Did the Padres’ 2025 offseason moves actually pay off?

The San Diego Padres made a lot of moves over the 2024-25 offseason. They let go of 11 players and added 10, creating significant roster turnover heading into the 2025 season. While all of their moves are intended to improve the roster, let's take a look at the offseason to see if San Diego actually got better or worse.

What the Padres really got from their 2025 offseason

2025 losses: 11 players, 8.9 bWAR

Mostly in free agency, the Padres lost 11 players between 2024 and 2025. Those 11 players had combined for 8.9 bWAR in 2024. Leading the way were Jurickson Profar (3.6 bWAR) and Ha-Seong Kim (2.6 bWAR). Other notable losses included Kyle Higashioka, Donovan Solano, Martin Perez, David Peralta (who retired), and Tanner Scott. Those five combined for 4.9 bWAR. The Padres also let go of four players with negative bWAR in 2024.

How they fared: 10 players, 4,3 bWAR

Aside from Peralta, all 10 of the other former Padres did play in 2025. Six of the ten improved, but not by much. Tom Cosgrove improved from -0.9 bWAR to 0.1 bWAR, while Graham Pauley jumped from -0.4 to 0.7, and Nick Ahmed improved from -0.2 to 0.1.

Offsetting those improvements were four players who got significantly worse. Profar lost 2.6 bWAR in 2025, mostly due to missing three months of the season with a steroid-related suspension. Ha-Seong Kim also fell off, slipping from 2.6 bWAR in '24 to just 0.4 bWAR in '25. Tanner Scott was actually worth negative value for the Dodgers despite the big contract he signed, putting up -0.6 bWAR. And Donovan Solano was worth -0.1 bWAR before being released by the Mariners, over a win less valuable than he was in San Diego.

Overall, it seems like most of the guys San Diego moved on from got worse, and the ones who got better did not get much better. Aside from Martin Perez, who improved from 1 bWAR to 1.3 bWAR, and Kyle Higashioka, who improved from 1.4 bWAR to 1.6 bWAR, there is nobody else who stands out as a player the Padres should have brought back.

Higashioka, in particular, does stand out as the biggest loss of the offseason. He led the group of former Padres in bWAR with 1.6, and crucially, plays a position that San Diego had very little value from in 2025. Outside of Higashioka, the Padres generally did a good job identifying the guys they needed to move on from in 2025.

2025 additions: 10 players, 5.1 2024 bWAR

The Padres brought in ten players who had combined for 5.1 bWAR the previous year. Almost all of it came from three veterans. Jose Iglesias (3.1 bWAR with the Mets), Nick Pivetta (1.7 bWAR with the Red Sox), and Jason Heyward (1.2 bWAR for the Dodgers and Astros) brought in a combined 6 wins to the Padres. However, the rest of their additions had actually combined for a negative value in 2024. That included Gavin Sheets, who was worth -1 bWAR in 2024.

How they fared: 10 players, 2.7 bWAR

Yikes.

What makes this even more impressive is that Pivetta turned out to be a slam dunk. He was worth 5.3 bWAR on his own! Sheets, the least valuable player the Padres brought in the offseason, turned out to be the only other semi-good decision they made, as he put up 0.7 bWAR. He was the only other addition who was worth more than 0 wins.

That means the other eight additions combined for -3.3 bWAR.

Heyward and Iglesias were the worst of the bunch, at -0.6 bWAR and -0.7 bWAR, respectively. Other bad signings included veterans Yuli Gurriel (-0.5 bWAR) and Martin Maldonado (-0.3 bWAR). Kyle Hart, who was signed to be a starting pitcher after years away from the MLB, also struggled, at -0.4 bWAR.

Final verdict: Mostly, bad

San Diego lost 8.9 bWAR from 2024 and replaced it with 2.7 bWAR in 2025. That's obviously a disappointment. The team, clearly, got worse. Again, they mostly made the right decisions on the players they chose not to bring back. They just did not do enough to replace the guys they lost. San Diego settled for veterans like Iglesias, Heyward, Gurriel, and Maldonado, which was the wrong strategy.

Their lack of depth forced them to trade a significant portion of the farm system at the trade deadline, and while they did add controllable pieces at the deadline, they also had to pay good money for a rental bat in Ryan O'Hearn.

San Diego needs to avoid another bad offseason in 2025-26 if they want to come back as contenders next season. They can not afford to get worse again.