Consider the 2024 San Diego Padres. Coming off a modest 82 wins last year, having traded away star slugger Juan Soto, and presumably facing the free-agent loss of reigning National League Cy Young winner Blake Snell, expectations should be somewhat low, no? Yes, the recent blockbuster trade for ace right-hander Dylan Cease will help plug the hole left by Snell, but in a division that houses the mighty Dodgers, reigning NL-champion Diamondbacks, and much-improved Giants, the Soto-less Pads surely don't have much hope, right?
Despite all of the above, that may not be a safe assumption. For a number of reasons – and one very important reason – the Padres under first-year manager Mike Shildt may actually see their lot improve despite the fact that Soto, one of the best hitters in baseball, is now a Yankee. Let's explore.
The single biggest factor is that they were terrifically unlucky in 2023. This is that aforementioned "very important reason" – the most important reason, actually. Yes, the Padres, despite a star-stuffed roster and what was a sky-scraping payroll at the time, wound up a mere two games over .500. Really, though, they deserved a better fate.
First and foremost, they out-scored their opponents on the season by 104 runs. That kind of healthy run differential is expected to yield a record of 92-70, which would've been good enough to land the Padres in the postseason with relative ease. It's rare that a team undershoots its "deserved" record by such a huge margin, but the 2023 Padres pulled it off, to their eternal chagrin.
If run differential does a good job of stripping away luck and randomness from a team's record, then a thing called third-order standings, developed by Clay Davenport, strips away additional layers of luck and randomness from run differential. The Padres last season had a third-order record, rounded off, of 90-72, which, again, would've been enough to put them in the playoffs by a comfy margin.
The purpose of all of this isn't to lament the Padres' bad fortune in 2023. Rather, it's to demonstrate that the club's baseline for 2024 is quite a bit higher than their actual record would lead you to believe. "Deserved" records based on run differential and third-order outputs do a much better job of projecting a team's record in the following season than the team's actual record does. So thinking of the Padres as a .500-ish team that lost Soto doesn't give you an accurate snapshot of who they are going into 2024.
Very much related to this is that the things that drove that poor luck in 2023 don't figure to persist in 2024. The Padres were 9-23 in games decided by one run, and history proves that a team's record in one-run affairs is driven by randomness. That figures to correct itself in 2024. Speaking of randomness, the Padres were 2-12 in extra-inning games. This isn't because of any kind of roster flaw. It's that the "automatic runner" setup that now prevails invites roulette-wheel levels of randomness into games that go beyond nine innings. On other levels, Padres hitters saw their production drop in clutch situations, which, again, isn't something that's going to persist.
It's more than just the realistic expectation that the Padres' luck will improve in 2024. First, there's Fernando Tatis Jr. The Padres' young star missed all of 2022 and the opening weeks of 2023 because of a combination of an injury and a PED suspension. In addition to some lost playing time last season, Tatis also surely dealt with rust at the plate as he worked to overcome the long layoff and also adapt to full-time duty in right field – an adjustment of note for the former shortstop. (If you look at batted-ball quality, Tatis was also quite unlucky at the plate in 2023.)
Along similar lines, Xander Bogaerts, who's shifting from short to second base this season, saw his production sapped by a chronic left-wrist issue. After receiving a cortisone shot in July, however, he found his vintage level at the plate. Bogaerts' wrist is healthier now, and don't be surprised if he produces more in line with what the Padres expected of him when they inked him to a $280 million pact. Elsewhere, Jackson Merrill, whom CBS Sports ranks as one of the top prospects in all of baseball going into the upcoming season, is in line to be the Padres' regular in center field, perhaps as soon as Opening Day. Center was one of the Padres' weak spots last season, and Merrill's contact skills from the left side should help matters.
On the pitching front, Michael King, acquired from the Yankees as part of the Soto whopper, has swing-and-miss stuff and a balanced and well-paired repertoire – fronted by a sinker and sweeper – that should allow him to thrive as a back-end member of the rotation. As for the aforementioned Cease, Snell's de-facto replacement in the San Diego rotation, he still has frontline stuff, and his BABIP (what's this?) of .331 and FIP (what's this?) of 3.72 from last season both strongly suggest better days are ahead on the run-prevention front. Getting away from Guaranteed Rate Field (and the White Sox's defense) and into Petco Park will also help matters. While it's unlikely Cease will match Snell's excellence from last season, let's also note that Cease indeed authored a Cy Young-worthy campaign in 2022.
Add it all up and, yes, the Padres, as strange as it sounds, may be poised to improve upon their record from a season ago despite sending the superstar likes of Soto to the Bronx this offseason. Such are the blessed complications of This, Our Baseball.
