Quick, name a team that has been heavily involved in the bidding for two of the biggest free agent hitters to sign this offseason. Now name a team that is shopping all three of the top pitchers in their rotation and their starting catcher. What does that leave you with? The San Diego Padres.
It also leaves you incredibly confused because throwing out huge contract offers to Pablo Sandoval and Yasmany Tomas would suggest that the Friars, their recently anointed owners and the shiny new GM they just hired are ready to spend the club into contention in the NL West. But the shopping of Ian Kennedy, Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Yasmani Grandal suggest that the never-ending rebuild is going to continue. You can’t have it both ways, Padres.
The problem for San Diego is that both strategies make sense on their own. San Diego hasn’t had a winning record since 2010. They’ve since been stuck in a weird purgatory due to ownership issues coupled with a local television dispute. They’ve now resolved both of those issues, so throwing around money to provide major upgrades to the roster so the team can be competitive and get the fans interested makes some sense. Spending a little bit of money so that they can put a decent product on the field while they wait for their young players to develop is probably something they owe their fans.
On the other hand, this is a team stuck in the same division as the high-spending Dodgers and the defending World Series champion Dodgers. Signing one quality bat in free agency isn’t going to suddenly help them close the gap in a division where they finished 17 games back. If they really think they can contend right away, they are deluding themselves. They can’t possibly think that, right?
Padres said to be aggressively looking for hitters who can help them contend for NL West title immediately.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) December 1, 2014
Oh… this is awkward.
For the Padres to contend “immediately” is a gargantuan task. Even if their bar for contending just means winning a Wild Card spot, that’s still a 10+ win upgrade they need to find. Unless Mike Trout magically demands a trade to San Diego, that isn’t happening with one batter. Maybe that’s why Olney mentioned “hitters,” plural. After all, it isn’t like the Padres are one bat away from having a quality offense. This is a team that finished dead last in the majors in runs and wRC+. They need lots and lots of bats.
Where they plan on getting those bats remains to be seen. They tried to land Panda and Tomas and whiffed. Even with the San Diego weather as a selling point, free agents don’t seem particularly eager to take their money. Now there aren’t many quality bats left to even offer that money to. That’s probably where the shopping of Grandal and their starting pitchers comes in.
That path is fraught with its own peril though. While Petco has a way of making the Padres pitchers look good, the Friars don’t exactly have a treasure trove of pitching talent right now. They have help on the way in their farm system, but not the kind that is going to be a big help right away and turn them into contenders. So how is it they intend to deal away at least one of their quality starting pitchers so that they can upgrade their offense from woeful to merely below average and expect to contend, much less be competitive?
Unless they are placing far too much faith in the ability of Petco Park to turn replacement level starters into league average pitchers, the answer is they can’t. Perhaps they have been fooled by the magical run of the Kansas City Royals into thinking any sad sack franchise with a pathetic offense can make one or two upgrades and suddenly become a World Series contender.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with San Diego adding some quality players, just so long as they realize that making the leap to a legit contender is something that is going to take time. Granted, they’ve been rebuilding for what feels like forever, but that’s no reason to start selling false hope to a fan base that has been largely devoid of any real hope for most of the last decade.
Take your time, Padres. Show some patience. You’ve already waited this long.
