Leading up to the start of the 2017 Regular Season, Diamond Hoggers will preview each of baseball’s 30 teams . Today’s preview features the San Diego Padres. Stay tuned until Opening Day as Diamond Hoggers previews every team one by one until the beginning of the 2017 season.
There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that the San Diego Padres may finally have a relatively young cornerstone player to build around. The bad news is that player is Wil Myers, and we don’t think he’s really all that good.
What seemed like a ‘finally’ last year in his age-25 season, Myers had somewhat of a breakout that at a deeper look isn’t all that much to get excited about. But it’s something. He hit 28 home runs, stole 28 bases, and scored 99 runs while being named an All-Star. On the other hand, Myers hit just .259 and had an OPS of .759 with a modest 2.5 bWAR. If you think that title teams are going to be built around the likes of Myers; and people seem plenty excited about the upside of the Padres, then they’re either going to have to get a lot better around him or he’s going to need to do better than that.
Myers is the guy who headlines the post – with the basement Padres coming off a another doormat-type 68-94 year. You’re about to see why Myers is their headline guy.
Major Off-season Moves:
Projected Starting Lineup:
The lineup can never really be constructed around offense because of the way Petco plays. People seem to love Petco Park, we just don’t like it. It makes for boring, slow, late-night baseball. It’s just a miserable experience.
So anyways, you’ve got Jankowski leading off who can steal bags (30 last season) but can’t hit to save his life (we don’t think). Relative unknown and once mega-prospect Manuel Margot will get a shot in the outfield this season. He appeared in 10 games last season for his first cup of coffee. Then you have the headliner Myers, followed by Yangervis Solarte who is a nice little player that rakes lefties and can handle his own against righties. Still, this is your clean-up hitter?
Hunter Renfroe has big time upside but there’s not a ton of time on his side for development as he’s already 25. I saw people adding Ryan Schimpf like he was a hot stock in fantasy leagues last year and see the 20 home runs, but I also see he hit .217; so again, he’s just a damn Schimpf of a player.
Austin Hedges was supposed to be a pretty good catcher at one point. We’ll see. Can you tell we’re mailing in this section of the preview like the Padres did constructing this roster? Luis Sardinas will be their damn shortstop. You won’t care that he’s their shortstop.
The bench features arguably more interesting guys! Jabari Blash, Alex Dickerson, Cory Spangenberg, Erick Aybar, and Christian Betancourt are all kind of attractive pieces; in terms of being Padres players but at the press time of this post aren’t expected to be in the starting lineup.
Projected Pitching Staff:
Now, what exactly do they think they’re doing here? Not only is Clayton Richard back for a second tour of duty, but he’s going to go ahead and hold down the two-spot for them. Clayton Richard!
Jhoulys Chacin isn’t half-bad, but he’s not a staff ace. If you’re going into a season with that as your Opening Day starter; you are pretty much announcing that you’re playing to lose for a draft pick.
From there the arm we like most isn’t even a guarantee to make the rotation in Luis Perdomo. The other guys aren’t getting much mention, they aren’t good pitchers.
The closer is Brandon Maurer. Nice arms in the bullpen such as Brad Hand, Ryan Buchter, and Kevin Quackenbush. But still, meh.
Season Outlook:
Fangraphs has them at about 72 wins. I think Fangraphs is on drugs if they think this team doesn’t finish dead last in the division. I’ll take Arizona all day over them. They will again be the doormat of the National League West. They are a mess, and should be ashamed of the current roster construction. There is little reason to write about them on this blog, and we won’t.
Have fun with your hopes that will end in May, Padres fans. This team is as boring as the day is long. Favorite player on the team is Brad Hand, if we have to choose.
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