The first month of the 2024 season has been anything but boring for the San Diego Padres. Already they've had a trip overseas, some huge comebacks and equally disappointing collapses. So far, they've come out on the wrong side of .500 at 14-16.
It's still awfully early, so the Padres have ample time to turn this thing around. But in Major League Baseball, it's never a good idea to take a full month to figure out your identity as a ballclub. It feels as though the Friars are still doing so, and it's costing them valuable time in what's sure to be a tight playoff race in the National League.
With an enthralling mix of star talent and thin depth, these Padres are counting on everyone to fill the perfect role for this ship to run smoothly. Those that aren't performing are easily exposed by that very lack of depth. So the following players will need to make big strides, and soon, if San Diego wants to maintain a winning record going forward.
Xander Bogaerts
If anyone on the Padres needed a good April, it was Xander Bogaerts. He was entering Year 2 of an albatross 11-year contract and had just been moved from his native shortstop to second base, where his value became more dependent on his offensive output. So far, the results have been resoundingly negative.
Bogaerts is last among qualified Padres hitters with a .567 OPS, which includes a slugging percentage of .288, better than only 20 hitters across the league. He's not hitting for power and is pulling far too many ground balls. For a 31-year-old still owed $225 million after this season, per Spotrac, those are major concerns.
Respected by all across the game, Bogaerts is a true professional and has said all the right things throughout the course of his slump. He has achieved so much for his age and is not treating this second stage of his career as if it's a picnic, telling the press this offseason he wanted to win his third ring at his third different position.
But, unfortunately, production still matters. So far, Padres fans have been disappointed with Bogaerts fairly consistently. It's up to him to change that narrative with his performance.
Fernando Tatís Jr.
It's not entirely fair to put Fernando Tatís Jr. on this list, because he has had his moments this season. He leads the team in home runs with six and one of those was the team's signature moment of the season, completing a comeback from 8-0 down against the Chicago Cubs. But on the whole, whether justly or unjustly, the Padres expect more from their young superstar.
Tatís is maintaining a .771 OPS to this point, eerily similar to last season's .770 mark. The year wasn't viewed as a full-on disappointment — after all, Tatís had missed a full season to injuries and a PED suspension, but the world had seen him hit 42 home runs with a .975 OPS in 2021. This was supposed to be the season Tatís returned to that peak level and. right now, he's not quite reaching it.
And because the Padres lost Juan Soto in the offseason, this team needs Tatís to be a true difference maker in the lineup. His expected batting average and slugging percentage are both well above their actual numbers, so there's some positive regression to be expected soon. But the sooner the better, because he's mired in a mini-slump right now and the Padres have lost four of six this week, a sign that as El Niño goes, so does this offense.
Joe Musgrove
Sticking with the theme of well-respected veterans who know they're not getting the job done when it counts, we have another struggling 31-year-old in Joe Musgrove. With a 6.94 ERA and MLB-leading 45 hits and nine home runs allowed, Musgrove simply hasn't found a groove yet in 2024, and that groove can't come soon enough for the Friars.
There's a good deal to be concerned about in Musgrove's Baseball Savant data. His four-seam fastball, which has been wildly effective for much of his San Diego tenure, is getting plastered, generating a .462 batting average and .962 slugging percentage to this point. He has allowed 13 barrels already in 35 innings, only one fewer than he allowed all of last season. His strikeout rate has dipped over 7 percentage points from a year ago, and he's even walking more batters than he'd like in an ideal world.
On the whole, the Padres are slightly below average as a pitching staff, but this early in the season, a lot of that is due to Musgrove by himself. The rest of the team's regular starters all have ERAs of 4.18 or below, while the bullpen is 14th in fWAR even with the loss of Josh Hader.
Musgrove has been worth -0.7 wins to the Padres this season, easily the worst on the team of any position. The team expects him to turn it around because his track record is so good in the long haul, but everyone is prone to a down year. I Musgrove isn't the rotation anchor San Diego is counting on him to be, the team has no hope of achieving any of its postseason goals.
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