State of the Padres (Pitchers & Catchers Reporting)

Pitchers and catchers report to San Diego Padres Spring Training today. Let's take a look at the roster and see what the state of the team is.

A couple of months ago, I did a podcast where I talked about where the San Diego Padres were heading into winter meetings and free agency. I also talked a bit about the media that covered the Padres and how they’re mostly tied to the team itself, either literally or through vital business partnerships.

I feel like the Padres podcasts, including what Darren Smith and I have been doing for the last few weeks, might be the answer to the media problem….but I want to hold off on that conversation for now.

Padres pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in Peoria, AZ today. Well, they probably reported before today, but today is the “report date”. Basically, today is the last day a pitcher or catcher could report before facing some sort of punishment.

So, let’s take a look at the roster…

Infield

3B - Manny Machado is the face of the San Diego Padres now and probably for a while. He is signed to a contract that pays him like the best 3B in baseball…through 2033. I don’t really want to think about what paying $40M for a 40-year old third baseman looks like, so I won’t. Manny went back to playing in 150+ games last year and remains a solid All-Star level player.

SS - Xander Bogaerts is the highest-paid player on this year’s payroll, cashing $25.4M worth of checks for whatever his output is. If you want to say that the current price on the free agent market is $8M per WAR, there’s a chance he ends up being worth it. He put up just 2.0 fWAR last season, but he’s projected to finish somewhere around 3.5 fWAR this season, which would not be out of line with his career averages.

He is, once again, switching positions this offseason. However, this time he’s going back to his original spot at shortstop.

2B - Jake Cronenworth is another guy switching back to an original position. He’ll be heading back over to 2B, a position he hasn’t walked into Spring Training focused on in three years. He was much better in 2024 than he was in 2023, but the team would love for him to rediscover the guy he was before 2022.

1B - Luis Arraez is not a first baseman. He has played every position except RF, CF, catcher and pitcher since making him MLB debut in 2019. None of them have really stuck. I don’t know if the Padres would like him to become a decent 1B because it would fit their roster best or if they’d rather him be the DH, with someone else manning 1B, but right now it’s easier to pencil him in here and hope someone’s bat gets hot over the next few weeks.

Catcher

Unless Padres GM A.J. Preller adds a better option to the roster, Luis Genaro Campusano will get a chance to prove that 2024 was a blip and not a sign of things to come. After an unexciting-but-productive 2023 season where he slashed .319/.356/.491, his numbers fell off a cliff. Specifically, his hitting numbers, which is where most of his value will come from. He struggled with consistency (three months with OPS+ of 115 or higher, three months with an OPS+ of 71 or lower), which is normal for a young player, but he’s also running out of opportunities.

No offense to Elias Diaz, but we know what he is by now. He’s a 34-year old backup catcher who can’t really hit. If he’s the Padres starting catcher for more than a week, the offense will struggle.

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Outfield

RF - Fernando Tatis Jr. can do anything. Sometimes, I dream about him returning to the shortstop position just so that he can more regularly be involved with the action, but he’s a supremely talented right fielder and he should stay there. There’s no reason to believe that he can’t get back to his 2023 numbers… if can manage to play in 140ish game again.

CF - Jackson Merrill should’ve won Rookie of the Year. Maybe that fact ends up bringing him and Tatis, who also should’ve won Rookie of the Year, closer together. It’s easy to daydream about all of the MVP awards Merrill will collect during his career, but there’s a long history of guys having unbelievable rookie campaigns and then losing momentum after that. If he can come anywhere near last year’s production, it’s a massive win for the team and they should sign him to the longest contract they can find.

RF - Connor Joe / Jason Heyward is about as good of a left fielder as you’re going to find at this price point, assuming that Tirso Ornelas isn’t ready yet. I assume that Heyward will play a lot more than Joe, but I’m not sure I really believe in bounce-back seasons for either despite it being a platoon that makes sense.

Heyward’s improvement with the Dodgers in 2023 aligned with a dramatic improvement in his launch angle and a .320 batting average on fastballs. Last year, he saw that launch angle drop back down to what’s been normal for his career and his batting average on fastballs went down to .228. If you can’t hit fastballs for average or power, it’s pretty easy for MLB pitchers to beat you.

Starting Rotation

Dylan Cease
Michael King
Yu Darvish
Matt Waldron
Randy Vasquez

The top three of this group is fantastic. Waldron and Vasquez had moments of competence last season, but neither is going to give you much more than a fighting chance. In baseball parlance, both guys are number 5s but one of them is going to have to be the number 4 starter in the rotation.

An optimistic person would tell you that’s fine, and maybe it is, but it reveals a horrifying lack of depth. Should any of these five pitchers face an injury this season, an almost certainty, the next guy up right now is followed by question marks.

Jhony Brito?
Omar Cruz?
Adrian Morejon?

The Padres might be hamstrung by Joe Musgrove’s injury or Jay Groome’s gambling habit or the $12.2M they are still paying to Eric Hosmer, but nobody will be thinking of that when the bullpen is being asked to save the day in back-to-back games each week. This is the thing, even more than the catching spot, that is likely to sink the team’s playoff chances in 2025.

Bullpen

Robert Suarez (CL)
Jason Adam
Jeremiah Estrada
Adrian Morejon
Bryan Hoeing
Sean Reynolds
Yuki Matsui
Wandy Peralta

That’s not even a complete list (the back end of the bullpen will likely get sorted in Spring Training), but it shows you maybe the Padres’ biggest roster strength right now. It also shows you why guys like Morejon and Hoeing are being talked about as potential projects to be moved into the starting rotation.

In my opinion, Suarez is the guy that Preller should shop around the league in hopes of landing another starting pitcher or a better option at catcher (the former being preferable to the latter), because he’s likely gone after this season. He has an opt-out that he can take advantage of, if he assumes his value is more than $8M (which is less than half of what the Dodgers just agreed to pay Tanner Scott). If Suarez doesn’t opt-out, it’s because his arm fell off. For these reasons, his trade value is likely diminished a bit.

What’s left?

I said on the podcast this week that it feels like Preller has been told that he can’t buy a car or a house but he can buy a lottery ticket, which is a thing that can turn into a car or a house if you’re lucky. And Darren Smith was quick to point out that Preller has been lucky a lot when buying lottery tickets.

When I look at the crop of unsigned players available to sign, all I see are lottery tickets. Players in their mid-to-late 30s, coming off a down year, with much of the league writing them off as having fallen off a cliff. Your Jason Heyward types, if you will.

There are guys like that Preller could sign to fill out the rotation (Alex Wood? Andrew Heaney?), the DH spot (J.D. Martinez), the catcher spot (Yasmani Grandal homecoming?), you name it. They’re all lottery tickets and they’re probably all waiting to see if they can find a team to offer them a contract that is more respectful before signing a lottery ticket contract.

If this team is going to find its way to the 2025 MLB Playoffs, they’ll need the big-dollar players to play up to their contracts, at least a couple lottery tickets to win out, and probably some luck with health along the way. That is, unless Preller changes everything before the start of the season.