In the present day’s 4-3 loss to the Reds dropped the Padres to 38-46, because the staff continued to languish in fourth place in NL West. San Diego is nearer to the last-place Rockies than they’re to a wild card berth (8.5 video games) or the first-place Diamondbacks (11.5 video games), and the Padres aren’t precisely gaining momentum, with seven losses of their final eight video games.
It’s a really shocking dropoff for a membership that reached the NLCS final season, and has been spending to franchise-record ranges to proceed that success. The Padres exceeded the luxurious tax threshold in every of the final two seasons and are simply on tempo for a 3rd, with a $250MM payroll and a projected $275.8MM tax quantity (as per Roster Useful resource). Attending to the NLCS solely made the Padres hungry for extra, however a busy offseason that included signing Xander Bogaerts and lengthening Manny Machado and Yu Darvish has up to now yielded mediocre outcomes.
The struggles of the Padres’ first three months haven’t dampened the general view of staff chairman Peter Seidler, who to start with hasn’t written off the Friars’ probabilities for 2023. “We have now half the season to play. I imply, a lot, a lot stranger issues have occurred….So there’s lots of catching up for us to do. I’m on the practice that claims we’re gonna catch up,” Seidler advised Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Simply because the Padres’ plan for 2023 “hasn’t labored but….it doesn’t make me lose sleep at night time or lack confidence in what we’re doing.”
“I do know we’re going to be good. We’re gonna have each likelihood to be within the combine for the World Collection each single 12 months. And so that provides me some type of critical long-term consolation. We’re not going to reverse course. We’re at all times gonna modify….All my focus now’s on this 12 months, as a result of I’m as strong as I might be on the 12 months after and two years after and three and the following decade.”
Whereas Seidler naturally isn’t happy with how the Padres have carried out to this point, he pointed to the commerce deadline as a chance for enchancment, saying “ we’re at all times open for enterprise.” Whereas naturally a lot can nonetheless change between now and the August 1 deadline, Seidler’s remark would recommend that the Padres wish to be consumers, slightly than sellers. After all, the staff may take a center floor and pursue each routes, maybe buying and selling some shorter-term belongings for gamers who might help the Padres both in the remainder of 2023 or in 2024 and past.
As to who may very well be making these calls on deadline day, Seidler expressed his complete assist in membership CEO Erik Greupner and president of baseball operations A.J. Preller.
“I’m not afraid to make modifications. I by no means have been. However I actually worth stability,” Seidler stated. “And once I know the individual as properly and the skillset in addition to I do know A.J. and Erik, they’re not going anyplace. Interval….I imagine in stability. It’s one thing that’s undervalued, typically talking, in organizations and possibly significantly in sports activities franchises. However I’m not for mediocre stability. I’m for excellence. And to me, A.J. is excellence.”
“That’s the very attention-grabbing factor about skilled sports activities. You may have a few unhealthy months and followers or the media say, ’You’ve bought to fireplace this man.’ It’s loopy to me. Completely loopy.”
Preller is likely one of the longer-tenured entrance workplace bosses in baseball, operating the Padres’ baseball ops division since August 2014. It hasn’t precisely been a easy journey, as Preller’s tenure has included solely two profitable information in his eight full seasons, although he did oversee a considerable rebuild (albeit within the wake of an ill-fated try and load up on big-name expertise early in his stint as common supervisor). At the same time as not too long ago as 2021, the Padres appeared to be stumbling each on and off the sphere, however the hiring of Bob Melvin as supervisor appeared to calm issues, and San Diego went 89-73 in 2022 earlier than making their postseason run. Preller acquired a contract extension following the Padres’ playoff berth in 2020, and his present deal runs by way of the 2026 marketing campaign.
Seidler endorsed Melvin as properly, although as Acee famous, Seidler (like Preller in current feedback) didn’t give a full assure about Melvin’s future because the Friars’ supervisor. Melvin’s cope with the staff is up after the 2024 season, and if the Padres’ struggles had been proceed, a managerial change could be one logical route of shaking issues up, if a larger-scale entrance workplace change isn’t occurring.
That stated, Seidler appeared to disagree with the premise of a real assure of Melvin’s job safety, asking “What’s the purpose in saying that? Bob is likely one of the nice managers in our sport. I’ll go away it there. In addition to being an incredible man and as trusted a human being as you’ll ever discover. However we’re speaking a couple of job right here.”
