The 2024 Major League Baseball season is a week old (plus two games for the Padres and Dodgers but for the sake of symmetry we’ll focus on the last seven days). Yes, that is an extremely small sample size.
But, also yes, this is baseball. Hyperbolic headlines are not just welcome, they’re expected and encouraged. So, after closely observing this edition of Padres baseball, here are five things we’ve learned 5.5% of the way into the season.
1) The Lineup is Much Deeper
A year ago, the Padres lineup wasn’t just top-heavy, it was outright incomplete. In 2023 the bottom third of the order was most often some combination of centerfielder Trent Grisham, catcher Austin Nola, and an infielder like Rougned Odor or Matthew Batten. This year that format has been somewhat mirrored with centerfielder Jackson Merrill, catcher Luis Campusano, and an infielder like Tyler Wade or Graham Pauley.
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At the start of last year Ha-Seong Kim was batting 7th before he slugged his way up the order so let’s compare the difference in production from center and catcher.
2023 Trent Grisham = .240, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 4 BB, 8 K
2024 Jackson Merrill = .240, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 3 BB, 6 K
2023 Austin Nola = .130, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 3 BB, 6 K
2024 Luis Campusano = .400, 1 HR, 7 RBI, 0 BB, 1 K
You may notice this year’s version is much, much better. Even the combination of Wade and Pauley have been on par with what Kim was giving them through the first week.
What’s really encouraging is this year’s bottom-of-the-order is only going to get better. Campusano is 25 years old. Merrill is only 20 and before Opening Day had never played a game above AA (ditto Pauley). The kids are panning out quite well.
The depth in the lineup is on display in how often they’ve put up crooked numbers. This year the Friars reached double digits in runs twice in their first six games. Last year it took 16 games to do that, and they had Juan Soto in the lineup. The 2024 offense has the look of a club that won’t go into the same week-long droughts that torpedoed their chances last year.
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2) Some All-Stars Have Found Themselves Again
Last year Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake Cronenworth did not look like themselves. This year they both look like All-Stars again because one looks like he used to and the other looks brand new.
A year ago, Tatis Jr. went through extended slumps we are not used to seeing. Many people wrote it off to missing 16 months with suspensions and injuries. But, when he showed up to Spring Training with a new leg kick, it suggested something different was happening. Sure enough, Tatis Jr. made an off-season adjustment by adding a higher leg kick, and for very good reason.
“It was all my dad’s idea. I feel like last year I was all over the place. I was drifting too much with my lower half, I wasn’t controlling it,” says Tatis Jr. “So, I feel like we’re getting into a way better-hitting position and the results are coming out.”
Here’s how it looked in 2023:
And the more exaggerated step this year:
So far, so good. Tatis has three mammoth home runs, a .606 slugging %, and almost as many walks as strikeouts.
A year ago, Cronenworth moved to 1st base and it seemed like he was trying to hit like a 1st baseman. That’s the land of Pete Alonso, Paul Goldschmidt, Freddie Freeman … sluggers who turn in 30-plus homers every year. That’s not Jake’s game. He’s a line-drive hitter who uses the whole field. In 2023 his barrel %, hard hit %, and exit velocity all dipped while his chase rate spiked. That means he was swinging at more bad pitches and hitting fewer balls on the nose.
Early returns this year are promising. Cronenworth is hitting more pitches on the sweet spot than he ever has, and he’s cut his strikeout rate by a full 7%. If both of these guys continue what they’ve done the first week this offense will be very, very good.
3) The Starting Rotation is Going to Be Goooooooooood
The Seoul Series messed a few folks up because apparently it’s tough to fly halfway around the world to play two games then fly back to deal with exhibition games before more games that count. That disturbs a pitcher’s routine, and the Padres arms are feeling it.
“The first time around the rotation I think everyone’s felt a little bit shaky,” says Musgrove. “A lot of that, I think, is the schedule we’ve been on. We had eight, nine days coming out of Spring Training to the start in Korea then another eight-plus days coming into our first start. Some guys had to go to Arizona and throw to come back.”
Musgrove, and Yu Darvish before him, didn’t really look like himself until his 3rd start of the year. Nobody else in the Friars rotation has made a 2nd start yet so they’re still playing catchup from the weird preseason, too.
“It threw me out of my rhythm for maybe, I don’t know, 10 days, something like that. Maybe a little longer with jetlag and all that,” says Dylan Cease, who was acquired in a trade with the White Sox the very day the Friars flew to Seoul.
Neither Cease not Michael King made it through five innings of their first San Diego starts. The good news here is they’re both likely going to settle in like Darvish and Musgrove and soon look like the pitchers we were expecting to see.
“At the end of the day I feel like, if you’re a winner, you just kind of find a way to make it happen so that’s the way I’ve been looking at it,” says Cease. “It was something I had to do and make the best of so here I am doing that.”
When all four frontline starters are going well this rotation has a lot more length than we saw in San Diego last year, even with reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell in the Bay Area.
4) The Bullpen is Still a Work in Progress
Robert Suarez has locked down the 9th inning (and at times some of the 8th inning). He’s converted all three of his save chances and two of them were more than three outs. That’s something we saw Josh Hader do exactly ONE time in 85 appearances with the Padres, and that one time was in the National League Division Series against the Dodgers.
Suarez has no problem throwing multiple innings or coming in when things are messy, and that has not gone unnoticed in San Diego’s clubhouse.
“Having a closer you can rely on for more than just three outs is huge to us here,” says Musgrove. “He’s always willing to take the ball and we’re grateful for him.”
The back end of the ‘pen is fine. The middle innings, however, have been shaky. Enyel Del Los Santos, Tom Cosgrove, Yuki Matsui, Stephen Kolek, Jhony Brito, Wandy Peralta, and Pedro Avila have been more or less interchangeable from the 5th through 8th innings as the Friars try to figure out matchups and who handles specific situations (like an 8th inning specialist) well. It’s not like the talent isn’t there. What the group is lacking is consistency.
Padres relievers are averaging about a strikeout an inning, but they’ve also allowed a league high-tying six homers and have somehow managed to hit six batters, far and away the most in the game. That tells me the stuff is good but they’re not always putting it where they want to. This group will continue to evolve, and perhaps add some different pieces, as the season unfolds.
5) Skipper Shildt Was the Right Choice
It’s too early to assess Mike Shildt as an in-game decision maker although so far it looks like he’s got a solid handle on it.
I could point to stats like San Diego’s .326 average with runners in scoring position. Last year they hit .241 in that situation, worst in the National League. But the bottom line is the clubhouse feels like it’s more together. The 2023 Padres had more talent with the likes of Juan Soto and Hader on board, but those guys were more interested in doing their thing the way they wanted to do them than being part of the team dynamic and it caused chasms in a clubhouse that never felt truly united.
Shildt seems to have everyone on this year’s club pulling in the right direction, and there’s something interesting to keep in mind. His teams have ALWAYS been better in the 2nd half of the season. Submitted for your approval:
- In 2018 he took over the Cardinals after Mike Matheny was fired with 69 games left in the season. St. Louis was one game over .500. Shildt almost got them into the playoffs with a 41-28 run that included a 22-6 record and an 8-game winning streak in August.
- In 2019 St. Louis went on a 20-5 tear that bridged August and September.
- In 2020, the COVID year, the Cardinals had to play 29 games in 22 days and miraculously went 16-13 under Shildt’s guidance.
- In 2021 St. Louis was 52-52 on July 31. They finished the year on a 38-20 rampage that included a franchise-record 17-game winning streak in September (and the Cards for some inexplicable reason fired him).
After their Opening Day win over the Giants at Petco Park, where they had to come from behind twice, Shildt laid out his philosophy thusly:
“We always talk about better as the game goes, better as the series goes, better as the season goes.”
It’s only been a week, but I see no reason to think that will not be the case in San Diego for 2024.
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