Oh Padre! The Potential of San Diego
Feb 15, 2024 9:03:27 GMT -5
Tim_GiantsGM, Commish_Ron, and 2 more like this
Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Feb 15, 2024 9:03:27 GMT -5
San Diego is bad.
But there are many flavors of bad.
Milwaukee, for example, is that kind of bad when you take bad milk, leave it outside for a month, come out and check on it and find three dead squirrels and a grizzly bear that all dared the forbidden flavor.
San Diego is not that bad.
They're more like the kind of bad when you pull out a piece of bread, see a bit of mold on the side, check the rest of the bread and find that it's fine, pull the mold off, and eat it as normal.
San Diego is 25th in Team WAR, which sounds bad, but they're 7 WAR ahead of the 26th place team. They're expected to finish with 72 wins this year. That puts them ahead of 9 other teams in the PBL. 72 wins isn't terrible, it's some real improvement and some luck away from a playoff spot.
Context:
From 2047 to 2062, the Padres had an astounding 16 year playoff streak. In that whole time, they never finished below 90 wins. But after that they went through some hard times. From '63 to '65, they made the playoffs twice, but had pythags of 78, 80 and 85 wins (WARs of 16th, 22nd and 11th) - those numbers reveal that those playoff seasons were nowhere near as good as you'd guess.
Their seasons after that:
2066: 69 wins, 71 pythag, 26th in WAR
2067: 71 wins, 71 pythag, 29th in WAR
2068: 58 wins, 58 pythag, 30th in WAR
2069: 75 wins, 68 pythag, 32nd in WAR
In other words, the last four years have been a pretty consistent rebuild for San Diego, and their 75 wins last year was a tantalizing mirage.
Compare that to their forecast for this year:
2070: 72 wins, 74 pythag, 25th in WAR
Not a massive step up, but definitely better than '68 and '69.
A rougher tale is that of San Diego's budget. Coming off their playoff appearance in '65, they had a budget of $186M. That has fallen to $150M, which is a $36M hit, but that's not a terrible place to be.
The Future:
San Diego isn't terribly aggressively leveraged, with $55M between their budget and payroll (league average is around $60M).
Furthermore, next year a ton of salary comes off their books, mostly in the form of aging vet Yusuke Tanaka ($21M this year for an expected -0.4 WAR). So financially, they have a ton of room to maneuver.
What about their future prospects? Well so far, since 2060, San Diego is 30th out of 32 in WAR yielded from their draft picks.
That's not good.
The counterpoint to that is that the first half of the decade (where most of the WAR were accrued) San Diego was a competing team, and drafting late where they still had their picks. Let's take a look at their first rounders, starting in 2060.
2060: Roberto Campos (SP), #33 overall, 3.3 career WAR
2061: Brian Jordan (CL), #22 overall, a fireballing wild thing who had a few good seasons, but has so far put together 2.6 WAR, and Shao-Qi Ng (OF), #24 overall, who has put together a very nice 9.7 WAR since he was drafted. The downside is that he's done so for Washington, who acquired him and a 4th rounder for Francisco Martinez, who never put up more than 2 WAR for San Diego.
2062: Either never signed their 1st, or traded it. I lean toward the latter.
2063: Donnie Patterson (SP), #24 overall, is now 26 and is 5/8/6 and may never make an ML roster.
2064: Ben Simms (SP), #13 overall, drafted as a 9/9/6 starter, is now 24 and has developed to 8/9/4, with his control potential capped at 5. He's in the majors now, but it's not clear how much value he'll provide.
2065: Andrew Crocker (SP), #19 overall, drafted as an 8/8/6 starter, is now 25 and 7/7/6 as a reliever, with 8/7/6 potential. Again, may have some value, but not a ton.
2066: Kenny Lewis (SP), #23 overall, drafted as an 8/7/6 starter, is now 26 and is 7/6/6 out of 8/6/6 potential. Again, may have some value, but not a ton.
2067: Ralph Niemes (SP), #2 overall, drafted as a 9/8/8 starter, has since imploded and now has potential ratings of 8/7/2.
2068: Chip Sampson (SP), #8 overall, drafted as a 10/6/6 starter, is already in the majors at 23, but is at 10/4/4 development despite his potential not being changed. His K/9 in the majors (in a small sample size) approaches 15, so if he can ever get those movement and control up he'll be a monster . . . but that may or may not happen.
2069: Tanner Reed (SP), #4 overall, drafted as a 9/10/8 starter, has fully retained his potential, is currently 22, in the majors, at 6/9/5 and is pitching comfortably above replacement level so far.
The aggregate? Their late picks in the top half of the decade turned into mostly busts or mediocre/decent players, and the one that wasn't (Ng) was traded elsewhere.
They've only had three high picks so far, and one busted so hard that nobody can be held responsible for it. And Sampson and Reed both look like potential monsters (though both have been called up faster than I probably would have done - then again, my team is terrible).
There's definitely some upside, but less than you'd like to see from a decade.
As far as prospects besides those? Rick Hampton is a 25 year old lefty DH / LF with 6/8/9 potential, who could be really nice if he developed fully (5/5/5 right now). Tom Gress (the #11 pick in the 2070 draft) is a 9/7/7 potential SP who could be awesome, if his 1 changeup develops into the 10 that's projected.
But overall, less depth in the minors than you might wish for.
Prognosis:
Here's the thing. San Diego is a low 70s win team, they're going to have $60-70M to work with next year (if they want it), they have two potential monsters in their rotation (but emphasis on potential). If Reed and Sampson develop fully, there's plenty to work with to get them to the mid-80s pretty easily. And from there, anything is possible.
I, cautiously, think they may be rushing their rebuild a bit, pushing Sampson and Reed into the majors to get their team as good as fast as possible, when another several years of high draft picks would have a lot of value in helping them out. But I could easily be wrong - time will tell. They have a lot of potential.
But there are many flavors of bad.
Milwaukee, for example, is that kind of bad when you take bad milk, leave it outside for a month, come out and check on it and find three dead squirrels and a grizzly bear that all dared the forbidden flavor.
San Diego is not that bad.
They're more like the kind of bad when you pull out a piece of bread, see a bit of mold on the side, check the rest of the bread and find that it's fine, pull the mold off, and eat it as normal.
San Diego is 25th in Team WAR, which sounds bad, but they're 7 WAR ahead of the 26th place team. They're expected to finish with 72 wins this year. That puts them ahead of 9 other teams in the PBL. 72 wins isn't terrible, it's some real improvement and some luck away from a playoff spot.
Context:
From 2047 to 2062, the Padres had an astounding 16 year playoff streak. In that whole time, they never finished below 90 wins. But after that they went through some hard times. From '63 to '65, they made the playoffs twice, but had pythags of 78, 80 and 85 wins (WARs of 16th, 22nd and 11th) - those numbers reveal that those playoff seasons were nowhere near as good as you'd guess.
Their seasons after that:
2066: 69 wins, 71 pythag, 26th in WAR
2067: 71 wins, 71 pythag, 29th in WAR
2068: 58 wins, 58 pythag, 30th in WAR
2069: 75 wins, 68 pythag, 32nd in WAR
In other words, the last four years have been a pretty consistent rebuild for San Diego, and their 75 wins last year was a tantalizing mirage.
Compare that to their forecast for this year:
2070: 72 wins, 74 pythag, 25th in WAR
Not a massive step up, but definitely better than '68 and '69.
A rougher tale is that of San Diego's budget. Coming off their playoff appearance in '65, they had a budget of $186M. That has fallen to $150M, which is a $36M hit, but that's not a terrible place to be.
The Future:
San Diego isn't terribly aggressively leveraged, with $55M between their budget and payroll (league average is around $60M).
Furthermore, next year a ton of salary comes off their books, mostly in the form of aging vet Yusuke Tanaka ($21M this year for an expected -0.4 WAR). So financially, they have a ton of room to maneuver.
What about their future prospects? Well so far, since 2060, San Diego is 30th out of 32 in WAR yielded from their draft picks.
That's not good.
The counterpoint to that is that the first half of the decade (where most of the WAR were accrued) San Diego was a competing team, and drafting late where they still had their picks. Let's take a look at their first rounders, starting in 2060.
2060: Roberto Campos (SP), #33 overall, 3.3 career WAR
2061: Brian Jordan (CL), #22 overall, a fireballing wild thing who had a few good seasons, but has so far put together 2.6 WAR, and Shao-Qi Ng (OF), #24 overall, who has put together a very nice 9.7 WAR since he was drafted. The downside is that he's done so for Washington, who acquired him and a 4th rounder for Francisco Martinez, who never put up more than 2 WAR for San Diego.
2062: Either never signed their 1st, or traded it. I lean toward the latter.
2063: Donnie Patterson (SP), #24 overall, is now 26 and is 5/8/6 and may never make an ML roster.
2064: Ben Simms (SP), #13 overall, drafted as a 9/9/6 starter, is now 24 and has developed to 8/9/4, with his control potential capped at 5. He's in the majors now, but it's not clear how much value he'll provide.
2065: Andrew Crocker (SP), #19 overall, drafted as an 8/8/6 starter, is now 25 and 7/7/6 as a reliever, with 8/7/6 potential. Again, may have some value, but not a ton.
2066: Kenny Lewis (SP), #23 overall, drafted as an 8/7/6 starter, is now 26 and is 7/6/6 out of 8/6/6 potential. Again, may have some value, but not a ton.
2067: Ralph Niemes (SP), #2 overall, drafted as a 9/8/8 starter, has since imploded and now has potential ratings of 8/7/2.
2068: Chip Sampson (SP), #8 overall, drafted as a 10/6/6 starter, is already in the majors at 23, but is at 10/4/4 development despite his potential not being changed. His K/9 in the majors (in a small sample size) approaches 15, so if he can ever get those movement and control up he'll be a monster . . . but that may or may not happen.
2069: Tanner Reed (SP), #4 overall, drafted as a 9/10/8 starter, has fully retained his potential, is currently 22, in the majors, at 6/9/5 and is pitching comfortably above replacement level so far.
The aggregate? Their late picks in the top half of the decade turned into mostly busts or mediocre/decent players, and the one that wasn't (Ng) was traded elsewhere.
They've only had three high picks so far, and one busted so hard that nobody can be held responsible for it. And Sampson and Reed both look like potential monsters (though both have been called up faster than I probably would have done - then again, my team is terrible).
There's definitely some upside, but less than you'd like to see from a decade.
As far as prospects besides those? Rick Hampton is a 25 year old lefty DH / LF with 6/8/9 potential, who could be really nice if he developed fully (5/5/5 right now). Tom Gress (the #11 pick in the 2070 draft) is a 9/7/7 potential SP who could be awesome, if his 1 changeup develops into the 10 that's projected.
But overall, less depth in the minors than you might wish for.
Prognosis:
Here's the thing. San Diego is a low 70s win team, they're going to have $60-70M to work with next year (if they want it), they have two potential monsters in their rotation (but emphasis on potential). If Reed and Sampson develop fully, there's plenty to work with to get them to the mid-80s pretty easily. And from there, anything is possible.
I, cautiously, think they may be rushing their rebuild a bit, pushing Sampson and Reed into the majors to get their team as good as fast as possible, when another several years of high draft picks would have a lot of value in helping them out. But I could easily be wrong - time will tell. They have a lot of potential.