3 Padres players we'll be glad are gone in 2024 and 2 we will wish stayed

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If you look across the entire league, the San Diego Padres are, without question, the team that lost the most in terms of offseason roster turnover. When a team trades away an MVP candidate from their lineup, in addition to losing 60% of their rotation (including the reigning NL Cy Young winner AND arguably the best reliever in baseball), that is pretty rough.

The reasons why those changes happened are well documented at this point, considering the state of the team's finances and subsequent payroll constraints this offseason, but it is time to look forward. While the Padres certainly lost a lot this offseason, not all of those departures are locks to end up being a bad thing for the team in the short and long-term. Maybe that is just wishful thinking, but there are positives to take away from how things have gone down.

With that in mind, here are some of the Padres' departures that may end up being blessings for San Diego, as well as a couple departing players who are going to be truly missed in 2024.

Keeping Gary Sánchez in San Diego would have been a mistake

Given his track record, Gary Sánchez's time in San Diego in 2023 was a pleasant surprise other than when he fractured his wrist after a hit by pitch in September. He came to the team after being claimed off of waivers and promptly hit 19 homers in 72 games while being excellent defensively at catcher. Waiver claims normally don't work out nearly that well, and it was truly a bummer when he got hurt.

The problem with keeping Sánchez would have been two-fold, however. One, Sánchez's track record is extremely questionable overall. Even if one thought that he could stay healthy, which would have been a big IF as a 31-year-old catcher, his hit tool was so bad from 2018-2022 that he struggled to stick on any team despite having the most raw power of any catcher out there and being a sound defender.

The other issue is that the Padres have to figure out their long-term future at catcher. Luis Campusano is already looking like he will get a real shot to play behind the plate, and top prospect Ethan Salas is coming up very, very fast. Giving Sánchez the $7 million he got from the Brewers (after narrowly clearing their physical exam) feels like it would have been a waste, given San Diego's depth at the position, and could have set them back in the long run.

Losing Blake Snell is just a brutal blow to the Padres

There have been a lot of folks trying to justify the loss of Blake Snell from the Padres rotation. They say that he doesn't pitch deep enough into games, would cost more than he is worth, walks too many batters, and has an iffy track record of staying healthy. All of that is certainly true to an extent, but the fact remains that Snell is one of the best pitchers in baseball right now, and the odds are that he is going to be playing somewhere else in 2024. That stinks.

Sure, Snell is not a perfect pitcher whatsoever. However, he literally just won his second Cy Young award and hasn't struck out fewer than 11 batters per nine innings since 2017. All pitchers come with a degree of risk of injury or regression and Snell is no different, but starting pitchers are the one demographic where you just have to place your bets and hope for the best. In Snell's case, his presence at the top of the Padres' rotation, given how good his stuff is, will be sorely missed.

Josh Hader moving on may be a blessing in disguise for San Diego

This is a weird one because, again, Josh Hader is an absolute hammer out of the bullpen. Hader is on an historic pace when it comes to strikeouts for a reliever, and he has a 2.50 ERA and 2.73 FIP over the course of his seven-year career. On the surface, letting a guy who is THAT good go should be firmly in the "will be missed" category, but the situation isn't that simple.

Where things get tricky is that Hader is still a reliever, no matter how good he is, and the Astros had to give Hader a five-year, $95 million deal to bring him into the fold, which is a massive investment in a single bullpen arm. Letting Hader go get paid in Houston allowed the Padres to build a much deeper bullpen with the additions of Yuki Matsui, Wandy Peralta and Woo-Suk Go, while shifting Robert Suarez into a more prominent role. No single one of those guys is as good as Hader, but the Padres' bullpen may end up being better overall. The team protected against the risk that Hader gets hurt (again, he is still a reliever and has that risk), completely torpedoing the bullpen's depth in the process.

Trading away Juan Soto effectively ended the Padres' window of contention...for now

For San Diego, the package that the Padres got for one year of Juan Soto has a lot of potential, and this is not a knock on those guys. They reinforced their young pitching depth significantly and got some catching depth in the form of Kyle Higashioka from the Yankees. However, moving the best pure hitter in baseball -- even for one year -- at a position where the Padres don't have a clear replacement is devastating on multiple levels.

Not only does trading Soto away deal a massive blow to the Padres' lineup, but it represents the end of an era. Gone are the days of AJ Preller going all out to make the Padres a World Series contender at virtually any cost. There are some smart people in the Padres organization, which gives some hope that they can build a sustainable and successful team down the road, but trading away Soto is going to go down as the beginning of the end of a really fun time for San Diego fans, and that is truly sad.

San Diego letting Michael Wacha walk may not be as bad as it looked

While there are bigger names that the Padres lost this offseason, losing Michael Wacha is no small loss. Wacha joined the Padres at a career crossroads and really came up big for them with a 3.22 ERA in 24 starts in 2023. He was so good, in fact, that the Royals rewarded Wacha with a $32 million deal over two years during the offseason.

That is a pretty reasonable deal at first glance, but there are some problems here. First, Wacha is not an innings eater, which means that keeping him around would have put a strain on the San Diego bullpen, and it is likely that he will need to be skipped at times during the season to rest. Second, while his ERA the last couple of years has been good, his FIP of 4.01 over the past two seasons seems to indicate a certain amount of good fortune for him. When you combine that with a guy that doesn't really have power stuff or miss a ton of bats, the Padres may have dodged one here, and could be better off exploring rotation options with more upside.

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