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San Diego Padres and MLB content: analysis, "interviews", and allegorical fiction. Now with 30% more sanctimony!
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
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- Sep 29, 2026
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- Jul 17, 2026
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Reintroductions (opens the original)
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For the first time in the club’s history the San Diego Padres have entered the playoffs in three straight seasons. They’ll face the Cubs, the team that ended their playoff run a year ago. The Padres and Cubs have history. In the 1984 NLCS the Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the five-game series before the Padres won three straight to clinch the National League Pennant and make their first World Series.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NH8t!,f_auto
Taking Shape (opens the original)
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The Padres completed a three game sweep of the Marlins on Sunday, and moved the magic number to two games with six left to play. Any combination of two Padres wins and/or Diamondbacks losses clinches San Diego a postseason berth. Friday’s game offered a particularly interesting look at some important considerations for a playoff run.Ramp UpOn Friday Nick Pivetta made his third start since returning from the IL. And after another miserable outing from Casey Mize on Saturday, it’s looking increasi
Midseason Form (opens the original)
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The Padres are down to the final nine games of the season, and though it’s a long shot, they’ve played their way to a magic number. If they win six games across their final nine they will reach the playoffs, irrespective of how well any other team performs. This was a hard position to imagine after the team reached the halfway point of the season at 48-48, three and a half games out of the final Wildcard spot. We wrote at the time:The Padres would need to play at a 96-win pace (39–27 over 66 gam
The Pivetta Problem: Coda (opens the original)
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There’s an argument to be made that when the season started, Nick Pivetta was the most impactful single player on the team. He was the ace of a threadbare rotation that represented the Padres’ clearest vulnerability. Still, at the time of Pivetta’s injury we wrote that the Padres might weather his absence based on a scenario analysis of various levels of performance from Pivetta stand-ins, including a worst-case scenario in which it might reasonably lead to ~3.4 fewer marginal wins across the se
Chaos (opens the original)
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Obama chuckled. ‘You mean the Chaos Emeralds?’—AnonymousFriday’s game was remarkable in that, if it were the only game you’d watched all season, you would likely come away with an understanding of the team as coherent as one brought about by season-long analysis. Not just because it’s the most recent data point, but because the strengths and weaknesses that have emerged across a chaotic season were on full display. And we think the way the team has weathered the tempest implies the strategy AJ P
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