Injuries and an Underwhelming Deadline Have Dealt the Padres Significant Blows
Particularly when measured against their competitors in the NL West, the Padres did not have a very good trade deadline — or even a good July. While they added depth to their infield, outfield, and bullpen with a trio of trades, none of those were impact moves. Everything they did was overshadowed by their failure to reach the finish line on a deal for Max Scherzer that was reported as “close” by multiple reporters on Thursday night. Ultimately, though, the three-time Cy Young winner went to the division rival Dodgers in a move that turn(er)ed out to be bigger than anyone expected. Beyond that, the Padres could only watch as the Giants landed slugger Kris Bryant. And to add injuries to insult, the deadline dust had barely settled when San Diego had to place both Fernando Tatis Jr. and Chris Paddack on the Injured List on Saturday.
In his post-deadline ZiPS roundup from Monday, Dan Szymborski illustrated the summer swap meet’s impact on the Playoff Odds for each individual team. His estimates showed the Giants as the NL West’s biggest winner at the deadline, with the Dodgers winners (albeit with diminishing returns given where they started), and the Padres clear losers:
| Team | Div% Before | Div% After | Chg | Playoff% Before | Playoff% After | Chg ▴ | WS Win% Before | WS Win% | Chg% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giants | 43.1% | 45.2% | 2.0% | 95.9% | 97.4% | 1.5% | 9.8% | 10.3% | 0.4% |
| Dodgers | 48.7% | 49.2% | 0.5% | 97.3% | 98.0% | 0.7% | 10.5% | 10.6% | 0.1% |
| Padres | 8.2% | 5.7% | -2.5% | 75.5% | 73.8% | -1.7% | 4.4% | 3.9% | -0.4% |
All of which is to say that the Padres hurt their chances with missed opportunities, and that was before they suffered the one-two punch of the Paddack and Tatis injuries. Chronologically, the Paddack injury came first, but as Tatis is the Padres’ marquee player, we’ll begin there. The 22-year-old shortstop once again suffered a left shoulder subluxation (partial dislocation) while sliding into third base against the Rockies on Friday night. After he singled in his first-inning plate appearance, he had headed to second on Manny Machado’s hot smash to third baseman Ryan McMahon, then lit out for third when the ball ball squirted away from McMahon while trying to transfer it to his glove. Tatis slid feet first, but in attempting to evade shortstop Brendan Rodgers‘ tag, he twisted, caught his left shoulder, and immediately grabbed his arm after being tagged out.
According to The Athletic’s Dennis Lin, this is at least the fifth time this season that Tatis has suffered a shoulder subluxation. Though he has generally recovered quickly, he’s dealt with inflammation and instability all season, and it’s affected his availability. Most notably, he missed nine games in April after his shoulder subluxed while swinging a bat, and an MRI taken at the time revealed a slight tear in his labrum. He missed another game in June after reinjuring the shoulder while diving for a ball. An MRI taken on Saturday didn’t show any additional tearing, but the repeated recurrences have raised the possibility of season-ending arthroscopic surgery. Via Lin:
On Saturday night, after another upset by the Rockies, Padres manager Jayce Tingler said Tatis’ focus remains on getting back on the field for a playoff push. Tingler also acknowledged a crushing possibility: If the shortstop does not make enough improvement over the next 10 days or so, season-ending shoulder surgery “would be on the table.”
…“That option is certainly one of the many that we’re going to continue to discuss,” Tingler said. “He’s got his mind set on playing this year and doing everything in his power to get back on the field with his team. But obviously he’s young, he’s got a career in front of him, we’ve got 14 years (on Tatis’ contract). So, we’re going to weigh all those things, he’s going to weigh all those things and make the best decision.”
The loss of Tatis for the remainder of the season would be a devastating blow. The 22-year-old shortstop is hitting .290/.373/.647, with both his slugging percentage and his 31 homers leading the NL by wide margins, and his 23 steals and 4.6 WAR leading by narrow ones. With Ronald Acuña Jr. down for the season due to a torn ACL, Jacob deGrom shut down from his pursuit of a history-making ERA, and last year’s top two finishers, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, in the midst of comparatively subpar seasons, Tatis appeared to have a clear path to the NL MVP award, but he won’t win it while on the shelf.
The award is secondary to the Padres’ success, of course, and even with a healthy Tatis, the lineup already has two spots where they’ve received replacement-level production or worse, at catcher and first base. The absence of Tatis for the third time this year — he also missed eight games due to a positive COVID-19 test in May — could potentially create another hole. While the 25-year-old Ha-Seong Kim, who has filled in for Tatis during his previous absences, has shown some defensive wizardry thus far (7 DRS in 220 innings at shortstop), he’s hit just .216/.275/.370 (76 wRC+) in 230 PA while spotting at second, short, and third. That’s a far cry from what the Padres hoped he could provide when they signed him to a four-year, $28 million deal.
If Tatis is out for an extended period, the Padres could sacrifice defense for offense by trying Jake Cronenworth and/or Adam Frazier — who was acquired early last week from the Pirates to help address some of the team’s trouble spots — at shortstop. Both played the position extensively in the minors (367 games for Cronenworth from 2015-19, 220 games for Frazier, mostly from 2013-15), but not much in the majors; Cronenworth has 89 innings there, Frazier just seven. Such usage might not only compromise the infield defense, it would offset the value of having both Frazier and Cronenworth in the lineup, with the latter playing first base while Eric Hosmer takes his weak bat and glove to the bench.
As for Paddack, he last started on Tuesday, July 27, when he threw six innings and allowed three runs against the A’s, his second solid start in a row during what has been an admittedly rollercoaster season. After a rough April, the 25-year-old righty had pared his ERA to 4.10 and his FIP to 3.52 as of June 18, but in his ensuing six starts — three good ones, three bad ones — and a decent relief appearance, he posted a 7.36 ERA, inflating his season mark to 5.13. At least his 3.72 FIP makes the case that he deserves better.
Paddack strained his left oblique during his bullpen session on Friday, shortly after the trade deadline had passed. The Padres were able to backdate his IL move to July 28, but the initial prognosis suggests that he could be out until late August.
While the Padres couldn’t have specifically known that Paddack would get hurt, general manager A.J. Preller’s pursuit of Scherzer illustrated his desire to provide a substantial upgrade for the rotation. The trade had reportedly gotten to the point of the Nationals and Padres agreeing upon the players in the deal, but not yet exchanging medicals or getting Scherzer’s approval to waive his 10 and 5 rights. Beyond that, how the deal fell apart is unknown, but The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, who was the first of several reporters to report the deal as close, issued a mea culpa, noting, “Padres GM A.J. Preller said on Friday he was not close to landing Scherzer at the time of my report. The information I received from multiple sources in real time led me to the opposite conclusion, but the situation was clearly more fluid and complex than how I presented it on Twitter.”
Once Scherzer slipped through the Padres’ fingers, Preller reportedly pursued the Twins’ José Berríos, who wound up being traded to Toronto on Friday afternoon. While Preller did deal for reserve outfielder Jake Marisnick and righty reliever Daniel Hudson, if he had a Plan C that involved a starting pitcher, it didn’t materialize.
“We have starters that we believe in,” said Preller in the aftermath of the deadline. “We could’ve added a starting pitcher, but if the other four or five guys don’t pitch like they’re capable of, honestly, it’s not going to matter. We feel like we have enough from a starting pitching standpoint.”
From this vantage, that’s not quite so clear, particularly now that Paddack is out. Thanks to the offseason additions of Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, and Joe Musgrove, the Padres’ rotation topped our preseason Positional Power Rankings, but the rotation entered Tuesday ranked 10th in the NL in WAR (7.5), ninth in ERA (4.17) and seventh in FIP (4.05), with the starters averaging just 4.67 innings pitched per turn. Musgrove has been excellent, and Darvish nearly as good as advertised until being lit for a 7.36 ERA and 6.43 FIP in July, during which he made a trip to the IL for left hip inflammation.
The rest is a mess. Snell has been nowhere near his Cy Young-winning form, posting a 5.44 ERA and 4.58 FIP while averaging just 4.44 innings per start. Twenty-one-year-old rookie Ryan Weathers has been shaky (4.18 ERA, 5.42 FIP) while on a short leash; only four of his 13 starts have lasted longer than four innings. Dinelson Lamet has been limited to nine starts and a total of 34.1 innings due to ongoing forearm issues that date back to last fall, and he’s now targeted for a multi-inning relief role once he returns, hopefully later this month.
The ranks of reinforcements have been thinned by the promotion of Weathers, the loss of Adrian Morejon to Tommy John surgery in April, and the stalled development of top pitching prospect MacKenzie Gore. The 22-year-old lefty struggled in six starts at Triple-A El Paso, then was sent back to the team’s spring training complex in mid-June to work on his delivery and to fully recover from a blister problem. To replace Paddack, the team called up 24-year-old righty Reiss Knehr from El Paso to start on Sunday. Knehr is San Diego’s number seven prospect, but at least in Eric Longenhagen’s view he’s better suited to the bullpen, as he has an above-average changeup, some deception in his delivery, and not much else to offer besides iffy command of a 91-94 mph fastball and slider. In three turns this season (one of them part of a suspended game that’s yet to be completed), he’s faced a total of 36 hitters; whether it’s him or somebody else, the likelihood is that the Padres use openers or bullpen games until Paddack returns.
All told, between getting outmaneuvered at the deadline, suffering injuries, and losing 14 of 25 games, the Padres would just as soon forget July. Here’s a look at how things have changed for the three NL West contenders since the close of play on June 30 via our Playoff Odds page:
| Team | Div% Before | Div% After | Chg | Playoff% Before | Playoff% After | Chg ▴ | WS Win% Before | WS Win% | Chg% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giants | 6.4% | 32.8% | 26.4% | 80.2% | 98.0% | 17.8% | 1.6% | 3.9% | 2.3% |
| Dodgers | 64.4% | 62.9% | -1.5% | 99.3% | 99.3% | 0.0% | 16.2% | 22.5% | 6.3% |
| Padres | 29.3% | 4.3% | -25.0% | 97.1% | 77.1% | -20.0% | 10.0% | 4.9% | -5.1% |
At 61-47, the Padres still hold a four-game lead over the Reds (56-50) for the second Wild Card spot, but they’re no longer the near-certainty that they appeared to be, and with a seven-game deficit behind the Giants (67-39), their hopes of winning the division are now slim. With or without Tatis and Paddack, the road ahead is rougher than anyone expected just a month ago.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
As a lifelong Padres fan, this season has and will continue to be the most exciting one in over two decades. But with the disappointment of the deadline, as well as Tatis getting injured, it felt like Friday was a just gut-wrenching blow, if not the end of what was once an incredibly promising season. To be honest, if Scherzer had just gone to the Dodgers without any of the media drama, it would have sucked but been digestable if not expected. However, the media reports that he was coming to San Diego, only to be snatched away, made things all the more disappointing.
This team can get hot at strange times (went 9-1 when Tatis and others were out with COVID), and I have full faith they can make a run if they make the WC game, which would see them facing one of their 2 NL West rivals who they have a decent shot against any day. This team also looks poised for an incredible 2022, with the return of Clevinger, Morejon, perhaps CJ Abrams and Mackenzie Gore, and of course a fixed-up Tatis.
But man, Friday really hurt.
I think saying Darvish was “nearly as good as advertised until being lit up in July…” is a little overly optimistic. He has one double digit strikeout game since mid-May, and hitters’ quality of contact against him has been trending the wrong direction. His ERA may have still looked elite until the last couple of starts, but the warning signs in the peripheral data have been there for more than two months. He and Gerrit Cole have had very similar season arcs, but Yu Darvish is a much more sympathetic and likeable figure than Gerrit Cole, so fans give him more benefit of the doubt.
Through the end of June, Darvish had a 2.44 ERA and 3.05 FIP, well ahead of his career norms and 2021 projections. Strikeout and walk % both ahead of career norms and projections as well, home run rate a bit lagging. Unless you presume that he was going to be able to replicate last year’s small-sample performance, then “nearly as good as advertised…” is more than sufficient.
I think what ascheff meant is that Darvish was using the sticky stuff and the July Darvish is what’s here to stay.
(I’m not saying I agree with this, but this is what I think ascheff meant)
He’s given up nearly as many home runs (9) in his last 25 innings that he gave up in his first 75 (10). His K% tanked, his BAA skyrocketed, and it’s not even due to an aberrated BABIP (.2725, compared to .272 in the first half).
There’s zero evidence it has anything to do with the cracked down on sticky substances, but SOMETHING happened with Darvish. He has not been great as of late.
Only the literal best pitchers in baseball don’t have 25 inning samples where they’re worse than usual, 25 innings is just very much not evidence of anything.
It’s not just 25 innings with Darvish though, which was my entire point. Going back to the end of May is an 11 start, 60 inning sample size. In his first 10 starts of the season, he allowed a .567 OPS (which includes his bad start on opening day). In the 11 starts since, he has allowed a .783 OPS (and only recorded 3 outs in the seventh inning or later). It isn’t just one bad month, which as Mike pointed out, any pitcher can have.
Darvish pitched seven full innings in five of eight starts in the stretch leading up to June, and he has only recorded three total outs in the sixth inning or later since the start of June. His rate stats were still fine in June, but he wasn’t going nearly as deep into games or being as dominant as he had been at the start of this season, for all of 2020, and for the second half of 2019.
The one game in June in which Darvish’s stat line looks like his peak self was the Dodger game, and in that game he gave up seven hard hit balls and only two hits. His defense recorded outs on balls with xBAs of .560, .390, .900, .500, and .660. The only two hits he allowed were a home run and a single with an xBA of .870. That was one of the luckiest, flukiest starts of the season.
Friday was the worst day in recent memory for the Padres. Even worse than that, the potential reinforcements in the minors are just not there (yet) leaving Preller and Tingler in a bind to pickup the slack from injuries and underperformance. And what is going on with Blake Snell? He has been a complete blackhole since arriving in SD. Snell coupled with the inconsistent lineup isn’t doing their dwindling playoff odds any favors.
It’s almost as if the Rays saw something in Snell that made them willing to part with him in the off-season instead of the media narrative that the Rays were just being cheap.
There were a ton of red flags before the Snell trade. They never seemed to let him go more than 4-5 innings, ever, and often got pulled after 3. He’s hurt a lot which doesn’t help, but he needs to be piggybacked or he loses the ability to throw strikes.
That was what I thought, anyway, and I figured that getting a guy who can blow out opposing batters for 3-4 innings in a playoff game is valuable enough that he would help them. But no, he was never going to hold up as a traditional starter. I bet even the Rays didn’t think he would regress this badly, though.
It’s ironic that the offseason acquisition that generated the most hype for the Padres also might have been their fatal mistake. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at the time it seemed like a classic example of overpaying for award credentials and a small sample of postseason success. Patino may or may not be any good, but he would have been super valuable as a trade chip last week.
Not sure if it was totally a “Rays” thing, he has a career BB/9 over 4. But yeah, the Padres probably knowingly ignored these red flags because they needed viable arms going into this season.
I don’t think we’re far away from asking if Blake Snell is even a starting pitcher
Feels like the Pads could have beaten the Giants’ offer for Bryant. Play him at 3B, slide Machado to SS, Frazier at 2B and Cronenworth at 1B is about as strong a recovery from a Tatis loss as you could find. It would almost certainly have been an overpay, but the Pads are at the point where they should be buying established talent with prospects to win now.
Tatis was healthy when Bryant was traded.
Hard to justify going all in when you’re the third best team in your division. The Giants are closer to being a WS team than the Padres, so Bryant is technically more valuable to them in terms of championship expectancy. That difference in expected value makes it really hard to outbid them. Same applies to the Scherzer deal.
The Padres system was more than capable of putting together a trade package better than Alexander Canario and Caleb Kilian.
I’d imagine they kept asking the Cubs to take on Eric Hosmer or Wil Myers, or something like that.
^this. And Tatis was already hurt, just not IL’d yet (but they knew it was either surgery now or later). You’d think Preller would have known by that point that you can swoop in at the last second and make the trade you want. Now, it feels like the front office gave up on the season, and, well…why?
bryant return wasnt amazing but im struggling as to who padres could send back of similar value. knehr + ?
This analysis is focused on winning today. I’m all in favor of winning now, but I think the Padres were smart not to trade for Scherzer–if the price to get him was both Robert Hassell and Campusano. Campusano at catcher may be an upgrade on Caratini or Nola right now. I don’t see Hassel or Campusano mentioned in this analysis, but that was the price of beating the Dodgers out for Scherzer.
If Scherzer were 27 instead of 37 and had another year on his contract past the end of 2021, that trade by the Padres would have made more sense. If Hassell and Campusano were the price for Scherzer, the best thing the Padres could have done was bid up the cost for the Dodgers acquiring Scherzer, and given Bauer’s legal problems and Bellinger’s struggles, the Dodgers were more or less desperate.
Nobody wants to trade four legit prospects for a 37 year old rental like the Dodgers did. They felt like they had to do that in order to win it all this year. If I were the Dodgers, I’d do the same thing they did. The Padres did the right thing by not trading Campusano and Hassell, too. They’d be looking for a long term solution at catcher next year if they had, and they’d be looking at resigning Scherzer or replacing him, too.
I agree with you in sentiment but you ignored the fact that the Dodgers also got 1.3 years of Trea Turner in the deal as well.
If Gore weren’t back in development hell or CJ Abrams weren’t injured, the Padres might have thrown one of them into a deal for both Turner and Scherzer, too. And I might still be reluctant to part with any three of the Padres’ top four prospects to get Trea Turner and a 37 year old rental. A good decision for the Dodgers, given their current position, isn’t necessarily what’s good for the Padres. Going forward, the Padres probably need to win with prospects. The Dodgers probably need to win now.
And they weren’t 4, top 100 prospects…
The crazy thing is that even with the pitching staff flailing and maybe losing Tatis Jr for the year they’ve still got favorable chances of getting that last wild card spot. They’re something like 4 games up on the Reds and the Cardinals, Phillies, and Braves are something like 8-10 games back. Machado, Cronenworth, Grisham, Pham, and (hopefully) Nola is a pretty talented lineup. They have no major lineup holes either except for Kim at shortstop, and if they wanted to they could try Cronenworth there and put Frazier at second. Okay, so they only have four starters and two of them are struggling pretty badly. That’s not good! Bullpen is still strong. I think they probably have a worse record than the Reds down the stretch but their lead matters.
The Padres played the Scherzer thing perfectly. It would’ve been insane of them to (somehow, some way) better the Dodgers’ offer and they bid the price up as high as it could reasonably go.
For the long run, the Padres had a great deadline. Unfortunately, I think for the long run Tatis’ shoulder will never be right for any length of time.
Real lesson to be learned: NEVER TRADE WITH THE RAYS!!!
The “don’t trade with the Rays” trope is so old.
Yes, the Blake Snell trade is not working out well for San Diego. But they also got Jake Cronenworth & Tommy Pham for Hunter Renfroe (non-tendered) and Xavier Edwards.
It’s not like the Rays have never made a bad trade over the past few seasons…
So strange that the Padres would let Tatis keep playing with an injured shoulder instead of going for surgery/rehab, esp when they have him on a 14 yr contract
It isn’t really that odd, these kinds of shoulder issues are frequently played through because the risk of serious recurrence is pretty low. Cody Bellinger had the same problem, and had surgery for it this offseason, but he’d had the problem for a few years. Postponing the surgery to the offseason when you’re supposed to be a playoff team is certainly explicable – the Dodgers did exactly the same thing!
If you go back and read some of the coverage of the final time Bellinger dislodged his shoulder (his NLCS game 7 shoulder bash), he discussed how long he’s had the issue and how many times it had happened. And you can find instances of it happening and him missing a few games in 2019, followed by the Dodgers declaring they’d move him to the OF full time (b/c several of his instances happened when he dove directly to his side into the shoulder for ground balls in the infield).
The Padres have Tatis for 14 years, but their team is really good, and the rest of the core isn’t there and isn’t good for 14 years. There’s a pretty strong probability that this current group of Padres – this season, and indeed the next couple while these are all together – end up being the best Padres rosters of Tatis’s 14 year contract. The team is like 95+ wins true talent: very few teams sit sustainably at that level for more than a couple seasons (and the Padres unfortunately share the division with one of them).
pretty fair summary of the trade deadline and disappointments with the season, though i disagree with the brief assessment of kim.
a) preller’s inability to add a single SP is inexcusable. its okay to miss out on the big fish but the lack of forsesight in hedging your bet with the likes of say, duffy or heaney, and then come out and say “we can win with the guys we have” is laughable. from the start of the season, you have lost one pitcher to tj, another pitcher to tj limbo, and blake snell’s meltdown tour.
b) preller fixates more than any other gm on pedigree/”splashy” transactions. obviously he has an incredible eye for talent (tatis jr., cronenworth, grisham), but he seems to have a confirmation bias for rewarding his picks off sss (hosmer’s 2017, myers’ 2016, profar’s 2020).
c) i think despite the public comments on a willingness to exceed the luxury tax, ownership is taking a hard stance on the finances. why else ask for money in the frazier deal and try to include hosmer in blockbuster trades? im hoping more than anything this doesnt impact extensions for cronenworth and grisham or resigning pham this winter.
d) i’m imagining a padres infield of machado, tatis jr., trea turner and 1B (cronenworth?) and upsetting myself.
also 2nd minor quibble but i do think hudson is an impact move, especially for a bullpen that outside of a semi-resergent stammen has leaned really heavily on the defense.