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.

From hearing yesterday that Jason Adam and Fernando Tatis Jr. were selected to join Manny Machado as the Padres All Star selections, I wasn’t surprised that Jason Adam was selected (it’s well deserved) and that he was picked over Robert Suarez.

Even though Suarez leads the NL in saves, his underlying metrics haven’t been good (see my previous post) and Adam has been great all year. He’s had some blips here and there as you would expect with any pitcher and a long season, especially someone like Adam who is tied for second in number of appearances (44) this season (Tyler Rogers 45) which is leading to him being overused. It can’t be sustainable to have him end up appearing in 80+ games this year and even though he’s never complained about it, the current usage has to catch up to him here and there and having rough patches as a result.

Tatis being selected was a surprise, since we’ve seen him struggle for two months now. Since May 1, his slash line is .218/.328/.364 (OPS of .692) and a wRC+ of 98.

But reading more into it, my assumption is the players voted him based on overall metrics which include his hot start to the season along with what he does on the defensive side.

Even with the bad stretch, his fWAR is 3.6, his bWAR is 3.7 and both are 10th overall in all of MLB for position players. As well, he’s tied for 12th with 9 Outs Above Average, which is the highest for any right fielder.

So when you look at all the metrics including his defense, I can see why he was voted. But other players had solid cases for being selected as well so it wouldn’t have been surprising if someone like Juan Soto had been selected instead.

Hopefully this helps give Tatis a bounce in his step and he starts to rebound and play like he did earlier in the season and last night against Texas when he was driving runs and setting the table in the leadoff spot.

With an off day yesterday and a 10-game homestand starting before the all star break, some thoughts on the current state of the Padres:

• The Padres have a need for another batter, ideally a right handed hitter, that can either DH or play left field. A righty would be a good complement to Gavin Sheets to play the two positions.
• There’s a need for a hitting catcher though I do get also about the calling the game part. Both Elias Diaz and Martin Maldonado are doing a good job of handling the pitching staff considering three young guys who were supposed to battle it out for the 5th spot (Randy Vasquez, Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert) are all being called to pitch in the rotation right now and have held up their end. But when you see stats like this, it’s hard not to see such a large hole in the lineup.
• You can never have enough starting pitching so you hope that Yu Darvish and Michael King are able to come back so you then have them along with the above three young guys and Nick Pivetta and Dylan Cease (who you hope will have more good days than what he’s been doing this year).

It seems like the Padres best option to deal for any hitting will be to deal one of their relievers and teams will be more interested in guys like Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon who still have some control (Morejon has one more year while Estrada still has four). Kind of like how the Padres dealt for Jason Adam and Bryan Hoeing last year who both still have control. I also see this as part of why the Padres have been promoting many young relievers recently (like Eduarniel Nunez) to get a feel for how they handle the big league level if they were to deal one of the current relievers on the major league roster.

Ideally the Padres would deal Robert Suarez. Besides his peripherals not being good since June 1 (it makes me nervous when I see him come out to close), he’s most likely to opt out at the end of the year. Considering how good he was earlier in the year (which is similar to last season where he had the rut in August and early September and then bounced back and pitched fine in the playoffs), it could also be due to overuse as the more often he pitches, the more he’s just throwing hard fastballs down the middle with no movement.

It makes me think about how Milwaukee dealt Josh Hader and Devin Williams before they became free agents and that makes the most sense to me so the Padres can get something for him and then elevate Adam or Morejon or do a closer by committee.

Because realistically it’s highly unlikely AJ Preller will sell no matter where the team is in four weeks. The years where the Padres were on the outside with a small chance to make the playoff (2015 and 2023), he didn’t sell even though it made more sense to. So even if he doesn’t make any major moves (because the prospect system isn’t as good as it was in years past), I don’t see him selling either and instead making some minor moves.

With the Washington Nationals in town for a three-game series and how well the former Padres players in the Juan Soto trade on the Nationals’ active MLB roster are doing, it’s fun to look back at the What If? had the Padres kept those players and not made the trade.

Here are their stats as of today:

CJ Abrams: 2.7 bWAR, .278/.351/.484 (.835 OPS), 11 HR, 15 SB

James Wood: 3.5 bWAR, .278/.375/.560 (.935 OPS), 21 HR, 57 RBI

MacKenzie Gore: 2.8 bWAR, 3.19 ERA, 3-7 W-L, 123 SOs (leads the league)

Robert Hassell III was called up on May 20, 2025 for the first time and in 79 plate appearances has a slash line of .218/.228/.269 (.497 OPS) while Jarlin Susana is still in the minors.

Of course if the Padres don’t make the trade, there’s always the daisy chain effect as Jackson Merrill might not be here (he might have been traded instead for another player that AJ Preller felt could put the team over the top), they sign or trade differently because of who they have here and other gaps (such as not signing Xander Bogaerts with Abrams as SS), etc. But let’s for fun, assume only the trades directly affected by Juan Soto (such as the trades to get Michael King and lead to getting Dylan Cease) don’t happen, you end up with a starting lineup and pitching rotation of:

Tatis RF
Arraez 1B
Machado 3B
Wood LF
Sheets DH
Merrill CF
Cronenworth/Iglesias 2B
Diaz/Maldonaldo C
Abrams SS

Pivetta
Gore
Bergert
Kolek
Another starter with Darvish and Musgrove on the IL

The first thing that sticks out is how this lineup skews really lefty with six left-handed hitters. There’s already that challenge with Merrill, Sheets, Cronenworth in the middle of the lineup (and Arraez if you want to switch it with yesterday’s lineup where Merrill batted second and Arraez fourth) so this really makes it even more so.

The other thing is the length of this lineup as really the only glaring hole is the catcher position. But having solid players from 1-7 and 9 really goes with the Padres motto of passing the baton along the lineup and how some other teams have that length where every batter is a challenge.

Starting pitching seems to be more of an issue with this lineup; I get it’s been an issue this year with the injuries to Darvish and King but you have to give credit to Vasquez, Kolek and Bergert for how well they’ve been pitching considering being young guys at the back of the rotation.

Besides the fact that the surrounded players signed/traded would be different because of a different approach to roster construction with having these guys around as mentioned above, the other thing is if the Padres don’t make this trade, they don’t get to the NLCS in 2022 or win 93 games in 2024 (since they picked up Michael King and Dylan Cease as a result of trading Soto to the Yankees after the 2023 season).

The ultimate goal is to win the World Series but considering the lack of success in the Padres history, they had legitimate teams these past few seasons to make the playoffs and do something which is what you want as a fan.

So would I still do the trade in hindsight? Yes, because it’s still allowed the team to be competitive since then. Now if the Padres didn’t get anything for Juan Soto when they felt they couldn’t re-sign him, had their payroll/budget concerns after Peter Seidler’s passing and didn’t end up with King, Cease and Vasquez that made them competitive last year and again this year, then I’d have a different opinion.

Musings halfway through the second series with the Dodgers after dropping 4 of the first 5 games to them:

• Xander Bogaerts batting in the middle of the lineup continues to kill the Padres scoring opportunities. Two times he had two runners on and both times he grounded into double plays. I previously mentioned about moving Xander down and at that time Sheets hadn’t emerged the way he has, which is even another reason to move him down. I get it that Jackson Merrill is out right now but it doesn’t mean that Xander has to be the one to move up. For a while Shildt seemed to have moved Xander down to 6th in the lineup but now he’s right back in the middle of the lineup where he can do damage or is more often the case do what he did tonight.
• Nice to see local guy Trenton Brooks hit a two-run home run. It’s sad but he already has contributed more in that one at bat than the other call ups this year including Luis Campusano and Connie Joe. Might as well give him some run with Merrill out and considering the major hole at left field.

The Padres can be frustrating to watch, especially considering the struggles the past week against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks. Nevertheless I’ll be watching against tomorrow and be at Petco Park on Friday when the team returns home.