By: Andrew Lu
The San Diego Padres have never won a World Series before, but they hope to now. The team traded for Juan Soto, Josh Hader, and a bunch of other established superstars – but they’re now broke. Thankfully, this season will be quite sensational for Padres fans.
A team was established in 1969; they were just another expansion team that lost 110 games. After five decades, they had a few hall-of-Famers but no World Series. Then, after aggressive spending, the team finally got their first World Series, with Juan Soto leading the way.
That story conveniently plays out for the Washington Nationals. In 2019, the team, led by Soto, won their first World Series. Now, the San Diego Padres are hoping for a sequel of their own.
The Padres are close expansion cousins of the Montreal Expos, who eventually moved to Washington. The team has never been close to a title, and their last scheduled World Series was Oct. 25, 1998. But, they were swept. The scheduled game was never played on that day, but miraculously, Soto was born that day.
Soto is now on the Padres, and he’s 23 years old. And just by seeing him play for a few seasons, people can be sure that he’s going to be up there with the all-time greats soon.
Soto is that good. That’s why he could turn down a $440 million deal from the Nationals. That’s why he can command a bunch of expensive players from the Padres that shook the league’s Tuesday trading deadline.
Washington sent Soto and Josh Bell for first baseman Luke Voit and five inexperienced players. None of the five players have ever played a full season in the majors before.
The trades and deals leave Washington with almost no one on their championship team. All they’ve got are discouraging reminders of bad trading and no potential left. Stephen Strasburg makes $35 million a year and can’t escape injury. Patrick Corbin, who makes $23.3 million, is 15-38 since the World Series. And outfielder Victor Robles, once a rookie of high potential, is a flop.
The Padres are in big trouble, too. They won’t be able to sustain the amount of money they’re spending – and the team will fall apart sooner or later. And even despite their spending, they’re not the best team in the league.
The Padres traded for third baseman Manny Machado, marking the first player to have $300 million in a single deal in the league. But then, they gave even more money to shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., a $340 million deal for 14 years. Tatis was only 17 years old when the Padres stole him from the White Sox in 2016.
The deal for Soto and Bell wasn’t the only big headline. Then, there was Josh Hader, a four-time all-star closer, who arrived from Milwaukee last Monday. Finally, the versatile Brandon Drury (.274 with 20 home runs) joined from Cincinnati on Tuesday.
Other teams bravely traded for a few players before the deadline.
But nobody was as desperate as the Padres, who waited so long for this moment. They’ve endured a nine-year losing streak, and for the first time since 1998, in 2020 they won a game in the playoffs.
Last year, the Padres started with promise, then flopped. They were 18 games over .500 on Aug. 10. And the Padres were four games under by the season’s end. They fired Manager Jayce Tingler and signed Bob Melvin – a three-time Manager of the Year winner.
But still, Tatis has a broken wrist, and he hasn’t been able to play. But Melvin put the team in a playoff position with a record of 58-46 last Monday. Then, he hasn’t added Soto, Bell, or Tatis to the active lineup. So this means that the Padres might be able to play big this year.
“Offensively, especially without Tatis, we’ve been challenged. It’s a credit to Bob and the staff and the players in this room that they’ve put us in a position to decide that, hey, we’ve got a team that can play deep into October,” said Preller, a high-impact prospect.
ThePadres have been challenged by other teams: The Dodgers, Yankees, Astros, Mets, and Braves all are contenders for the World Series. And the Padres are desperate to wedge themselves between them.
These five teams have something that the Padres don’t have, and that’s (at least) a world championship title. I guess we can say that this is another chance for Soto to lift another team to their first parade.