There is no doubting that the Dodgers have made themselves the juggernaut of the NL West and indeed all of baseball, winning back-to-back World Series and signing one of if not the top free agent every winter. The Rockies meanwhile don’t look close to shaking the label of worst team in baseball any time soon. The intriguing question for the division, therefore, is how the other three teams will place by the end of the season. For the first time in what feels like a long time, it looks like the Padres
may finally be displaced from their perch as the perennial runners-up to the Dodgers, and appear at risk of missing the playoffs altogether.
2025 record: 90-72 (2nd, NL West)
2026 FanGraphs projection: 80-82 (4th, NL West)
They’ve got an incredibly top-heavy lineup — Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill, and Xander Bogaerts are expected to put up over 16 wins between them and should carry the rest of the offense on most nights. However, they have a billion dollars tied up in Tatis, Machado, and Bogaerts. While that’s not the worst trio to have that kind of money invested into, Machado and Bogaerts are both 33 while Tatis is excellent yet not exactly the slugger he was pre-PED suspension. Furthermore, Merrill has to prove he can bounce back from a disappointing sophomore campaign and once again establish a ceiling as a perennial future All-Star.
If anything should happen to that quartet, be it injury, regression, or failure to rebound, production will drop off precipitously. No other hitter on the roster is expected to reach a 110 wRC+ while Merrill is the only projected starter under the age of 30. That being said, I don’t expect the offense to be the unit that holds the Padres down.
That distinction belongs to the starting pitchers. There is a scary amount of injury risk in the rotation. Michael King re-signed for three years and $75 million after missing most of the season to a nerve injury in his throwing shoulder. Nick Pivetta is coming off a career-high in innings and has several major injuries in his pitching arm’s past. Joe Musgrove is expected to start the season in IL after suffering a setback in his Tommy John rehab. Yu Darvish’s status is at the very least “unlikely to pitch” after conflicting reports of his retirement over the winter. King’s fellow former Yankee Randy Vásquez has been healthy but is downright allergic to strikeouts. Germán Márquez, Griffin Canning, and Walker Buehler were all brought in on one year prove-it deals, all three having undergone major surgery in the last two years. There is a very real possibility that none of the players mentioned hits 100 innings in 2026.
The saving grace is that the Padres should continue to have the No. 1 bullpen in MLB. Led by flame-throwing closer Mason Miller, almost every late inning San Diego lead is safe. Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon were both terrific in 2025 and project to be the same in 2026 while Jason Adam could be ready for Opening Day after his excellent 2025 was cut short by a torn quad.
All this being said, the biggest Padres story as Opening Day looms does not take place on the field but instead in the highest offices of the organization. Following former owner Peter Seidler’s untimely passing from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after the 2023 season, his brother and widow became embroiled in a toxic lawsuit over control of the team. His widow eventually dropped the bulk of her claims, but it created a pall over a team that should have been solely focused on its championship window. Seidler’s sons are now in the process of fielding bids for a team sale, with final bids expected to come in April as many around the industry predict that the franchise will top the record $2.4 billion that Steven Cohen paid to buy the Mets.
Thus, San Diego appears to be in somewhat of a no-man’s land as they await the finalization of the sale and the accompanying changes to the front office. They have one of the oldest rosters in baseball and shouldn’t expect any help to come from the minors given their status as the worst farm system in MLB, with only Kruz Schoolcraft cracking MLB Pipeline’s top-100 list at 88th overall. Given all this uncertainty about the short and long-term trajectory of the franchise, it’s understandable that the Padres were conservative when it came to external additions, preferring one-year deals near the league minimum for veteran players. Canning and Márquez joined the fold one one-year pacts and Buehler on a minor league deal with a spring invite while Nick Castellanos was claimed off waivers from the Phillies, San Diego only on the hook for the minimum portion of his salary. Even regarding King’s three-year deal, it has opt-outs, so if he fully gets back to his 2024 form, he’s probably out the door for a better dealafter 2026.
For Padres fans accustomed to their recent success, they could be in for a rude awakening in 2026. FanGraphs Depth Charts pegs them for a fourth-place finish with a losing record of 80-82 and just 22.3-percent playoff odds while PECOTA believes they will finish third at 81-81 with 30.6-percent playoff odds. It’s not that the teams around them have gotten better — though the Giants have made several marquee additions to the offense over the last two years — so much as the Padres being injury-riddled and a year older. It’ll be a three-way dogfight for second in the division, and even then that’s no guarantee of clinching a Wild Card.
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