For all that has happened and all we thought we knew, we have just now reached the first marker where lasting impressions can be ascertained.
The thinking in Major League Baseball has long been that a team is pretty much what it is by Memorial Day, which roughly coincides with the one-third point of the season.
Trades, injuries and various other factors will alter the course of some teams over the season’s final four months. But the current roster is largely going to perform as it has.
And for whatever changes are in store, whatever drastic movement up and down the standings a few teams make, the standings at the end of May have most often provided a harbinger of who will still be playing into October.
Even in the three years of expanded playoffs, which has made for more jockeying down the stretch, that has held true. In each of the past three seasons, five of the six teams in playoff position in the National League after 54 games went on to make the postseason. In the American League, that was the case for four of six in 2022 and ‘24 and for five of six in 2023.
That is a 78% rate, which is pretty good odds.
But there is a gap between that and certainty. And that gap seems especially large when considering a Padres team that has been so vulnerable of late.
At 31-23, the Padres are in a virtual tie with the Cardinals (32-24) for the fifth playoff spot in the NL.
But are they the team that had MLB’s best record (25-13) on May 10? Are they the team that has gone 6-10 since?
Do they have the offense that had at least 10 hits in 20 of its first 38 games or one of its past 16? Do they have the bullpen that protected every one of the first 22 leads it was handed or blown six of the past 10 leads it was handed? Do they have the Fernando Tatis Jr. who had a 1.020 OPS through his first 29 games or the .620 OPS in 23 games since?
The answer to all those questions is yes. Because that is the reality of a 162-game season.
There are 108 of those games remaining. The Padres will have contributors over the season’s final four months that haven’t even played for them yet in 2025. At least a couple of the players who have helped them (and/or hurt them) to this point will be mere memories by the end of summer. There will almost certainly be a stretch of games more surprising than the team’s 7-0 start to the season or its 0-6 skid a couple of weeks ago.
As Manny Machado says so often about so much that happens in this game, “That’s the beauty of baseball.”
We can’t predict it.
But we can be informed by what has happened.
So let’s take a look back at the first third of the season with an eye toward figuring out where the Padres go from here.
More from the core
The Padres offense has died at the feet of Xander Bogaerts far too often.
For whatever his .220 batting average with runners in scoring position and .681 OPS say, there is one very specific stat that stands out for how it illustrates the difference he is not making.
He has not come through with Jackson Merrill and Machado on base.
Since Merrill returned from the injured list on May 6, there have been 15 innings in which both he and Machado reached base.
Bogaerts is 3-for-13 with two sacrifice flies in those instances. Seven of those plate appearances came with the Padres tied or within one run in games they ultimately lost, and Bogaerts was 0-for-6 with a sacrifice fly in those plate appearances.
It is going to be virtually impossible to effectively the baton when the guy batting fifth or sixth every game is dropping that baton.
The consternation over the lack of production from the left fielders and catchers is warranted. The Padres’ left fielders have combined for a .193 batting average that is tied with the Pirates for worst in the major leagues. The Padres’ .534 OPS is the second-worst total in baseball behind the Pirates. Padres catchers have the majors’ fifth-worst average (.216) and OPS (.600).
The team is seeking help in left field and hoping they don’t have to make a determination about a rock-bottom number they can abide from Martín Maldonado’s half of the catching tandem.
But the reality is that this is a team built around its core.
It is not as dependent on its best players as it was in 2023. But the premise remains the same.
And Bogaerts is not the only member of the team’s core who must improve.
Tatis has shown over the past two seasons he is capable of being all he was expected to be before the shoulder surgery, wrist surgeries and PED suspension of 2022. He started this season as hot as almost any player in MLB. But he has been grounding out at an alarming rate lately and is hitting .185/.257/.385 in May.
Behind him, Luis Arraez is not getting hits nor getting on base nearly enough. It has been a strange year, as his batting average on balls in play is down nearly 50 points from his previous career low. Arraez is tied for the league lead with nine games in which he has three hits or more. But he has gone hitless in 17 of his 47 starts. His .290 batting average is 33 points off his career mark coming into the season, and his .324 on-base percentage is down 48 points.
Machado has been hitting better than .300 most of the season, but only with three home runs over the past six games has he doubled his home run total to six. That is a distant third on the team behind Tatis (13) and Gavin Sheets (11).
Besides a seven-game slump, which aligned almost exactly with the Padres’ six-game losing streak, Merrill has been pretty much all the Padres could expect. Even with that 2-for-27 stretch, he is batting .330 with a .901 OPS in 27 games. The only thing the matter with him was a balky hamstring that kept him out of 24 games.
Not much more could be asked of a guy batting sixth and seventh than the .248/.388/.473 line Jake Cronenworth has put up over 30 games. He, too, missed 24 games.
The absences of Merrill and Cronenworth overlapped for all but two games at the front and two at the back. The Padres were 14-10 while Cronenworth’s fractured rib was healing, and they were 15-9 without Merrill.
The issue is that Tatis and the Padres’ bullpen began cooling off around the same time Cronenworth and Merrill returned.
Penalized
For all the justified focus on the offense, the Padres’ season has largely been a tale of two bullpens.
No Padres relief pitcher lost a lead until May 6. That was 22 wins they locked down in the season’s first 34 games. Nine of those games required them to protect a one-run lead for at least one inning and usually for longer. Additionally, the bullpen covered at least three scoreless innings at the end of eight comeback victories. Over the course of the first 34 games, the Padres relievers’ 1.68 ERA was tops in the major leagues by nearly a full point.
Then came the worst six-game stretch a Padres bullpen has ever had. They allowed 31 runs and blew three leads. Save for a walk-off home run by Tatis, it would have been four. And in another game, four relievers allowed so much of an 11-run lead to evaporate that Robert Suarez had to come in for the save.
The bullpen has been handed a lead seven times since, and it has given up the lead twice. Relievers have also taken a loss during that span in a game in which a reliever allowed the tie-breaking run.
The thing about relief pitchers is that their general instability as a group is expected. It’s a matter of weathering the downturns.
It is not as if the Padres relievers haven’t shown how good they can be. They did it for more than a month in trying circumstances.
The Padres’ bullpen bailed out a rotation that was not turning in its equitable share of innings early. It worked a lot of close games.
Then it hit a rough patch.
This is the one portion of the team where that can be shrugged off to some extent as long as there are positive signs.
The current bullpen, including a few options in the minor leagues, might be what the Padres are stuck with. They have needs on offense and potentially in the starting rotation, and they don’t have a lot of resources with which to address those needs.
Rotation equation
The Padres planned to go with a six-man rotation during the stretch of 26 games in 27 days that begins Friday.
The expectation is that Yu Darvish was going to be back by now.
Not only is he still on the IL, Michael King ed him last weekend and will be there until at least next weekend.
Darvish’s elbow is said to be healthy, but he continues to feel tightness in the area and is not comfortable returning. There is no telling when he will be.
King’s shoulder issue is not believed to be a long-term concern, but the Padres have yet to determine his timeline either.
So it is Dylan Cease, Nick Pivetta, Stephen Kolek, Randy Vásquez and, for now, Kyle Hart.
Matt Waldron, out since late in spring with an oblique issue, could return after just one more rehab start.
The Padres will probably attempt to get through the busy next month by relying on some length out of the bullpen. Sean Reynolds has looked good in multi-inning stints. Look for Ryan Bergert to be called up when it becomes apparent he is needed to cover some innings.
While the depth has become a concern, the Padres also have to hope Cease can find his fastball command and keep the slider moving as it has the past four outings. A 4.58 ERA and 5⅓ innings per start is going to take its toll.
They also might be highly reliant on Pivetta continuing his renaissance season. The right-hander, who never had better than 4.04 ERA in any of his previous eight seasons, has been their best starter by a lot. He has thrown seven shutout innings in three starts and allowed one run over six innings in three others. His 2.72 ERA over 10 starts, which includes his six runs in four innings at Coors Field, is the seventh-best mark in the National League. That is two spots behind King (2.59).
Holy Sheets
The $1.6 million man gets his own section, because heroes get special recognition.
Cast aside by the White Sox and signed to a minor-league deal shortly before spring training, Sheets hit a game-tying pinch-hit home run in the season opener and has been lifting the Padres ever since.
He leads the team with 34 RBIs. That includes seven that have tied games and seven that have given the Padres a lead.
Sheets has served as the primary designated hitter and filled in at first base and in left field. His evolving into an everyday player is due in large part to the Padres not having a better right-handed-hitting option but also because he is hitting 51 points better (.219) against left-handed pitchers than in his first four seasons.
For as important as the core is, Sheets continuing to make up for others’ shortcomings would go a long way.
Strange road
Half of the Padres’ games have come against American League teams. They have played all three division leaders in the AL and seven of that league’s top nine teams.
They have finished their season series against both the Braves and Cubs, and by Sunday will be done playing the Pirates.
Yet the Padres have not played the Dodgers.
Seven games against the National League West leaders will be played in a span of 11 days in June.
They are 20-7 against teams with a losing record. After the Pirates, just one of their next six series is against a sub-.500 team.
