Opening day has finally arrived and I couldn’t be more excited. The Padres are only projected by most news outlets and projection systems to finish between 78 and 83 wins, but in a rebuilding year that isn’t half bad. Also, thanks to a few low risk, medium-to-high reward acquisitions, the Padres could easily find themselves with a little luck closer to 90 wins.
Signs that optimism is realistic can be found if we take a look at the player projections that led to 78 wins.
The first thing that jumps out at me is 101 starts apportioned to Jake Peavy, Chris Young, Greg Maddux and Justin Germano. That’s 20 fewer starts than those four combined to pitch last year. Combined with the off-season acquisitions of Randy Wolf and Mark Prior, there is no reason the Padres can’t get by with fewer than 30 starts from Hensley, Ledezma and Wade LeBlanc. It’s also entirely possible that one or the other of Wolf and Prior will rebound well enough to make a real, positive impact.
Turning to the bullpen, there’s not much not to like about the projections aside from the inclusion of 50 innings of 5.00+ ERA from Mauro Zarate, which I sincerely doubt we’ll see.
When looking at the offense, it’s worth noting that the projection system doesn’t know Brian Giles and Tadahito Iguchi were hampered by injury last year and incorrectly reads their performances as decline, so both are potentially undervalued. Also, the projection system seems to think Headley’s impact will be relatively small and almost entirely unhelpful rather than a potential ROY candidate type performance which is entirely possible. Another issue is that a few too many plate appearances are seen going to Oscar Robles and Luis Rodriguez neither of whom even made the team out of Spring Training, while the Justin Huber trade is not taken into account at all.
Taken all together, it isn’t hard to see the Padres scraping together 90 wins and making a playoff run with a little injury luck and a couple breakout seasons from their young core. Is it terribly likely? No, but the team will almost certainly still be in contention in September and post a winning record on the year. What more can we as fans really ask for in a rebuilding year?
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