Dodgers’ 2019 NL West Outlook: San Diego Padres

In the final installment of “Dodgers: 2019 NL West Outlooks” I’ll look into the San Diego Padres. The Padres are poised to join the elite teams in the National League in a season or two.

2019 shouldn’t be their year, but it should at least be a season of growth for their young core. Fernando Tatis Jr., Luis Urias, and Francisco Mejia all should play significant roles for the Padres this season

In the first three installments of this series, I talked about the three top teams in the NL West after the Dodgers last season, the Dbacks, Rockies, and Giants. The Padres were connected to some of the players the Dodgers have been rumored to be going after, notably J.T. Realmuto and Corey Kluber, but the team ended up with one of the biggest prizes on the free agent market in Manny Machado.

In this series, I went through each team in the NL West and recapping their 2018 (overall and against the Dodgers), analyzing their off-season thus far, and “Dodger Killers” on their rosters.

2018 Results

The Padres went 66-96 last season, finishing 7 games behind the lowly Giants in the NL West standings. The team was largely in rebuilding mode last season, though in the latter stages, as they mostly rotated in prospects at every position. The outfield saw five major contributors and the infield saw position battles and swaps all season long.

Only the highest paid player from last season’s roster, first basemen Eric Hosmer, was kept out of the rotational fray, though his performance was far below his career norms in his first season hitting at Petco Park, a stadium known to suppress left-handed power.

Hosmer hit just .253 last season, the lowest mark of his career, to go along with his 18 home runs. Most alarmingly the slugger had a career-high strikeout rate of 21.0%, more than 3% higher than his career average. If Hosmer can’t turn things around in year two of his megadeal, the team will struggle to put up runs, even with the additions of a new wave of highly-touted prospects and of course Manny Machado.

Last season, the Padres had trouble not only plating runs but also in keeping their opponents from scoring. The team finished 28th in baseball in runs scored last seasons, ahead of only the Giants and the Miami Marlins.

Their pitching wasn’t much better. The team’s 4.40 team ERA and 71 quality starts ranked the staff 21st in all of baseball. The one area the Padres’ pitchers did relatively well in was in strikeouts. The “Pad Squad” pitching staff racked up 1399 strikeouts in 2018, good for 14th in the MLB, placing them in the top half of the league.

All of this being said, it is obvious that the Padres did poorly in 2018. But with new pitching and hitting prospects on the way, and free agent signings all offseason long, the team should win more than 66 games in 2019. But that’s for a later section.

2019 Outlook 

After a dismal 2018 with the only bright spots seeming far away, the future seems to have the potential to be blinding. The record-setting Manny Machado signing put the Padres back on the map for 2019, and really for the next half-decade or so of Machado’s prime. The Gold Glover will be paired with up-and-comers Luis Urias and Fernando Tatis Jr., both of whom could grow into transformative talents if they hit on their lofty potential.

Beyond the well-known Tatis and Urias, the Padres have a loaded stock of young pitchers set to make an impact this season as well who have received much less press. Most notable in this group though by far is Chris Paddack. The 6’4 righty has no MLB experience as of yet, but in his 4.2 innings of Spring Training thus far, Paddack has racked up 7 strikeouts.

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In his three minor league seasons, Paddack has a minuscule 1.82 ERA and 230 strikeouts in his 177.2 innings pitched. Paddack’s best season came in 2017 when he finished with 2 wins and a 0.85 ERA in 42.1 innings pitched, but last season was his best in terms of innings pitched, finishing with 90 innings in 2018.

Besides Machado, the team added a few veterans, most notably second basemen Ian Kinsler, who will provide playoff experience and stability to the young team, and bullpen arm Adam Warren.

Even if the Padres don’t win half their games in 2019, their potential to be a thorn in the sides of the top teams in the NL West has not gone unnoticed. The Padres will no longer be a pushover for the foreseeable future, making the Dodgers’ quest to October even more difficult than it has been these past six seasons.

Fangraphs’ Depth Charts system projects the Padres to win 78 games this season, a 12-game increase, and depending on the young studs who will surely rise up as the season progresses, the team could surpass the Dbacks as the third best team in the NL West in short order.