When a ballclub plows a quarter of a billion dollars into the player payroll, as Padres leaders have this year, it's the same as shouting out a request.
Fellas, the team's investors are saying, bring home the World Series trophy.
So far, deep into the regular season, the Padres have accomplished what was realistically expected of them. They're tracking toward about 90 wins, as forecast by oddsmakers, analytical systems and a few newspaper scribes, even after Fernando Tatis Jr. was projected to miss the season's first four months. The club's primary engines, correctly forecast as well, have been the starting pitchers and Manny Machado. Bob Melvin seems the upgrade he was expected to be, commanding respect of the vets and green-lighting a six-man rotation that paid dividends.
Now, however, the Padres have reached the Kilimanjaro leg of the trek.
What will it take to win 13 games in the postseason, fulfilling the $233 million payroll (per MLB's numbers) and inspiring a parade down 19 Tony Gwynn Drive?
For starters, they'll have to seize the second or third wild card, which means holding off either the Brewers or the Phillies in the final 14 games.
If that happens — and remember, the Padres hold the tiebreaker over Milwaukee, which recently shut down two starting pitchers — the postseason guides to this Padres team can be found in the franchise's previous squad to post a winning, 162-game season. We speak of the 2010 Padres, who fell a whisker short of the playoffs but — and here's the rub — squeezed every drop out of their talent in a 90-victory journey that still shimmers like a hallucination.
If the 2022 Padres max out as the 2010 team did, they won't be pushovers for anyone. Based on the premise this team is much more talented, that's the ticket, and it's grounded in this reality: Several Padres players have shown they can be good or very good at big-league baseball. And, satisfying what baseball's quants call "meaningful sample sizes," several have done it for long stretches, at some point, in their careers.
Start with Machado.
He can rival the defensive wizardry of Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson in several postseasons, notably the 1970 World Series. Take it from Merv Rettenmund, the San Diego treasure who went to seven World Series, three with Robinson and the Orioles.
"Manny reminds me of Brooks at third," said Rettenmund. "And, this guy can really hit. Everything seems so easy for him. There's no tension there."
Juan Soto provided a glimpse three Octobers ago of what he can do when he's hitting the ball hard, not only drawing walks. He hit five home runs in the postseason, totaling 14 RBIs in 17 games.
No team wins a World Series without overcoming top-tier pitching.
Soto homered off Justin Verlander (who's still the Houston Astros ace) in the 2019 World Series. He's penned several other big-time pitchers into his home run book: aces Gerrit Cole and Julio Urias of the Yankees and Dodgers, respectively; current Cy Young Award contender Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins; Mets co-ace Max Scherzer and Philadelphia's Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler.
The Padres will need Josh Bell to live up to his career adjusted OPS, which defines him as 21 percent above league average. If Brandon Drury and Jake Cronenworth match their recent seasons of adjusted OPS, the lineup's plausible number of capable hitters grows to five, headed by Machado and Soto.
Pencil Wil Myers and Jurickson Profar as a candidate to make it six. Count on excellent defense from shortstop Ha-Seong Kim.
Asking the pitching staff to hold up its end doesn't require any of the mainstays to do something they've not done. Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove have all shut down a number of dangerous lineups in their careers.
Josh Hader doesn't need to jump into a phone booth for a costume change, either. In 11 playoff games, he's assembled a 1.88 ERA and white-hot rates in WHIP (0.837) and strikeouts per nine innings (14.4).
Put another way, if the Padres get big performances from the likes of Machado, Soto, Darvish, Snell and Hader, it wouldn't match the 2010 Padres on the talent-to-achievement meter.
This was a team whose payroll, at $38.6 million, ranked 29 of 30 (the current team stands sixth).
Returning dollars on pennies, rookie starter Mat Latos pitched to a 2.92 ERA in 31 starts while drawing a $408,000 salary in what stood as his best season in a nine-year career.
Latos foreshadowed Darvish's consistent success this year, setting a big-league record with 15 straights starts of five or more innings with two or fewer runs allowed. The record had belonged to Hall of Famer Greg Maddux (1993-94) and former Astros ace Mike Scott before Latos shut down the Dodgers, in early September, to keep the Padres in first place.
Following the 22-year-old's lead, the rotation delivered value well beyond its collective income. For the first time in team history, five pitchers — Latos, Clayton Richard, Jon Garland, Wade LeBlanc and Kevin Correia — made at least 25 starts. Swingman Tim Stauffer, delivering the best of his 10 big-league seasons, while providing examples of why he went fourth in the 2003 draft, recorded a 1.85 ERA.
Adrian Gonzalez, the offense's only star, had an Adrian Gonzalez season, hugely outperforming his $4.75 million salary. Unwilling to pay him the market rate, the Padres traded the Chula Vista and Tijuana product to the Red Sox that offseason.
Of all the engines to the team's success, the bullpen provided the most horsepower. Led by coach Darrel Akerfelds, the unit provided a six-month stream of favorable matchups. Closer Heath Bell recorded a career-best 1.93 ERA and 47 saves. Mike Adams, who logged a 1.76 ERA and career-low home run rate, threw cut fastballs that would've made Mariano Rivera proud. Joe Thatcher and Edward Mujica posted the best WHIPs, .857 and .933, of lengthy careers.
Get in and get hot. That's the two-step the current Padres have to pursue, and a final blast from 2010 serves as inspiration. The winner of the 2010 World Series was the same team the $38.6-million Padres pushed to a 162nd game, the San Francisco Giants.
