PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 The Padres arrived at the Peoria sports complex in February 2023 with a swagger befitting a team that had advanced to the National League Championship Series the previous fall and had spent the winter spending money.<\/p>\n
And then they scattered.<\/p>\n
Nine of the 26 players who would be on the Padres\u2019 opening-day roster that year departed in early March to participate for their respective countries in the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we had pretty much every player in the starting lineup gone,\u201d Jake Cronenworth recalled with some hyperbole.<\/p>\n
When the last of those players returned from the WBC, there was less than a week remaining in spring training.<\/p>\n
The Padres began the \u201823 season with two losses, did not get above .500 until the last day of April, spent most of the year with a losing record and finished 82-80 and out of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The WBC is not why the Padres were so monumentally disappointing in 2023, and no one in the organization has said it was. That team had chemistry issues and various other shortcomings. But the time apart at the start absolutely did not help a team with a significant number of new players jell off the field and get ready on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you asked all of us, we weren\u2019t prepared for what that might entail that last week or 10 days of spring training,\u201d said Padres manager Craig Stammen, who was in camp as a reliever that spring. \u201cAnd who knows? Say we had a great week to 10 days, would we have gotten off to a better start? We don\u2019t know that. However, I think learning from that \u2014 Manny (Machado) learning from it, Xander (Bogaerts) learning from it, all the guys that played in that series learning will help.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres must hope so, because a similar exodus is occurring again.<\/p>\n
By Monday, at least seven players expected to be on this season\u2019s opening-day roster will have departed camp to prepare for the WBC.<\/p>\n
Machado, right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. and reliever Wandy Peralta are headed to Santo Domingo to train with the Dominican Republic team. Bogaerts\u2019 Netherlands team will train in Florida. Closer Mason Miller will join the United States across the Valley in Scottsdale. Relievers Alek Jacob and Nick Marinaccio will also stay local but be in Mesa with Team Italy. Yuki Matsui was scheduled to leave Sunday for Japan, but that is in doubt after he suffered an adductor strain on Thursday.<\/p>\n
There is no getting around the fact it is not ideal to have key contributors miss preparation time with the rest of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you can do a better job with it, for sure, than we did in \u201823,\u201d Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said this offseason.<\/p>\n
The mere understanding that they did not meet the challenge seems like a significant step.<\/p>\n
The Padres of 2023 were in uncharted territory.<\/p>\n
Previous WBC tournaments did not involve too many Padres major leaguers, and the Padres had not been considered contenders in a WBC year since the inaugural tournament in 2006.<\/p>\n
The 2023 Padres were full of stars, many of them new to playing together. Additionally, that was the year the pitch clock was being introduced throughout Major League Baseball. It was not used in the WBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like our team was not even there,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cIt felt like we were practicing with not even our team. \u2026 The pitch clock was something that those guys didn\u2019t get enough reps with and weren\u2019t really prepared for.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is also impossible not to deduce that some of what makes this go-round less worrisome for the Padres is the way their camp is structured. The efficiency and focus on details that began under Mike Shildt has continued this year, and it is in vivid contrast to the camp run by Bob Melvin\u2019s staff in 2023.<\/p>\n
Melvin\u2019s approach to the clubhouse was guided by a belief his players were professionals, and he mostly left them to create their own culture. Players were generally appreciative of his trust, but they were also sometimes essentially rudderless.<\/p>\n
\u201cBob, that was his kind of thing \u2014 let the guys figure it out,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what players appreciated about him. However, I think if you asked all of us, we weren\u2019t prepared for what that might entail at (the end) of spring training.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is not to put the failings all on Melvin.<\/p>\n
The \u201823 Padres were dominated by the strong personalities of Machado and Juan Soto, who were both in the WBC that spring.<\/p>\n
The leadership structure and culture of the club has evolved fairly radically in the past three years. Not only has Stammen, like Shildt, been intentional about proactively addressing potential issues, the running of the clubhouse has also become more crowdsourced.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of it is just the camaraderie and the work as a group,\u201d Joe Musgrove said of what was missing in \u201823. \u201cAnd especially when a lot of your leaders and big vocal guys in the clubhouse aren\u2019t around. I don\u2019t think we had many people step up to fill their shoes during that time. So I think this is a year where we\u2019re really looking heavily at Jackson (Merrill) and Gavin (Sheets), (Michael) King to step up in these times and kind of take on more of that role. \u2026 It\u2019s a perfect chance where they might feel uncomfortable doing it with those guys in the room, here\u2019s two-and-a-half weeks to test run it, go take some chances, be a little more vocal, use your voice. And those guys have been around for a little while. They\u2019ve done it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience of the players leaving for the WBC is something the Padres are banking on as well, since they are among the most important players on the team.<\/p>\n
Machado, in particular, has spoken of getting geared up for the WBC and then crashing. He came into camp with the aim of preparing for the season as usual, knowing the adrenaline will kick in during the WBC.<\/p>\n
And then \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, when I get back, kind of keep that intensity going,\u201d Machado said. \u201c\u2026 (Then) get back here and kind of, you know, switch the gears on getting ready for a long season and kind of keep that energy going that we bring from the WBC.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 The Padres arrived at the Peoria sports complex in February 2023 with a swagger befitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,853,4,43,137,18,4339,4338,185,3546],"class_list":{"0":"post-585429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-padres","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sandiegopadres","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116110862516588595","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}