For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the San Diego Padres.

Batters

The Padres have an elite set of offensive talent in Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and the rest of the assorted cast. Then again, they need to be, because as the team is currently designed, the pitching is a massive sinkhole. Soto leads this group, and after an underwhelming Padres debut in 2022, he hit about as expected in 2023. Tatis Jr. turned out to be an excellent corner outfielder and stayed healthy, and while Machado had some ups and downs and will play some DH in 2024 due to his elbow injury, he’s unlikely to be a problem for the Friars.

The next tier of hitters is as good as the best players on some teams. Ha-Seong Kim made a great case for 2021 being his outlier season, not 2022. Xander Bogaerts still ended up with a season right about where reasonable expectations where, and Trent Grisham is at least average in center field, though he should be banned from bunting on his own volition. If the catcher pairing and Jake Cronenworth are the weakest parts of your lineup, you’re doing a pretty good job.

That being said, there are serious concerns on the horizon. Soto is a free agent at the end of the year, which is why he’s coming up a lot in trade talks. That free agency is quite short on offensive talent just increases the incentives for the Padres to trade him for pitching help and/or farm system restocking. A lot of the organization’s depth has been whittled away over recent years, so the team is susceptible to injuries, and while the farm system has bounced back a bit — it was pretty depleted from myriad trades — many of the best prospects aren’t likely to be options over the next few years. One exception is Jackson Merrill, though with Bogaerts and Machado signed to the end of time, it’s uncertain where he will break into the majors.

Pitchers

Here’s where there should be many furrowed brows. At one point a few years ago, the Padres were entering the season with seven or eight viable starting pitchers, but it’s hard to envision that being even close to the case this upcoming spring. Joe Musgrove is their best pitcher now, but that comes with a pretty significant “but” in the form of a shoulder injury that ended his season prematurely and kept him from participating in the team’s doomed last-gasp run to sneak into the playoffs. Yu Darvish, meanwhile, is showing signs of decline, which is unsurprising for a pitcher who will be 38 by the end of the next season.

It gets cloudier from here, to be kind. ZiPS projects only six Padres with an ERA+ above 100, and the two best of them, Blake Snell and Josh Hader, are no longer actually employed by the team. The rest of the rotation is a bevy of sixth starters, better suited to be Plan Bs and not the guys you actually want to start the season in the rotation. ZiPS is quite intrigued by Robby Snelling, but he’s realistically a year or so away, with Dylan Lesko a little farther.

It’s not hard to see why the Padres have been interested in trading Soto if it gets them pitching help. Unlike the vast majority of franchises in history, their collapsed cable deal likely means that there’s a lot of truth to the Padres being at their limits on how much they can invest in the team. With revenues uncertain and some ownership changes coming given the recent passing of Peter Seidler, it doesn’t strike me as likely that they’ll spike a $300 million payroll. And to sign the pitchers in free agency that they need, that’s probably what they would have to do with Soto on the roster.

ZiPS wants nothing to do with the bullpen. Enyel De Los Santos and Tom Cosgrove project as the best of the lot, but neither bring to the table what Hader did. The computer was always “in” on Robert Suarez, going back to the moment he was signed, but it’s a bit worried now, as an elbow injury and losing a third of your strikeout rate are inauspicious signs. Even if Suarez isn’t a problem, the rest of the bullpen looks to be, and it’s not just ZiPS being mean; Steamer is only slightly gentler on the Pads.

Right now, the Padres look like a high-80s win team with a decently high ceiling if they get some uncharacteristically good fortune in 2024. The future of this team remains complicated. Those answers will not be known when this article goes live.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

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