2025 ZiPS Projections: San Diego Padres

For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the final team this year is the San Diego Padres.

Batters

After an extremely disappointing 2023 with Juan Soto in tow, the Padres bounced back to punch above their weight without him in 2024, thus giving less analytically inclined observers ample ammunition to reach spectacularly wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Losing Soto didn’t help the Padres, but a phenomenally successful move to the rotation for Michael King, a rebound season from Fernando Tatis Jr., and a stunning rookie campaign from Jackson Merrill did a lot to make up for his absence. (It also helped that they didn’t underperform their Pythagorean record by 10 wins like they did in 2023.)

Unsurprisingly, the 2025 roster looks a lot like the 2024 roster. That’s a good thing, but also a cause for some worry. The highs remain very high; Tatis and Merrill are bonafide stars, and while Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts are each on the back nine of their respective careers, they’re still very good players. Jake Cronenworth is back to mostly playing the position where he’s the most valuable, and though he’s overrated because of batting average, Luis Arraez is about as good as a first baseman can be when he has less power than the Plantagenet air force. ZiPS also still really likes Eguy Rosario as a plus-plus role player, something that Steamer has gotten more bullish about.

The holes also tell a story. The problems in left field were papered over by Jurickson Profar’s surprise All-Star season, but lucking into a performance like that every year is a very tall order, and Profar is now employed by the Atlanta Braves. Left field is likely to be a problem again, while designated hitter isn’t set to be anything more ambitious than the day-off hitter position. The catcher situation is decidedly mediocre, made worse by the Depth Chart playing time set for the just-signed Elias Díaz, whose value largely comes from it making it less likely the Padres will roster Martín Maldonado.

The team hasn’t done much to address its needs, with circumstances outside of the front office’s control complicating their efforts. The collapse of Diamond Sports Group caused a sudden, surprise decline in the team’s revenue, and not in the fake way teams usually talk about when it comes to their finances. The passing of Peter Seidler also removed the team’s strongest advocate for aggressive, ambitious spending. Adding to the team’s non-baseball problems this winter is the Seidler family duking out questions of team ownership and control in probate court.

A contending team is a lot like an army going to war. The longer you contend, the more attrition you face. The Padres had a much deeper roster several years ago, with a stacked farm system and a lot of spare options at most positions. But attrition has hit them hard, and while many of the fundamental pieces remain on the team, they’re both more expensive and older than they used to be, while the supporting cast behind them is a great deal thinner. The 2023 season likely represented the maximum amount of resources these Padres will ever put on the field, yet their need for reinforcements is only going to grow. That doesn’t mean the Padres are doomed right now, but like the Achaemenids after Marathon or the Byzantines after Manzikert, something dramatic would have to change for this team to prevent a slow, steady decline.

Pitchers

The story is similar on pitching side. The one-two punch of Dylan Cease and King has some real steel in the glove, and Yu Darvish remains solid, if clearly past his prime. Randy Vásquez and Matt Waldron both project as below-average starters, but not alarmingly so for no. 4/5 starters.

But if you look down the projections, you see the problem here: There’s not much after the starting five. When it comes to pitchers, it takes a great deal of good fortune to avoid having to dip well past your five best starters over the course of a season. And ZiPS paints an absolutely bleak picture of what would happen if Darvish gets injured, or if one of Cease or King was to be traded, as rumors have suggested. Joe Musgrove naturally won’t hit the projection in the table below, given that he’s out with Tommy John surgery. ZiPS thinks little of Omar Cruz as a starter, and the next established starter option, Austin Krob, is a soft-tossing, fringy Double-A prospect who has gotten zero attention. There’s some buzz about Adrian Morejon returning to the rotation, but it’s not certain that he will make such a move or that it would be effective if he did, and it likely still wouldn’t provide the team with enough depth anyway.

As for the bullpen, the second verse is the same as the first: ZiPS really likes five pitchers likely to see time in the bullpen, and then there’s a gulf. Most clubs have a number of mediocre emergency relievers, frequently organizational players, who are projected to be a bit below average. The Padres lack depth here as well, with two of the relievers who have 95-100 ERA+ projections, Bryan Hoeing and Stephen Kolek, already set to be in the ‘pen. San Diego’s relief corps projects as average to above, but only so long as all or most of the top relievers stay healthy.

Add everything up and ZiPS projects the Padres to finish with a win total in the high 80s, enough to be one of the prime Wild Card contenders, with an outside shot at upsetting the Dodgers. They’d make for an extremely dangerous opponent in the postseason. Still, it’s a fragile high-80s projection, with the very preliminary ZiPS projected standings pegging San Diego with a very low floor.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by 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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.