With the All Star Break now and the unofficial “first” half over (since really they play more than 81 games by the time they get to the All Star Break), some musings on the current state of the Padres:

• With Robert Suarez and Adrian Morejon being added as All Stars to replace other players who aren’t playing, the Padres became the first team to have three relievers make the All Star team in the same season. Pretty impressive and glad that MLB continues to value relievers not just based on saves. Adam and Morejon actually deserve it more based on their advanced pitching stats as shown below though I get that people still see saves as the “sexy” stat. Suarez does have three more saves than any other pitcher (28 saves to Carlos Estevez of KC and Josh Hader of Houston with 25 each) and seven more than the next NL pitcher (Trevor Megill with Milwaukee):

Player	IP	RA9	RAA	WAA	gmLI	WAAadj	WAR	RAR	waaWL%
Jason Adam	47.2	2.45	10	1.0	1.62	0.2	1.7	14	.522
Adrián Morejón	43.2	2.89	8	0.9	1.67	0.1	1.4	12	.518
Jeremiah Estrada	43.0	3.56	5	0.6	1.65	0.0	1.0	9	.512
Robert Suarez	40.2	3.76	4	0.4	2.23	0.1	0.8	7	.508
Wandy Peralta	42.1	4.04	2	0.2	0.93	-0.1	0.5	6	.505
Team Totals	850.0	3.98	63	6.7	1.35	-0.7	14.1	142	.515

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/14/2025.

• Still need a better hitting catcher and a right-handed batter who can play DH or LF. It’s becoming glaringly obvious how weak the bottom of the lineup is and getting this will really lengthen the lineup. There just isn’t much available on the trade market and I’m hoping AJ doesn’t go too crazy and trade one of our top picks. At some point we need to start replenishing the farm starting with the 2025 MLB Draft these past two days.
• Nice way to end the first half with a 6-4 homestand. Going into the homestand, I was hoping for 6-4 and thought 5-5 was more realistic. Figured the Padres would win 2 out of 3 versus Texas, split 2-2 with Arizona and then win 1 out of 3 against Philadelphia considering Arizona and Philly have played the Padres tough the past few years regardless of how they were playing (Arizona had lost 8 out of 11 going into the series with the Padres and Philly lost 2 out of 3 to the Giants).
  
  Once we got to the last series against Philly and how they had their three best pitchers lined up, I was thinking even 1 out of 3 was going to be tough. So nice way to finish winning 2 out of 3 and really could have won the last game as you can’t really ask for more from your pitching when you only give up two runs including a run in the 1st inning due to two errors and then having multiple scoring opportunities including Luis Campusano grounding into a double play with runners on 1st and 2nd.
  
  Hopefully, the Padres can start the second half with some momentum. Would be crazy to ask them to repeat their second half last year (43-20) but if they can be something like 36-30 to end up with 88 wins, I can see that being enough to get into the playoffs where it becomes a crapshoot.