Padres have suddenly become the envy of baseball

The San Diego Padres are getting everyone else’s attention with their offseason moves.

The San Diego Padres have become the talk of Major League Baseball this offseason. They’ve made three big moves over the past few days: trading for Blake Snell, signing Ha-Seong Kim, and trading for Yu Darvish. There’s even been speculation that they might still be in on Trevor Bauer; though it seems unlikely, so did the Darvish trade after they had already acquired Snell.

In any case, the Padres are coming off a season in which they went 37-23 and made the second round of the playoffs while becoming one of the league’s most exciting teams to watch. While there’s debate over whether they’ve closed the gap between themselves and the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, they will already be heading into the 2021 season among World Series favorites.

As I’ve been looking around the internet over the past couple of days, it appears not only that other clubs are talking about the Padres, but that their model for success has become the envy of Major League Baseball. I’ve seen several different articles from blogs of other teams explaining why they haven’t had the success that the Padres have had or that they need to copy what the Padres are doing. Some even feel that the Dodgers have become disrespected.

What we have to keep in mind is that where the Padres are right now – building a championship-caliber club while it seems that most of the rest of the league is struggling to do anything – is the result of years of hard work by A.J. Preller and Co. They’ve had to use their farm system to acquire a lot of talent, but it was a deep farm system that took years to build. A lot of that talent has graduated to the majors, and now Preller is just putting the finishing touches on the next great Padres team.

Another thing to keep in mind: The Padres haven’t won anything just yet. They’re coming off a highly successful season, and they did get by one nemesis in the St. Louis Cardinals in the playoffs. But they still have to get by the Dodgers and get that ultimate prize: a World Series Championship. There’s still a lot of work to do in that regard.

Still, the Padres are in great shape right now and have the whole league talking as a model for success. Can they finish the job and win a championship? That remains to be seen. For now, let’s enjoy what a great time it is to be a fan in San Diego.