even more catastrophic than 2021. (Two Augusts ago, before they unraveled, the Padres were as high as 18 games above .500. In 2023, they have not been above .500 since early May.)

Still, Seidler has recently spoken out in support of Preller.

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“I’m not afraid to make changes,” Seidler told the San Diego Union-Tribune on July 1. “I never have been. But I really value stability. And when I know the person as well and the skillset as well as I know A.J. and (Padres CEO) Erik (Greupner), they’re not going anywhere. Period. … I believe in stability. It is something that is undervalued, generally speaking, in organizations and maybe particularly in sports franchises. But I’m not for mediocre stability. I’m for excellence. And to me, A.J. is excellence.”


Seidler has not spoken publicly since then, but it seems unlikely his feelings have changed much. Amid a disastrous summer, Preller’s roster has continued to generate widespread attention and significant revenue. The Padres, who sold out 25 consecutive games at Petco Park at one point, are on pace to shatter their season-attendance record. A year after several heralded young players were traded for Soto, Baseball America this month ranked the farm system as the seventh-best in the game. Team officials have not shied away from contributing to the massive hype surrounding 17-year-old catching prospect Ethan Salas, who already has been pushed to Double A.

Preller, who is under contract through at least 2026, continues to act more aggressively than the rest of his peers. It is not a coincidence that Seidler does, too.

Yet, this past weekend, the Padres kept looking mediocre at the level that actually matters. The Milwaukee Brewers scored 22 runs across three games, with 17 of those runs coming in a total of three innings. Sunday, the Padres took a 4-1 lead in the second, then let the Brewers pile up seven runs in the sixth as a lack of reliable relief was again exposed. Milwaukee’s Rowdy Tellez delivered a pinch-hit, two-run double that swung the momentum and supplied a contrast between the teams — the Padres, still carrying an unusually thin bench, rank last in the majors with a .110 average in pinch-hitting situations.

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The regulars likely are feeling a bit overworked. Five Padres have appeared in at least 125 games; no other team has more than four such players. The team’s frustration, meanwhile, has been palpable. The Padres, in a familiar story, finished 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position. After popping out with runners on the corners in the seventh, Machado returned to the dugout and smashed a water cooler repeatedly with his bat.

“Shouldn’t have taken it out on a cooler — poor cooler,” Machado told reporters in Milwaukee. “I just wanted to come up clutch there.”

For all the attention Soto drew by saying that Padres hitters sometimes “just give up,” the team’s leading position players have not appeared to essentially quit on a season like they did in 2019 and 2021. That only makes their ongoing struggles and inability to put together a winning streak more alarming. If Seidler retains Preller after this season, as many expect he will, both men must again answer for why they did not have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. There will be even more questions if Melvin, who managed seven playoff teams in the past 11 seasons, becomes the latest manager dismissed under Preller.

Since the start of 2015, four teams have employed four full-time managers. The New York Mets, in the midst of a season that rivals San Diego’s in terms of disappointment, are one of those teams. The Los Angeles Angels, currently experiencing a nightmare August, are another. Last week, the Chicago White Sox finally shook things up above the manager’s chair, firing Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn after the two executives had spent decades with the organization.

The Padres, of course, are the fourth team in this group — and, now, the only one yet to make a change atop their baseball operations department.

[Caslon]

The Padres 2023 team has the 3rd highest payroll in baseball, heh. I just remembered. A late 80’s Florida Marlins team bought a World Series title with money for talent that year, The next year, management held a fire sale and sold every last expensive player that got them the title. Lol! The Marlins sucked the next year, last in their division. Not sure what the moral of this story is, something something.

[Caslon]

Toxic clubhouse. They don’t like each other.