Are the Padres Running Out of Time To Win Their First Title?

This past week, the sporting world celebrated yet another team finally climbing the mountain and reaching the championship promised land for the first time after the Oklahoma City Thunder won the 2025 NBA title.

As one more team comes off the board, it makes you think of the teams that are still waiting for their time in the spotlight.

In Major League Baseball, five teams have still never had the chance to pop champagne and revel in October glory with a World Series title, and it hasn’t been for a lack of trying in most cases.

From consistent division winners like the Milwaukee Brewers, to all-time season wins leaders like the Seattle Mariners (whose 116 wins in 2001 is still a record being chased), to teams that have even made it to the final stage but had to settle for a pennant like the Colorado Rockies in 2007 and the Tampa Bay Rays in both 2008 and 2020, there’s been plenty of chances for these remaining squads.

But there’s one more team we haven’t talked about. Although they may not have the same type of past accomplishments as the other four, they may have been the closest to a World Series title out of any of them.

This team is, of course, the San Diego Padres.

Despite being ousted in the NLDS last season, the Padres sported a loaded roster that, if they were to find a way to get past the eventual World Series champions in the Los Angeles Dodgers, would’ve had as good a shot as any to win it all.

After coming up short yet again though, and given the winter of uncertainty that they just went through, have the Padres’ best chance at a title passed them by?

Stats were taken prior to play on July 3.

Was 2024 the Padres Best Shot at Winning a World Series?

After sitting fourth in the NL West and three games below .500 as late as June 18 last season, San Diego turned things around in an immaculate manner last season, finishing as the first NL wild-card team with a 93-69 record.

Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. both continued to look like the prolific hitters the baseball world has become accustomed to seeing with wRC+ totals above 120.

Rookie Jackson Merrill and veteran bounce-back bat Jurickson Profar put together All-Star-caliber campaigns as well.

Then they held a series of above-average complementary bats in Luis Arráez, Xander Bogaerts, Ha-Seong Kim, Jake Cronenworth, Kyle Higashioka and Donovan Solano.

On the pitching side of things, Dylan Cease found a way to lead this staff by getting back to a Cy Young-caliber arm. Michael King experienced an otherworldly sort of breakout campaign in his first season as a Friar. Then, Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish had late-season returns from injury that made a huge impact down the stretch.

Robert Suarez, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrián Morejón held down the fort until names like Tanner Scott, Jason Adam and Bryan Hoeing were added at the deadline, making this bullpen one of the most formidable in the league.

However, after getting bounced in the postseason after a contentious battle with the Dodgers — a series that felt like whoever won was poised to go all the way — the Padres entered an offseason filled with uncertainty.

An Offseason of Uncertainty

For a team that already wasn’t the largest market before GM A.J. Preller started spending frivolously over the better part of the last decade, ownership disputes paired with the Bally Sports TV fiasco suggested that the organization’s budget seemed tighter if not decreased for 2025.

Names like Profar, Kim and Scott were all seemingly priced out of a return, while the likes of Arráez, Cease and Suarez were all on the trade block (and still may be).

Now, none of those three latter names have been dealt to this point, and the Padres currently sit six games above .500 and in an NL wild-card spot. But there doesn’t seem to be the same sort of gusto around this team that there was a year ago.

There’s a few reasons as to why this could be the case.

What’s Changed in 2025?

The first is on the mound. While Nick Pivetta has been a valuable addition and frankly has led the way for this starting staff this season, the rest of the rotation is where the issues have fallen.

Cease has gone from a mid-3.00s ERA to a mid-4.00s ERA, Musgrove is out for the season after requiring Tommy John surgery during the 2024 postseason, Darvish is yet to make his season debut due to elbow inflammation, and King’s follow-up to his 2024 breakout has been interrupted by an IL stint.

Arms like Randy Vasquez and Stephen Kolek have stepped up in a solid manner this season, but they don’t exactly exude the aura of World Series contending rotation pieces.

Then in the lineup, Tatis, Machado, and Merrill have certainly been in top form. The questions lie beneath the core. Cronenworth at a 115 wRC+ has been their next best hitter, but he’s not having the All-Star-caliber season to perfectly replace the sort of output that Profar provided last season.

Then there’s Arráez, who’s been a .300-plus hitter and consistent 110 wRC+ or better hitter nearly every year of his career entering 2025. However, this season, he’s not been that stellar high-average merchant we’ve become accustomed to seeing, resulting in his wRC+ slipping to a below average mark of 99.

Bogaerts is another name who’s continued to decline in 2025. While he may’ve slipped below average in 2024, he also spent an extended amount of time on the IL, perhaps giving him a bit of an excuse. But now that he’s been healthy in 2025, things haven’t improved all that much.

After that, their depth at the bottom of the order has either underperformed or holds reason to bare skepticism. The likes of Elias Díaz (73 wRC+), Tyler Wade (73 wRC+), Jose Iglesias (62 wRC+) and Martín Maldonado (48 wRC+) have all had 100 or more plate appearances and have been well-below-average hitters.

Then, there’s the curious case of Gavin Sheets, who’s having a remarkable season after being a Chicago White Sox outcast following an 88 wRC+ in 2024. He’s up nearly 30 points to a 117 wRC+ and has already exceeded his home run and RBI output from last season in just half a season this year.

Given his spotty track record, though, it’s reasonable to question whether this hot stretch is indeed merely a stretch.

With an injury-riddled rotation and a lineup that lacks the same thump that it once did, it leaves just a top-end bullpen (6th in WHIP, 5th in ERA, and 3rd in FIP). But even the bullpen is diminished given the loss of a top closer like Tanner Scott.

As good as the bullpen as been, a top-tier relief corps when paired with an offense that appears simply top-heavy and rotation riddled with injury doesn’t seem like the complete winning formula to contend for a World Series that they had last season.

And their financial issues likely won’t disappear magically overnight, implying they can’t spend their way to better odds like their arch rivals in L.A. have in recent years.

If teams like the 2019 Washington Nationals or 2023 Texas Rangers have taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen in October. All you have to do is find a way to be dancing by the time it comes around.

However, after how strong this squad looked a year ago and having still come up short, it’s hard to think that a weaker roster will somehow find a way to get over the hump all of a sudden this time around.