San Diego Padres 2025 preview
It has been a long and difficult offseason for the San Diego Padres. They had a 2-1 NLDS lead against the eventual World Series champion Dodgers and didn’t score a run in the final two games of the series. As the Dodgers continued to spend money from now until the end of time with deferred salaries and more big-ticket free agents, the Padres did effectively nothing until the mid-February signing of Nick Pivetta. They signed depth at the catcher position, spending $3.5 million in guaranteed money. The only trade acquisition was reliever Ron Marinaccio.
Of course, the Padres made their big splashes during 2024, trading for Luis Arraez in May and Dylan Cease in March, to go along with the massive Juan Soto deal in December that netted Michael King and Trent Grisham, among others.
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Off-field problems are making matters worse, as ownership of the team following the death of Peter Seidler in November 2023 has been caught up in a slew of legal proceedings. Seidler’s brother, Matthew, suggested in a court filing that the situation was a compromising factor in not signing Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki.
Various rumors surfaced that the Padres were open to trading Cease and King. For a team with three playoff appearances over the last five years that should be in “win now” mode to be even considering a sell-off of any degree is rather disheartening.
After all, the Padres won 90 games for the first time since 2010, have a budding superstar in Jackson Merrill as part of an extremely talented roster, and have a squad worthy of making a big push. Instead, this is a team in a bit of a weird spot entering the season.
2025 San Diego Padres Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Feb. 18)
World Series: +2800
NL Pennant: +1300
NL West: +1000
Win Total: 85.5 (-110/-110)
Make Playoffs: Yes +110 / No -130
San Diego Padres Preview: Offense
This is still projected to be a very good ballclub and a quality offense. There were 13 players with at least 100 plate appearances last season. Ten of them had a wRC+ of at least 101, where 100 is perfectly average. However, several of them are gone, including leader Jurickson Profar, whose 139 wRC+ over a team-high 668 plate appearances now resides in Atlanta. The next three players – Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, and Manny Machado – are all still around.
Donovan Solano and David Peralta are not. The Padres hit lightning in a bottle with both players, as Peralta was a May signing and Solano was a mid-April acquisition. Also gone are Kyle Higashioka and Ha-seong Kim from that group of above average hitters. Jake Cronenworth and Arraez are the other two that are still around.
Basically, what the Padres need is a return to normalcy from Xander Bogaerts and some further growth from Eguy Rosario and Tirso Ornelas to offset some of the losses since they weren’t willing to spend lots of free-agent dollars with the murky ownership picture. Bogaerts was objectively bad last season with a 95 wRC+ over 463 plate appearances. He hadn’t had a season with a wRC+ lower than 119 since his 2017 campaign.
Projection systems are bullish on a bounce back, but the Padres have quite a bit of ground to cover to replicate last year’s sixth-place finish in both wOBA and wRC+. They do get graded on a curve at home to boost the wRC+ numbers, as Petco Park is notoriously poor for offensive production, but this is a team that did a magnificent job of putting balls in play. They struck out 1.7% less often than any other team.
As such, they led the league in batting average and finished eighth in runs scored. Arraez will continue to help in the BA department, as he struck out in just 3.4% of his plate appearances after the May trade. The top half of the lineup, led by Arraez as a throwback type of leadoff hitter, should be great.
But, where things stand on the depth front cannot be ignored. Years of trading away prospects for proven superstars has left that cupboard bare at the upper levels of the minors. Ethan Salas is one of the game’s most impressive youngsters, but he doesn’t turn 19 until June and will likely start out at High-A after a rough 2024 season. Leodalis De Vries is a name you’d rather keep in mind for a dynasty fantasy league, as he’s another highly-touted 18-year-old who won’t help the big-league club this season.
Even with the hope that Merrill takes another big offensive leap and Bogaerts returns to his usual self, this is likely to be a less productive unit.
San Diego Padres Preview: Pitching
For now, this looks like a quality rotation. And I can’t say enough good things about the bullpen. The services of Joe Musgrove will not be available as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, but Cease, King, Pivetta, and the return of Yu Darvish make for a pretty strong Big Four. I also can’t quit a dude like Matt Waldron, as knuckleballers are so incredibly rare, especially ones that also throw fastballs in the low 90s.
Waldron’s massive fall from grace in the second half deserves a lot of attention, though. He had a 3.71 ERA in 106.2 innings and held the opposition to a .297 wOBA prior to the All-Star Break. He only threw 40 innings worth of batting practice in the second half with an 8.10 ERA and a .387 wOBA against. He only threw four innings over the final six weeks of the regular season after allowing 10 runs to the Twins on August 21.
It was Waldron’s first full MLB grind and there were obviously some extenuating physical circumstances, but he was not used in the postseason and it is fair to question his ceiling. And that’s a hard pill to swallow for the Padres because Darvish only has 40 starts over the last two seasons and has posted a FIP north of 4.00 in each of them. He was tending to personal matters last season, so maybe it wasn’t all health-related, but he does turn 39 in August with 1,706 MLB innings and more than 3,000 total innings on his arm.
Innings in Japan aren’t apples-to-apples with innings in the Majors, but that’s still a lot of work. Since the 1995 season, only 11 MLB pitchers have thrown more than 3,000 Major League innings. The only active one is Justin Verlander and we saw what happened to him last season.
Speaking of injury risks, King went from 104.2 innings in 2023 to 173.2 innings in 2024. He had 19 total MLB starts heading into last season and made 30. He was a part-time starter in the minors from 2019-21 before primarily working out of the Yankees bullpen. Workload increases are not guarantees for injury, but they don’t help the cause.
Even if Cease can be an ace again, as he was in ‘24 after a good, but not No. 1 starter good 2023, where his advanced metrics and peripherals far outweighed his ERA, this rotation has question marks. If Ruben Niebla and the rest of the coaches can get more from Randy Vasquez, Jhony Brito, and anybody else in the mix for starts, it’ll help a lot. The signing of Pivetta is a really big deal, as he gets an enormous park upgrade and also gets away from the AL East, which is bad for a high-efficiency strike-thrower with marginal command.
An elite bullpen helps a lot too. The top five in appearances had ERAs ranging from 2.77 to 3.99 and all of them are back, plus a full season of Jason Adam, who had a 1.01 ERA in 27 appearances after being acquired from the Rays. This team is going to lock down a lot of games with late-inning leads.
San Diego Padres Player to Watch
SP Yu Darvish
I cannot express how important Darvish is to the Padres this season. He’s a safety net for King in terms of the innings increase. He’s a way to replace Musgrove’s production. He’s a guy who has made 30+ starts in six of his MLB seasons. And he was still effective last season…
But there are red flags. His spin rates were down pretty much across the board, along with a decrease in velocity and an increase in Hard Hit%. He allowed the highest rate of pull-side contact in his career, benefiting greatly from a .245 BABIP against. All of that considered, he’s still a viable No. 2 or high-end No. 3 starter when healthy. Any innings he gives the Padres are valuable, but their ceiling will have a lot to do with how many of those innings he can provide.
One other player to watch is Adrian Morejon. Don’t be surprised if the Padres try to stretch him out and hope for a Garrett Crochet-esque breakout as a starter.
San Diego Padres Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
The more I sat and thought about the Padres, the more I liked the Under 87.5 when I wrote my first draft. King’s massive innings bump is something that I cannot ignore with Musgrove out for the season and Darvish’s advanced age. The ongoing ownership saga means that Cease is way more likely to be traded than signed to any sort of extension. There are not many movable contracts on this roster, but regardless of who wins the court battle, I think a payroll reduction is likely to be the goal.
That puts Arraez on the potential trade block as well. I think there’s a ton of talent here. I love the bullpen, but things are really messy within the org right now. Remember, this was a 50-49 team at the All-Star Break last year before figuring it out with a 43-20 second half. I don’t know that they have that type of run in them again if they don’t get off to a good start.
That being said, this went from a pick to a lean because the season win total moved down from 87.5 to 85.5 from the time I wrote my first draft until publish. I think this is a better number.
Lean: Under 85.5
