2022 ZiPS Projections: San Diego Padres

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Diego Padres.

Batters

There’s no lying: 2021 was a tough year for the Padres, at least the last six weeks or so. As late as August 10, they were firmly in control of a playoff spot and, at 67–49, on pace for a 94-win season. The rest of the year was as brutal a run as I can remember for any team, certainly for one that had legitimate playoff hopes beforehand. Over the last 46 games of the season, San Diego went 12–34, the worst in baseball, even worse than the Orioles, who were nearly at the level of dragooning fans into throwing mop-up innings. Before the Friars, only one team, the 1986 Orioles, ever finished the season this poorly while winning at least 70 games. That was a team I remember well, being an eight-year-old in Baltimore at the time; it basically sent Earl Weaver back to retirement at a relatively young 56.

The good news is that the best reasons for liking the Padres before 2021 remain on the team. Fernando Tatis Jr. has the best projection for any player on a team run so far, by a two-win cushion, though this is partially thanks to ZiPS having anxiety about Mike Trout’s injury record in recent seasons and will change when the ZiPS for the Nats go public, but he is the foundation of this team, even if he eventually has to move to another position because of shoulder problems. Manny Machado is still in his 20s, Jake Cronenworth had a star-level season, and ZiPS thinks Trent Grisham will have a better 2022.

The bad news is that outside of Tatis, Cronenworth and Joe Musgrove, there are precious few Padres to feel clearly more confident about this time around, and they don’t have enough wiggle room to justify scraping by with holes at three of the four corner positions. San Diego appeared, late in the season, to realize finally that the Eric Hosmer situation wasn’t going to work itself out magically but still hasn’t committed to doing anything significant at first other than “insert coin to try again” like it’s 1993 and it just lost to M. Bison in Street Fighter II. That Nomar Mazara might be part of the left field mess if the season started today is not something a fan should be excited about. Wil Myers reverting to non-2020 form leaves right field as another weak spot, though it may be tough for the Padres to do anything here while also fixing first and left. And ZiPS sees no in-house saviors on the short-term horizon; ask me next year about Robert Hassell III.

Pitchers

The Padres entered the season with a long list of plausible starting pitching candidates, and in the end, it still wasn’t enough. In addition to Mike Clevinger, already known to be out of the season with Tommy John surgery, they lost Dinelson Lamet, Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Chris Paddack, and Adrian Morejon to injury at various times. The season started with Paddack as the fifth starter, but its last whimper featured starts by pitchers such as Jake Arrieta and Vince Velasquez.

The Padres tried to use a deep bullpen to conserve the starting pitching after the shortened 2020 season, but this backfired; they still suffered a rash of injuries, and the bullpen collapsed as well. Through August 10, San Diego relievers led baseball with a 2.89 ERA in 480 1/3 innings — the most innings of any bullpen in the league at that point and far above the MLB average of 415. During San Diego’s season-ending hellscape, that ERA ballooned to over five.

So, what does ZiPS think? It still sees the Padres as having a reasonably deep pitching staff, but one with generally reduced expectations relative to last season. The dream of Lamet throwing 150 innings is probably gone, and both Darvish and Snell have weaker projections than before 2021. Compared to the preseason, I have the Padres’ full rotation about three-to-four wins worse this time around despite losing no significant starting pitcher to free agency and Clevinger returning. It’s still in the top tier, but like the offense, it has less margin of error to work with.

On the positive side, ZiPS remains less down on Paddack than fans and possibly the team are, the computer agreeing with Steamer that he should still be in the team’s plans. ZiPS is also highly intrigued by two quiet signings the Padres made: Nick Martínez to a four-year, $20 million contract, and Robert Suarez to a two-year, $11 million deal. Martínez throws harder these days than you may remember from his time with the Rangers, as he can now hit the mid-90s. Suarez is mostly a fastball-changeup pitcher who can touch the century mark in velocity and has been an elite closer for NPB’s Hanshin Tigers the last two seasons.

The Padres remain contenders in an NL West in which the Giants and Dodgers have both lost considerable talent to free agency, but they still need to be more aggressive than just waiting for the bounce.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2022 due to injury, and players who were released in 2021. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a big band orchestra that only plays nu-metal versions of baroque cantatas, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.36, similar to the post-June substance-enforcement environment.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2022.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter.