Futures win lines, analytics models forecast 82 to 84 wins. Many other Padres teams beat projections; it’s time one of A.J. Preller’s clubs did it
When it comes to winning more games than oddsmakers project them to win, the A.J. Preller-era Padres almost never do it.
A dandy time for an outlier would be this season, which resumes Thursday when the globe-trotting Padres (1-1) face the rested San Francisco Giants (0-0) at Petco Park.
There’s urgency within this year’s Preller-built team to honor Peter Seidler, the beloved club owner who died in November at age 63.
Reaching the playoffs would be a fine start. Winning the World Series would lead to dancing in pot-holed streets.
It didn’t daunt Seidler that San Diego stands as one of Major League Baseball’s bottom-five media markets in size.
He raised the player payroll to third of 30 teams last year, but the Padres never got rolling until it was too late and fell short of the National League’s six-team playoffs at 82-80.
Adding to the urgency this year is that Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts and Joe Musgrove are 31, Yu Darvish is 37 and Jake Croneworth is 30.
A MLB player typically peaks between ages 26-28.
So the old dudes need to take their vitamins, eat their broccoli, drink San Diego’s lighter craft beers and show that baseball wisdom can offset Father Time — at least for awhile.
Padres President of Baseball Operations has built the Padres into a franchise that expects to win, which could ultimately contribute to his undoing
The very, very early returns for the ’24 Padres aren’t bad.
Their pitchers, for now, seem to have weathered the Seoul Series/MLB Money Grab that wrenched them out of the rhythms of spring training by taking them to South Korea, where new manager Mike Shildt’s club split two games with the favored Dodgers.
Twenty-year-old Jackson Merrill — one of Preller’s potential “surplus-value” generators who gets paid pennies compared to his veteran teammates — whacked fastballs flush. That’s the first big-league test a rookie hitter must pass.
Already giving the Padres a few toes up in wild-card races that could run nine-deep, injuries have slammed the Miami Marlins and Cincinnati Reds, deleted a Milwaukee Brewers frontline pitcher until 2025 and shut down an Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher who this offseason joined the team on an $80-million contract.
Even so, oddmakers aren’t very impressed by the Padres’ chances of finishing well above .500.
The team is pegged for just 83.5 victories on many betting lines — not good enough, in most years, to win the third wild card in MLB’s recently expanded playoff field.
Preller and the players can’t complain about the payroll’s size — not that they have or would. Despite an offseason shearing in the wake of the team’s regional-TV partner folding last summer, the FanGraphs.com-estimated outlay of $167 million stands 13th in baseball — although it trails seven NL clubs.
Preller and his scouts have made many sharp moves over their decade together. In recent years, they’ve excelled at drafting and trading. Signing Venezuelan teenager Ethan Salas 15 months ago already stands as a win.
But when it comes to outsiders’ enthusiasm juxtaposed against on-field performance, a weird, sharp contrast has defined the Preller Era, which began in August 2014, when Seidler and partner Ron Fowler hired the former Texas Rangers scouting executive on the strong recommendation of then-CEO Mike Dee.
If the Preller Era Padres were a stock and the twin engines of attendance and media-buzz drove share price and dividends, loading up on that stock would’ve paid off with several big windfalls.
AJ Preller is entering his 10th full season as the Padres’ chief baseball decision-maker.
Padres tickets, once again, are hot, hot, hot. The club projects 3.3 million in attendance. A year ago, when the announced count was 3.27 million, the Padres set a club record, trailing only the Dodgers.
But if on-field results in the regular season were the only measurement, investors in the Preller Era Padres would’ve been better off shorting the stock.
The franchise’s winning percentage under Preller? It’s .469, ranking 22nd in MLB.
Nor is the picture gorgeous when one visits the yearly results relative to oddsmakers’ futures win totals.
Of the eight full-season teams in the Preller Era, six fell short of their futures win line by four-plus victories.
Just one of the eight clubs won at least one more game than the betting line — the ‘17 team whose 71 victories topped the line by 4.5 wins.
Call it a push for the ’22 club whose 89-victory total represents Preller’s high-water mark. Exceeding by half-a-victory its futures total listed by SportsOddsHistory.com, the ‘22 squad earned the only playoff berth of Preller’s eight full-season teams. (Preller gets a large gold star for the ’22 playoff run, which ousted the favored Mets and Dodgers.)
If you endorse the law of averages as an underlying reason to believe the ‘24 Padres can or should win say, 86 to 92 games, well, there are wilder theories about this volatile sport. The Padres are bound to improve upon last year’s records of 2-12 in extra innings and 9-23 in one-run decisions.
Ordinarily, Padres history isn’t a daunting measuring stick.
Yet Padres history is now shouting — yes, I can hear it — that a Preller Era team is overdue to beat its regular-season odds by multiple victories.
Consider that nine of the 14 Padres teams overseen by GM Kevin Towers beat their futures line. Among those “overachievers” was the ’98 World Series team that exceeded its future line by 11.5 wins and the ’06 team that won 91 games and the franchise’s most recent West title. Its future line? 77.5 wins.
It’s unfair to expect any team to match the overachievement of the ’10 Padres club built by Towers and GM Jed Hoyer. But in trouncing their futures win total of 71.5 en route to 90 victories on a $38.6 million payroll, those Padres showed that Padres Land isn’t exempted from pixie-dust showers and magic-carpet rides.
So, it’s not unreasonable to request mild overachievement of ’24 Padres relative to forecasts that also include prominent analytics systems — 83 wins and 82 wins, per FanGraphs and PECOTA.
Seidler showed extraordinary faith in Preller, whose contract runs through at least 2026.
As Padres players wear uniform patches honoring Seidler and fans once again fill up the downtown ballpark, this year would be a wonderful time for a well-paid big-league club and much-praised farm system to deliver on it.
A.J. Preller has made trades with 27 big-league teams as he enters his 10th year as the Padres’ general manager
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