New-look Padres have been 'hungry all offseason'

PEORIA, Ariz. -- With Friday’s full-squad workout and Saturday’s season-opening team meeting in the books, the 2024 Padres have officially arrived.

Needless to say, those 2024 Padres are eager to separate themselves from the '23 edition -- and everything that woebegone season entailed.

“We could’ve been a lot better last year, and we fell short,” third baseman Manny Machado said. “… A lot of guys are hungry, and they’ve been hungry all offseason.”

“You sit with those feelings all offseason,” right-hander Joe Musgrove said. “You’ve got that sour taste in your mouth.”

Now, at the dawn of the 2024 campaign, there’s a fine line to walk. The Padres must learn the harsh lessons from their disappointing '23 season. But they cannot afford to dwell on it, cannot afford to let the same issues curtail their '24 ambitions.

In his first season as San Diego manager, Mike Shildt has been tasked with navigating that line. He gave his start-of-season address to the Padres' clubhouse on Saturday morning. The specifics of that speech remained in-house, but it’s clear Shildt prefers a forward-thinking approach regarding everything that went wrong in 2023.

“We’ve done our reflection,” Shildt said. “It’s there. But the windshield of what’s in front of us is bigger than the rearview mirror. And we’re definitely looking through the windshield now.”

The 2024 Padres are, of course, a very different team than the '23 edition. For one, Shildt has taken over for Bob Melvin, who left to become manager in San Francisco. Juan Soto was traded to the Yankees in exchange for a glut of young pitchers, as San Diego underwent an offseason rotation overhaul.

Blake Snell remains a free agent and is unlikely to return. Josh Hader signed in Houston. The Padres got younger and will be relying on their prospects more this season, with serious question marks in their outfield, rotation and bench.

All of it makes for an interesting riddle: Can these Padres, despite everything they’ve lost, actually be better than they were last season? On paper, probably not. But -- with the 2023 season as exhibit A -- games are not played on paper.

The 2023 Padres finished with a +104 run differential, third best in the National League. They also started the year 0-12 in extra-innings games and finished 9-23 in one-run contests.

It can feel like the 2023 Padres season defied explanation. But that’s not how the current players are viewing it. They’ve done their best to pinpoint exactly what went wrong in '23, to ensure the '24 group doesn’t make the same mistakes.

“There’s a lot of talks that went on throughout the course of the offseason, between players only and then having the staff involved,” Musgrove said. “You try to address what the serious issues were. Take your egos out of it and look at it for what it was.”

Said infielder Jake Cronenworth: “The biggest thing is: How do we battle through and get through adversity? I don’t think we did the best job of that last year. We were definitely all trying to get out of what we were in. But I think we all learned a really valuable lesson in … what we learned from those times that were tough.”

Indeed, there were tough times aplenty in 2023. The Padres struggled to deal with the weight of expectations. They often crumbled when faced with adversity. They allowed minor setbacks to devolve into major losing streaks.

But they finished their 2023 season strong, then spoke of a need to play looser and freer throughout. Doing so will require a short memory -- and a purposeful forgetting of everything that went wrong last summer.

“It’s still there,” Shildt said. “We can’t ignore [it]. But we’ve already learned from it, grown from it. [We’re] making adjustments to move forward to create the best opportunity for us in 2024 to win our division and compete for a championship.”

Lofty ambitions -- especially for a team that lost its best hitter (Soto), its best starter (Snell) and its best reliever (Hader). But if the external expectations aren’t as high in 2024, the Padres seem just fine with that.

“Obviously no one can replace Soto,” Machado said. “He’s a top player in the game. He’s irreplaceable. But we believe in the guys we have. … Obviously, it’s a completely different team than we had last year.

“I think we’ve got the right group of guys to go out there and compete every single day. We’ve got a new manager coming in that’s been great so far in steering the boat the right way. We’re excited about it.”