State of the Padres: Halfway through the season

Every so often, I like to take a step back and try to analyze each part of the San Diego Padres roster separately and without the bias of what happened in the last few days. I call these "State of the Padres" posts, I did a few at the previous Substack location and did one here right before the start of the season.

It's not quite the MLB Trade Deadline and it's also not quite the MLB All-Star break, but the Padres have 70 games left in their 162-game season, so I feel like writing about them.

Infield

3B Manny Machado
SS Xander Bogaerts
2B Jake Cronenworth
1B Luis Arráez

No changes here from what we expected, really. Maybe Arráez has been a little worse than I thought he'd be, but Machado (who has practically matched his last two seasons already) has been better.

Leaving the contract stuff aside, this is a good (not great) group.

Outfield

LF ???????
CF Jackson Merrill
RF Fernando Tatis Jr.

I honestly could not figure out who to put down as the team's starting Left Fielder to this point. Baseball Reference still has it listed as (current free agent) Jason Heyward. FanGraphs has it listed as (current Padres DH) Gavin Sheets.

Sheets (31 appearances in LF) has passed Heyward (30 appearances in LF) and Brandon Lockridge (28 appearances in LF), but all that tells me is that the team doesn't really have a Left Fielder.

Tatis is having maybe his best year since missing the 2022 season, but it doesn't seem likely that he's going to be the 40+ HR hitter that we envisioned him being again after he tore through the league back in April. That being said, if he did get that hot again (even for just a month) during the second half of the season, it would make his end-of-season numbers look fantastic.

Jackson Merrill is having a sophomore slump. It's fine. Pitchers have figured out the most effective way to attack him, plus he's had a stop-and-start season where he always seems to be working his way back from an injury (first the hamstring, then a concussion). He currently has an abysmal .423 OPS since returning from said concussion, which is a worrying sign itself. Long term, I'm not worried about him. Short term, I think he could use a few days away from baseball during the All-Star break.

Catcher

Elias Díaz
Martín Maldonado

Here's what I wrote before the start of the season:

Right off the bat, I hate this. I despise this. This feels like the old days when sicko Padres fans would fight for who should be the starter between Austin Hedges and Francisco Mejía except without the potential for either of them to get better.

Díaz is 34 years old and the only thing that made his hitting "below average" instead of "unplayable" was that he spent five years playing half of his games at Coors Field. Opponents are already circling his spot in the lineup because they're going to use it to get out of jams.

Maldonado is a different thing. He might actually be Austin Hedges. I remember Astros fans ripping their hair out trying to get him out of the lineup because he hasn't hit above .200 in a full season since before COVID and the Astros players and coaches saying that he was the leader of the team that had to be out there. I look forward to living through that specific brand of hell again.

If I had to guess, I would put money on neither of these guys being the Padres' starting catcher by June.

Hey, guess who was right about everything except the last sentence? This guy.

I know we stopped talking about the Padres' unwillingness to spend money after they signed Nick Pivetta, but it definitely still feels like A.J. Preller and the Padres front office tried to cheap out on LF (miss you, Profar) & Catcher and it has bitten them both times.