With Tatis out, pitching could carry Padres

At this point a year ago, the Padres were as hyped as any team in baseball. Now, they seem like an afterthought in the National League West.

That’ll happen when you finish a season on a 12-34 run, lose one of the game’s biggest superstars, Fernando Tatis Jr., for several months due to a fractured wrist and share a division with the Dodgers and Giants, who both won 100-plus games in 2021.

But don’t count out the Friars just yet. Tatis’ absence stings, but the club could stick around in the NL postseason race behind a pitching staff that should be better than you expect -- and will surely be better than the one that closed out 2021, especially after the team added Sean Manaea in a trade with the A's on Sunday.

Here are five reasons to believe in San Diego’s pitching this season.

Yu set to rebound; Snell too?

San Diego was one of the biggest offseason winners prior to the 2021 season, making splashy trades for Yu Darvish and Blake Snell among a host of other moves.

While neither performed up to expectations in 2021, with Darvish posting a 4.22 ERA over 166 1/3 innings and Snell recording a 4.20 ERA in 128 2/3 innings, both showed glimpses of the aces the Padres thought they were getting.

Darvish dealt with a hip ailment throughout the second half, and his attempts to pitch through the issue led to back and groin tightness. Before the injuries cropped up, Darvish was one of the most effective hurlers in MLB, posting a 2.44 ERA and a 5.0 K/BB ratio in 96 innings over his first 16 starts, which came on the heels of a second-place finish in the 2020 NL Cy Young Award voting.

Despite his struggles after the All-Star break, Darvish completed the season with a 3.32 expected ERA -- based on quality of contact, strikeouts and walks -- making him one of this season's most likely rebound candidates.

Snell is more of a mystery. The 2018 AL Cy Young winner struggled over his first 19 starts (5.44 ERA, 1.91 K/BB) last year, but he found his groove after the All-Star break, notching a 1.85 ERA and a 4.64 K/BB ratio across a six-start span from Aug. 3-Sept. 7. Unfortunately for San Diego, Snell exited his start on Sept. 12 with a left adductor groin strain and didn’t throw another pitch for the Friars in 2021.

Snell's xERA was 4.86, as he had trouble limiting hard contact and walks. But the lefty hasn't lost his ability to miss bats -- his 31.6% whiff rate was the 12th-highest mark in MLB (min. 750 swings), while his 30.9% strikeout rate was the eighth highest (min. 500 batters faced).

If Darvish and Snell are healthy and pitching well at the same time in 2022, watch out.

Under-the-radar ace

Less than a month after trading for Darvish and Snell, the Padres completed another deal for a starting pitcher, acquiring Joe Musgrove from the Pirates. While this trade didn’t receive as much attention as the other two, Musgrove ended up being the Padres’ most reliable starter in 2021.

Musgrove threw the franchise’s first no-hitter in his second start of the season and led the Friars in innings (181 1/3) and strikeouts (203) while posting a 3.18 ERA and a 1.08 WHIP. Unlike Darvish and Snell, whose performances fluctuated wildly, Musgrove was steady, posting a sub-4.00 ERA in five of last season's six months and avoiding the injured list.

It was a breakout that was forecasted during the shortened 2020 season, when Musgrove was one of two starting pitchers to record a 50% whiff rate or better on multiple pitch types. The other was Cleveland’s Shane Bieber, who won the AL Cy Young Award that year.

Musgrove’s slider and curveball remained dominant in his first season with the Padres. He limited batters to a .146 average and .234 slugging percentage on breaking balls last season, and he racked up a combined 154 strikeouts on sliders and curves. The righty threw a breaking ball more than half the time while reducing his four-seam fastball usage to a career-low 19.6% and mixing in a cutter more often.

Considering he has yielded a .538 slugging percentage on four-seamers in his career -- the highest figure against any of his offerings -- it’s not hard to understand why he decided to dial it back.

With the uncertainty surrounding Snell, the Padres are counting on the 29-year-old to be the same pitcher he was last year.

Musgrove, meanwhile, is pitching for a lucrative contract -- he is eligible for free agency after 2022. Another strong showing could land him a deal similar to those signed by 30-year-old lefty Robbie Ray (five years, $115 million) and 31-year-old righty Kevin Gausman (five years, $110 million) this past offseason.

Clevinger back from TJ

The Padres’ active 2020-21 offseason was general manager A.J. Preller’s encore after an absurdly busy 2020 Trade Deadline in which he dealt away 16 players and acquired 10, none more important than right-hander Mike Clevinger.

Clevinger was expected to be the Padres’ No. 1 starter, and he looked the part in his first few outings with the Padres. However, he exited his start on Sept. 23, 2020, with right biceps tightness and, after attempting to return in the postseason, left his start in that fall's NLDS against the Dodgers after just 24 pitches. The following month, he underwent Tommy John surgery.

After missing all of 2021, Clevinger is back and set to rejoin a rotation that looks a lot different than it did when he last pitched.

If Clevinger had come out of that season healthy, it’s possible the Padres wouldn’t have felt the need to trade for all three of Darvish, Snell and Musgrove. But they did, and Clevinger is now the team’s No. 5 starter.

While it remains to be seen how he’ll look in his return, the 31-year-old has frontline-starter potential. From 2018-20, Clevinger’s 153 ERA+ was the seventh best among big league pitchers who threw at least 300 innings, and his 3.24 FIP was 11th best.

Gore waiting in the wings

Padres starting pitchers recorded a 5.64 ERA during their 12-34 stretch to end last season, averaging just over four innings per start. In that span, they used 12 different starters, including two pitchers (Jake Arrieta, Vince Velasquez) who were cut loose by other teams and three others (Reiss Knehr, Pedro Avila, Pierce Johnson) who have made a combined nine career starts.

When their season was slipping away and they were looking for anyone who could give them some decent innings, it would have been nice to be able to turn to the guy who was the No. 1 pitching prospect in baseball entering 2021. But MacKenzie Gore didn’t get the call.

The left-hander was working his way back up the Minor League ladder after running into command problems in Triple-A at the start of the MiLB season. Gore threw 50 1/3 innings across four Minor League levels in 2021 and issued 28 walks.

When MLB Pipeline unveiled its new Top 100 prospects list last month, Gore fell 80 spots, from No. 6 overall to No. 86.

But Gore’s spring success has the 2017 No. 3 overall Draft pick back in contention for a big league opportunity. In his first three Cactus League games, Gore allowed two runs on four hits with 11 strikeouts and only one walk over nine innings.

It’s what Gore had in mind when he worked extensively with new Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla prior to the lockout to sharpen his mechanics.

More depth

Pitching depth was clearly a problem for San Diego last year, but the club is now better equipped to handle the rigors of a 162-game season.

Gore, Chris Paddack, Ryan Weathers and Nick Martinez, who joined the Padres on a one-year contract with three player options after posting a 1.62 ERA over 149 2/3 innings in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball last season, were in the mix for the fifth spot in the rotation before the team acquired Manaea, and former Top 100 prospect Adrian Morejon will eventually be back from Tommy John surgery.

The added rotation depth should have a trickle-down effect on the bullpen, which was excellent for much of 2021 -- San Diego’s bullpen had the best ERA (2.89) in the Majors through Aug. 10 -- before running out of gas.

Dinelson Lamet, the team's former ace, is set to fill a flexible bullpen role as San Diego tries to keep him healthy. With Manaea in the fold, Martinez is expected to pitch in relief as well, providing further length in the 'pen.

Closer Mark Melancon, who led the Majors with 39 saves in 2021, is gone, but the Padres exercised their club options on Johnson and Craig Stammen, signed Luis García and inked Robert Suarez, who notched 42 saves and a 1.16 ERA in NPB last season. Austin Adams, Nabil Crismatt, Tim Hill and Emilio Pagán are still here, too, and Drew Pomeranz will add another lefty to the bullpen when he's back from flexor tendon surgery.

It may be a year later than they hoped, but the pieces are in place for the Padres to have the elite pitching staff they dreamed of last season, one capable of carrying the team while it awaits Tatis' return.