San Diego Padres: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season
The San Diego Padres continue to struggle to find their identity. But can young talent alone guide this team to a playoff berth they so desperately want?
The San Diego Padres are certainly on the upward trajectory with perhaps the best farm system in baseball backing them. They’ve been a team the past couple of years that has reeled in some pretty high-market free agents such as Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer while also landing some rather high-priority player trades from Tampa in Wil Myers, Tommy Pham, and Emilio Pagan.
But with the stars, the Friars have brought in, the hiring of Jayce Tingler as their new manager, and the wealth of young talent their farm system is producing, is this team finally ready to take that next step and compete for a playoff berth?
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Unfortunately, what I believe is going to hold the Padres back this year is their lineup and the uncertainty around it. Take the unknown factor out of the equation of whether or not the young players will break through have great developmental years, and we still have a lineup in which I’m not sure if we’ll have three bonafide run producers in it.
This team sacrificed a lot of power in trading away Hunter Renfroe for Tommy Pham. And although there is an argument to be made that Pham can actually be the most consistent hitter on this team, just him alone is not going to help break this Padres team through to the postseason.
We have the perennial all-star, Manny Machado, in the second year of his ginormous deal, but looking back on 2019, he tallied the worst batting average of his career of .256 and struck out 126 time, which was also a career-high for him.
New team jitters? The immense pressure of a big contract? Any way you slice it, Machado under-performed in 2019 and if that carries over into 2020, this team is not going anywhere if their best player can’t get his act together.
San Diego Padres: 2020 Preview and Prediction
We have the young phenom, Fernando Tatis Jr., who the San Diego Padres are working on extending long-term at the shortstop position. But although his ceiling is astronomically high, right now I would say injuries are a bit of a concern for him as he had a stint last season where he missed the entire month of May, and then we saw his season get shut down mid-August due to a back injury.
Now that could just be a one-time thing being that Tatis is so young but look at other notable young shortstops like Carlos Correa and Corey Seager and the long road they’re still on trying to fully recover. They’re not the same players they were when they first came up and in Correa’s case, he’s dealt with back injuries of his own. So, hopefully, this long delay is giving guys like Tatis time to fully recover, but I think it’s something to keep an eye on if the young phenom starts having similar patterns of injury.
We have Eric Hosmer who signed an 8-year/$144 million dollar contract in 2018 with the Padres, and to this point, Hoz has also been somewhat of an under-achiever since coming out to San Diego. Hosmer has hit .260 as a member of the Padres with an OBP of .316 and has struck out 305 times, which makes up about 30% of his career punch-outs (1,019 total). For a player who made his bones in Kansas City as a high-contact hitter, this San Diego version of Hoz is certainly not what the Friars expected in signing him to that long-term deal.
To his credit, Hosmer drove in 99 runs last year, but if he continues on this downward trend, he’s going to be a big contract that the Padres are dying to get rid of with plentiful first base options waiting in the wings like Josh Naylor, Ty France, Jason Vosler, Seth Mejias-Brean, and Wil Myers.
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Speaking of Wil Myers, is he even going to be on this team in the near future? Myers had an atrocious 2019 season hitting .239 and racking up a WAR of -0.4. Boy, has Myers fallen from the graces because this was a highly-touted prospect in the Rays organization who got traded over to the Padres and was an All-Star for them in 2016. But since 2016, Myers has hit .245 and just this very offseason there were rumors circulating about the team trying to swing a trade sending him to the Red Sox. If Myers continues to under-achieve, he may very well find himself out of San Diego
So, in terms of offensive prowess, I worry about this Padres lineup and the uncertainty it portrays. We have no idea how any of these guys are going to do except for Tommy Pham who is going to consistently give you an average of about .280 with 20 home runs and 20-25 stolen bases.
Are Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer going to continue trending downward? Is Fernando Tatis Jr. going to stay healthy? Is Wil Myers going to revitalize his career? How about Francisco Mejia? We’re still waiting on him to breakthrough. Unless proven otherwise, I think this Padre offense has all the makings of an under-achieving group, especially now that most of their power is gone in Hunter Renfroe and Franmil Reyes.
San Diego Padres: 2020 Preview and Prediction
But there may be a saving grace for this San Diego Padres team, and that is undoubtedly the pitching staff that is stacked with youth that is on the cusp of breaking through and veterans who are catching their grooves in their careers.
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In terms of the young pitching this Padres team has, we could be here all day talking about it, but at the top of the heap is Chris Paddack who had a very impressive rookie season in 2019 pitching to a 9-7 record and 3.33 ERA with 153 strikeouts in 140.2 innings. Paddack still has some kinks to work out, but it’s worth noting that he is designated as the number one starter of this team after just one season of service. The Friars have a lot of young talent and number one-capable starters coming up, but Paddack is the one the franchise is anointing to the top right now.
Then there’s a strong comeback candidate in Dinelson Lamet who missed most of 2019 recovering from Tommy John surgery. Lamet burst onto the scene in mid-2018 to pitch to a 4.57 ERA with 139 strikeouts in 114.1 innings. Lamet is also a raw talent that needs to get his walks and home runs allowed under control, but the strikeout rate shows how high his ceiling can be. And if he can come into 2020 a new man after Tommy John, we may also see him take tremendous steps forward.
Capping off the youth movement among the pitching staff, we have Joey Lucchesi who’s pitched solid in his first two years of MLB service with a career 4.14 ERA and 303 strikeouts in 293.2 innings. Lucchesi is impressive in that he’s such a soft-tossing lefty, but his funky delivery and movement on every pitch he throws still gets him a ton of strikeouts.
Then we have guys like Cal Quantrill and Matt Strahm who are converted starters, and in Quantrill’s case, potentially still a starter for this team. We have Michel Baez and Adrian Morejon who are highly-touted prospects as well headed in a similar direction as Quantrill and Strahm in that they can be used as long relief studs as well as starters if spots open up. And we have two top 100 prospects in baseball set to potentially come up and make an impact this year in MacKenzie Gore (#5) and Luis Patino (#27).
Gore has a 2.56 minor league ERA in three years with 243 punch-outs in 183 total innings. Patino has a 3.00 ERA with 279 punch-outs in 234 total innings in the same time frame. These are two legit pitchers coming up in the Padres organization and once they both do, the Friars, along with the likes of Chris Paddack, Adrian Morejon, Michel Baez, Cal Quantrill, Dinelson Lamet, and Joey Lucceshi, all of whom throw super hard (outside of Lucchesi) with top-notch stuff, this team is going to be a pitching clinic in this league.
As for the veterans the Padres are catching on great waves, look… Kirby Yates might be the best relief pitcher in baseball right now with the best split-finger in the game. 41 saves a year ago and a 1.67 ERA since 2018. Boy, has this guy become a force out of nowhere.
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They’re also catching Drew Pomeranz and Emilio Pagan at the perfect time as well. I don’t know what got into Pomeranz last year, but all of a sudden, he was hitting high velocity and becoming virtually unhittable as a member of the Brewers. Pagan landed in Tamp Bay last season after being kicked around Seattle and Oakland to become the Rays closer and rack up 20 saves with a high-90s fastball backing him.
This pitching staff as it is right now is vastly underrated, and now the Padres have a bullpen to be proud of. The strength of this pitching staff could go a long way in keeping the Padres competitive this year, and could even play a big part in helping them challenge for a playoff spot.
Ultimately, I believe the Padres’ biggest weakness will be their hitting, and for that reason, even though I really like their pitching, I don’t think this team will make that playoff push so many are predicting them to make.
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I have the San Diego Padres finishing the year in third place in the NL West, and if it were a full 162-game season, I had them with a record of 76-86. This team is certainly on the rise, but I think they need a lot more help on offense.