Fangraphs says the Padres will win just over 79 games and will open the season with a 21.6% shot at making the postseason. Baseball Prospectus\u2019 PECOTA projections have the Padres pegged for 81.1 wins. Ceasars is setting the over\/under at 83.5 wins.<\/p>\n
So a simulation of the Padres\u2019 2026 season via \u201cMLB The Show 26\u201d amounting to an 82-win effort that misses a wild-card spot by two games makes sense.<\/p>\n
At least as the Padres are presently constructed.<\/p>\n
Which is what nobody can predict:<\/p>\n
What will Padres baseball ops chief do to push his team into the postseason a third straight year, especially if he gets a cash boost from a new owner looking to make a splash with the fanbase?<\/p>\n
Of course, gamers on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch can take matters into their own hands in franchise mode if they believe they need more punch.<\/p>\n
And they do based on a simulation run by The San Diego Union-Tribune.<\/p>\n
Fernando Tatis Jr. will win a third Gold Glove in right field and is an All-Star reserve alongside Manny Machado but 17 home runs for Tatis is well on the light side of the scale even if paired with 31 steals and an .893 OPS. Machado leads the team with 28 homers in his Age 33 season and Jackson Merrill rebounds with a 25-homer season, but that duo both finish with an OPS just south of .800 and the supporting cast \u2014 from an injury-plagued year from Ram\u00f3n Laureano (a .562 OPS in 58 games) to inconsistency from newcomer Nick Castellanos (17 homers but a .709 OPS) to more lack of production from catchers (Freddy Fermin and Luis Campusano combine for 11 homers) \u2014 is not enough to make up for shortcomings on the mound.<\/p>\n
Rather on the mound to start games as Mason Miller and Jason Adam are All-Stars and Miller, Adam, Adri\u00e1n Morej\u00f3n and Jeremiah Estrada all have sub-3.00 ERAs out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n
A 10-win season (3.17 ERA) from Nick Pivetta would be both a good season and step back from last year\u2019s breakout. Michael King also winning 10 games while throwing 150 innings (3.97 ERA) also falls short of what the Padres need, while a Joe Musgrove starting the season on the injured list is behind the eight-ball if he\u2019s going to live up to MLB The Show\u2019s projection of a 3.90 ERA over 143 innings.<\/p>\n
Griffin Canning turns in solid work (140 innings, 4.41 ERA), but Randy V\u00e1squez (4.95 ERA) does not take an expected step forward, Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez (4.88 ERA) still looks like he\u2019s pitching half his games at Coors Field and an injured Walker Buehler is a non-factor all year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s enough for the Padres to remain in wild-card contention all season, but they are 15\u00bd games behind the Dodgers at the All-Star break and begging for Preller to make a move at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
So maybe that\u2019s the real takeaway from an \u201cMLB The Show\u201d simulation of the season, as well as the rest of the projections and odds making the rounds as opening day approaches.<\/p>\n
The Padres are good enough to contend.<\/p>\n
What happens the rest of the summer depends on what new owners allow Preller to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fangraphs says the Padres will win just over 79 games and will open the season with a 21.6%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,853,4,18,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-640682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-san-diego-padres","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116284336876209712","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640682","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=640682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}