The San Diego Padres offense has given fans whiplash this season with their inconsistent performances throughout the year. From winning streaks and long runs of good offense, to losing streaks and equally long runs of bad offense.
Lots of discussion has occurred about the Padres lineup not reflecting player trends or handedness of the pitcher being faced. Manager Mike Shildt seems to favor sticking with the same basic lineup no matter the circumstances.
A discussion of the Padres lineup that reflects player performance or the pitcher being faced is always an entertaining subject for baseball fans. The following is a lineup based on the numbers so far this season, as well as what it could look like if you changed it up depending on the handedness of the starting pitcher.
Conventional thinking regarding who hits where in the batting order has changed since the onset of analytics. If you consult a search engine or Open AI to assist in deciding who should hit where, the results will be different than conventional wisdom. All will be included for this comparison.
Padres vs right-handed starters
Padres vs left-handed starters
The AI option used for this discussion was ChatGPT. As a disclaimer, I got different results using different prompt language so this was just for the purpose of compare and contrast.