Hebrews 12:2

"We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne."

Friday- It was hard for me to decide what to write about today. A lot happens in 20-something baseball games, but with it only being an eighth of the season (just realized how disgustingly eighth is spelled...what word starts with two vowels, and is followed by four consonants?!?!?!), it's hard to put too much into any of it. Not to mention 14-14 isn't an overwhelmingly-inspiring start to the season. It's pretty on-par for my personal expectations, so I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm eager to see how this season plays out, but it's hard to put into words why that's the case.

I don't have an underlying suspicion that this year's squad is a sleeping giant, waiting to break out and go on an incredible World Series winning run. That's not to suggest that this team doesn't have incredible upside, because it does, but it would take a lot for that potential to be realized and harnessed in the 2024 campaign. Perhaps that's the best place to start trying to put into words why I still look at this team with joy, even after the worst display of pitching with a lead I've ever seen in yesterday's game against the second worst team in baseball (partially subjective, partially objective take), the Colorado Rockies.

Now being further removed from the disappointment of last season, I have a much different perspective on the Padres roster/front office decisions over the last few years. At the time the regular season was finished, and the Padres were at home while an 84-win division-rival was on a run to the National League-Pennant, I kept thinking the problem was the wrong moves and trades were made since the team broke out in 2020. Surprisingly enough, after looking back on Preller's trade history, it's hard to be overly critical of his recent moves, and easier to be critical of one's he made earlier in his tenure.

Juan Soto and Josh Hader are the two most notable acquisitions of recent memory, and even with neither guy still on the roster, it's hard to view either trade as a loss. Mixed-feelings within the fanbase on Josh Hader aside, he was dominant when he did pitch, and Soto was an absolute beast last season. On top of that, the trade that sent Soto to the Yankees this offseason has given an ultimate return of: Michael King, Dylan Cease, Kyle Higashioka, Jhony Brito and Randy Vasquez. The jury is still out on what kind of contributions these guys can give the squad during their respective tenure's, but it's enough value and potential to look at the situation with gleaming optimism. Yes, I know guys like CJ Abrams and Mackenzie Gore were moved in the Soto trade, but the Padres were trying to compete for a championship at the time, and while Abrams and Gore are coming into their own now, at the time having Soto was the better option. The loss of Hader doesn't produce as shiny of a return, but the Pads will still receive a compensation draft-pick for seeing him leave for Houston via free agency.

Other deals since the team broke out in 2020 include the acquisitions of: Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Blake Snell, Austin Nola and Adam Frazier. Two of these trades make me cringe a little. Those being the Nola and Frazier deals. In the Frazier deal, the Padres dealt away a few prospects to Pittsburgh, most notably Jack Suwinski, and the thought of having an additional guy capable of hitting 25 home runs in the lineup sounds pretty good.

On the contrary, Suwinski had largely struggled in his minor league career up until the season he was traded, which creates a tough decision for a general manager, in having to gage whether the player has made a genuine-lasting improvement to their game, or is just experiencing a good-spell at the plate. Preller likely guessed the latter and the deal was made. If you base this off of Frazier's time with the Padres, and Suwinski's production in 2023, this trade looks like a major let down. Stepping further back though gives us a different picture. The Padres already had Soto and Tatis Jr. as their corner outfielders last season, and with Suwinski not typically grading out well in center field, it's hard to say for sure how much better the team would have been. Sure, Fernando could have slid over to center hypothetically, but in the few spells he's had playing there he hasn't looked comfortable. This isn't to say that some sort of alignment amongst the three couldn't have yielded fruitful results, but it would be a stretch to suggest that this move single-handedly held the team back from reaching it's potential.

The same can be said for the Austin Nola deal. This trade saw Andres Munoz, Ty France and Taylor Trammell sent to Seattle. While Seattle's return has yielded better production, it's still hard for me to say with certainty that the Padres would have been a better team having kept them. Trammell is yet to have much impact at the major league-level, but France has had some solid production. A Cronenworth and France right-side of the infield sounds pretty good, but if that's the case, Xander Bogaerts becomes the most-likely subtraction you'd have to make (for an infield of: Machado, Kim, Cronenworth and France), and he was 20% better than France in OPS+ during the 2023 campaign. Hence my reasoning for not believing that this trade was the ultimate reason for the team not reaching its ultimate goal of winning a championship. Maybe the 2022 version of the Padres push the Phillies to a game 7 with France instead of Josh Bell? If anyone wants to make an argument on how the 2022 San Diego Padres would have won the World Series with Ty France at first base instead of Josh Bell, be my guest.

Of course there is still Munoz to look at in this deal, and he has certainly turned himself into an elite big league-closer. But the Padres' problem the past couple of seasons, and specifically the 2022 campaign, was the back end of the rotation, not the bullpen. During that postseason Darvish, Snell and Musgrove were electric, but it was the days Mike Clevinger or whoever else had to take the ball that were ugly (no disrespect to Mike Clevinger, who was a fantastic pitcher before multiple Tommy John surgeries appeared to catch up to him). All this to say, it would be hard to project another bullpen arm having been the missing piece from the '22 squad. Not that an elite bullpen isn't a big deal, but the impact it would have wouldn't be significant enough to have pushed that team over the top.

However Munoz does get me thinking about something interesting that I've discovered. Which is three of the best closers in baseball: David Bednar, Emmanuel Clase and Munoz were all at one point in the Padres organization, and traded. Yet, the Padres have still had a solid back-end of the bullpen for the years those guys have been good. Not the most directly related thing to this piece, but I just think it's weird how organizations produce certain positions in excess, but struggle to get other spots figured out. If any of those guys had stayed in the organization and been starters as opposed to relievers...man don't get me started...too complex of a rabbit hole.

I will use that tease of a rabbit hole to transition to the other part of Preller's trade history. The pre-2020 part. There are a few deals here that hurt. The first being the Padres acquisition of Wil Myers, where the Padres traded away Trea Turner. Yes, the same Trea Turner the Dodgers acquired when they swooped in and took Max Scherzer from the Padres in 2021, and now stars for the Phillies. And look, my mom loves Wil Myers, and I think to a degree it could be argued that this deal was an important one in terms of injecting some energy into a fanbase that had none for a while, but man did it come at the expense of pretty-darn good shortstop.

The next one that hurts was made in the same offseason, when Preller went and got Matt Kemp from the Dodgers and surrendered Zach Eflin and Yasmani Grandal. The former lead the American League in wins last season, and the latter is a two-time all-star at catcher. This all feels so ironic looking back, because I remember how much excitement there was that offseason when the team acquired Kemp and Myers, in addition to: Justin Upton, James Shields, Craig Kimbrel and Derek Norris.

Essentially the perfect irony for the importance of patience in sports. A fanbase so hypnotized by the spinning thought of relevancy we failed to recognize the potential of our existing prospects. As I type this I realize the biblical proportions of this metaphor and how heavily it ties to the verse I opened with. A perfect example of what we're trying to show at Rabbit Hole Sports, that life and lessons are all-around the sports world, and in this instance we see how even in sports, patience and suffering are worth it, and can even be joyful, when we see its purpose. Just like Jesus on the cross, who endured ultimate pain and suffering with joy, simply because he loved each and every one of us. If the Padres suffered through a few more miserable years from 2015-17, they could've been looking at a young core of Trea Turner, Max Fried and Zach Eflin, as well as one of the top catcher's in baseball in Yasmani Grandal, by 2018.

I don't say all this to implicate that the Padres fanbase should suffer, and we deserve to. No we've been through and are going through plenty of that. I write all of this to say: first, that down times are not the end of times. Second, that as time has gone on our front office has gotten better at keeping the right guys, and that should inspire faith in the team's direction, and lastly, and to a large degree the over-arching inspiration for this series, is to reveal how as a fanbase we shouldn't let the disappointment of the past (both recent and long term) control our outlook of what's to come. Yes we came up short of our goal in the past, but does that change what we are shooting for? No.

Another great way of approaching our relationship with God, sometimes we are going to come up short, but our goal remains the same, glorifying Christ Jesus, and we can get better at doing so by learning from our past shortcomings. We never know how God is going to make things work for us, and that includes our mistakes. This doesn't mean we should aim to make mistakes, but we shouldn't let the outcomes of our mistakes reshape who we are, and more importantly, who God is.

I mean shoot, look at the Houston Astros. They've been the model franchise in baseball for more than half of a decade now, but in the early 2010's they were a TERRIBLE team. So bad, they had the number one overall pick in the 2014 MLB Draft, and spent it on a San Diego local, Cathedral Catholic's Brady Aiken. The Astros quickly became concerned when a post-draft physical revealed inflammation on Aiken's elbow. This discovery lead Houston to offer Aiken a smaller signing-bonus, which he declined, and because of some intricate MLB Draft rules, this set off a chain of events that prevented the Astros from signing two of their additional draft picks. An absolute disaster of a situation for a team in the midst of a huge rebuild.

Well, after all the fallout, the Astros received the second overall pick in the 2015 MLB Draft as compensation for not signing Aiken, which they used to select Alex Bregman, who would turn into and still is a foundational piece for the team's run of excellence. Aiken on the other hand would never pitch in the majors.

With all this in mind, I say to you (and really myself too. I'm talking to myself as much as anyone in these I guess): maintain faith, and let's go San Diego!