3 regrets the Padres should already have about the 2023-24 offseason

Letting the offseason's biggest free agents go to division rivals (or, letting free agents go in general)

A number of teams have had an usually passive offseason this year, and the Padres are no exception. Aside from a few minor league deals, a trade with the Guardians for reliever Enyel de los Santos, and the Juan Soto trade, San Diego has made no notable moves to try to make up for the loss of a number of players, including but not limited to Blake Snell, Josh Hader, Seth Lugo, and Michael Wacha, all of whom elected free agency and have either already signed with new teams or made no indication that they're interested in coming back to the Padres.

San Diego has remained still as the rest of the NL West has been at work, with all rivals but the Rockies making significant deals in the past few weeks alone. The Diamondbacks got Eduardo Rodriguez, the Giants got Jung Hoo Lee, and the Dodgers, of course, got Shohei Ohtani. At the same time, even their interest has been rather lackluster, with a vague connection to Harrison Bader that has yet to materialize into anything and reports of interest in getting Gary Sanchez back being just about the only two issues churning in the Padres' rumor mill. Meanwhile, Lugo and Wacha have both signed with the Royals, who have become one of the offseason's most aggressive teams in terms of free agent signings.

The rest of the NL West is seemingly building toward making themselves as competitive as possible, which is ideally what a team should do during every offseason, but the Padres seem to be sitting on their hands. While we can hope that something big is still coming, free agent names are being taken off the board more and more everyday.