I think three factors have caused issues for the padres. The WBC, hero ball, and the rule changes have caused issues for the padres. The rule changes have been really affecting all of our players.

1. Rule changes

Yu darvish, luis garcia, suarez, manny, and juan soto all take their sweet time getting in the box. Manny in clutch moments last year loved to take slow deep breaths to calm his nerves down before getting into the box. Juan loves to talk before his plate appearances. Garcia, has a long routine before pitching, yu darvish is self explanatory, suarez also takes his time between pitches.

1. WBC

The WBC did not allow the guys to adjust to the rule changes. A lot of new faces in the club and going to the WBC probably lowered team chemistry. This forced them to figure it all out during the season and not in the spring. Figuring it out during the season and being surrounded by boos made it harder. After the ASB, the padres offense finally woke up but our pitching collapse.

1. Hero Ball

This is self explanatory. Swinging for the fences, always looking to pull the ball for HRs, playing selfish baseball and not trusting other teammates. The pressure to win got to these guys heads. I think in the offseason, a lot of our players need to figure out ways to stay calm in the moment. The pitch clock makes it difficult but I think it can be done. The underwater training that musgrove, tatis, and campusano did is a great way to learn to be calm in high leverage situations.

Reasons for optimism:

Like I said, the offense started to click after the ASB but due to our starting pitching injuries and bullpen arms, we lost. Tatis has been playing great considering he came back from 3 surgeries. Look at acuña last year. Terrible numbers coming back from injuries and many people thought that the ACL injury will be the downfall in his career. He finally now had a full offseason and is the 2023 NL MVP. Tatis can now train instead of going to rehab and his numbers are better than acuña’s post surgery. The ceiling will be high for tatis. Xander is making contact again like he did in April and manny is starting to figure it out. Juan soto is hitting oppo instead of only focusing on pulling and walking. Soto and xander still needs to adjust to petco but their numbers look good. Our run differential gives me a lot of hope. I see this team being the 2022 Orioles but with more talent. Only concern I have is our pitching depth but Ruben Niebla has proven to change the trajectory of pitchers.

I think we need to sign Soto and hopefully sign kim. If we sign kim, we need to convert campy to 1B so he can play there when salas eventually gets called up. That will give us options to trade jake for SP if jake continues to struggle. And we can have a bench piece play 1B when campy catches. If merrill plays well in the MLB, I am perfectly okay with letting Kim go.

Lets KTF and hope next year will be our year.