It feels like I write “The Padres are supposed to be good this year” in every series preview, so this time around I’ll tweak it a bit:
The Padres are 48-54. They’re supposed to be better than that, given their one big offseason acquisition. But Manny Machado was never supposed to be the thing that put them over the top, he was supposed to be the biggest name in a group of hardly known but extremely talented young position players. That group was supposed to coalesce while the front office figured out how to get the pitching on the same page.