The 2023 San Diego Padres Will Go Down As One Of The Greatest Underachieving Teams In Baseball History
We have to give Carl his flowers for this one. He said before the season that the San Diego Padres would not make the playoffs. That was a very smart take. With that said, I don’t believe he figured they would be out of the race before we even got to September. I’ve had a long leash with the San Diego Padres. Last season, they were wildly inconsistent, then flexed their muscles by the time they got to September, ultimately making a run to the NLCS. I was never going to bury them. They were too talented. I figured at some point in the summer, they would get hot and find their way into playoff contention. That has not been the case. The San Diego Padres currently find themselves with a 61–70 record. The World Series aspirations they had coming into the season are dead, as are any dreams of making it to the postseason.
The 2023 Mets are the best ever to happen to the 2023 Padres. The Mets became baseball's punching bag in 2023 with their underachieving and bloated payroll. Don't get me wrong, this year's Mets will never live down their failures, but I can properly explain why they took a massive step backward in 2023. They had multiple severe injuries, starting with all-star closer Edwin Diaz, who blew his knee out at the WBC. Justin Verlander missed the first month of the season. Max Scherzer took a step back, and some of their best players from last year, including Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte, fell off the face of the Earth. It's embarrassing that a team that spent this much money fell off like they did, but it's at least explainable. This year's Padres are not as explainable.
Few teams in the sport have been better at preventing runs than the San Diego Padres. They rank fifth in all of baseball in team ERA, and second in the National League behind the Atlanta Braves. Offensively, while a few guys have underachieved or taken steps back, they're 14th in the sport in runs scored. They have four hitters in their lineup with an OPS+ above 115. Ha-Seong Kim has been a revelation, posting a bWAR over 6. Josh Hader has been a lockdown closer for them, and Blake Snell has pitched Cy Young caliber baseball. So what the hell has happened?
You can have all the talent in the world, but some teams have "it," and some teams don't. This year's San Diego Padres just don't have that X Factor. They are anti-clutch. Their record in one-run games is 6–20. Their record in extra-inning games? A brutal 0–10. I don't know if I've ever seen a baseball team going the entire 162-game season without winning a single extra-inning game.
Whatever dreams the Padres had of competing this season are done. But is the dream of a bright future dead? They have a lot of players locked up long-term. After next season, they will likely lose Juan Soto in free agency. I'm inclined to believe that water will find it to level regarding the extra innings. Blake Snell will likely walk in free agency. They're paying too many players too much money for San Diego to ship them elsewhere in the offseason. They just need to hope that things improve. Next year, they won't have to worry about losing Fernando Tatís Jr. for the season's first month. But Xander Bogaerts, Yu Darvish, and Manny Machado aren't getting any younger. They are stuck with what they have, a talented team that has repeatedly proven that they tend to come up short when it matters most.