Basically everything we already knew.
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It's tempting to dream, if for just a moment, about what the 2015 San Diego Padres might look like if they had deferred gratification just a little while longer and retained their prospects. The exercise is worthwhile, because the Padres should think about hitting the reset button unless the fourth-place team overcomes its mediocrity and starts to win very soon.
If the Padres hadn't traded for Matt Kemp, they'd still have one of the best catchers in 2015, Yasmani Grandal, who has a .382 on-base percentage and 10 homers -- more than twice as many as Kemp -- and also ranks among the leaders in some next-level defensive metrics.
If Grandal hadn't been traded, then the Padres wouldn't have had to deal Jesse Hahn for Derek Norris. Hahn has 14 starts for the Athletics and boasts a 3.40 ERA.
If the Padres hadn't made the trade for Justin Upton, they would have 25-year-old Jace Peterson, who is hitting .279 with a .360 on-base percentage for Atlanta. The Padres also would have center field prospect Mallex Smith, who is hitting .340 in Double-A with a .418 on-base percentage and 23 stolen bases; Dustin Peterson, a 20-year-old outfielder and former second-round pick playing well in Class A; and well-regarded pitching prospect Max Fried, a first-round pick in 2012 who is now recovering from Tommy John surgery.
If San Diego had remained patient last summer and held on to Huston Street, the Padres wouldn't have traded for the game's second-most expensive closer, Craig Kimbrel, and would still have 22-year-old right-hander Matt Wisler, who was among the players sent to Atlanta for Kimbrel. Last Friday, Wisler allowed no walks and one run over eight innings in his major league debut. Cameron Maybin, also a part of that trade, is hitting .288 for the Braves with a .366 on-base percentage, while earning $7 million; it appears his $8 million salary for next year could be a bargain. Without the deal for Kimbrel, the Padres also would have Jordan Paroubeck, their second-round pick in 2013.
Joe Ross is 2-1 with a 2.66 ERA for the Nationals. Icon Sportswire/AP Images If the Padres hadn't traded for Wil Myers, they would still have Trea Turner, their first-round pick in 2014 and one of the top shortstop prospects in the game. He has been chewing up Double-A pitching this year, and rival evaluators view him as a worthy heir to the shortstop position for the Nationals. If not for the Myers deal, the Padres still would have Joe Ross, the 21-year-old brother of Tyson Ross. Joe Ross has filled in for Stephen Strasburg in recent weeks and surrendered just two walks and six runs in 20 1/3 innings.
If the Padres hadn't gone all win-now for 2015, they probably wouldn't have signed James Shields, and wouldn't have sacrificed the 12th overall pick in the 2015 MLB draft for compensation. Maybe they would've landed somebody like high school first baseman Josh Naylor in the draft, or impressive prep outfielder Garrett Whitley.
The Padres also wouldn't be staring at a looming salary crunch after this year, as they are now. San Diego had a $70 million payroll in 2013, $85 million in 2014, and this year the team pushed that to about $110 million. But because the Kemp trade was structured in such a way that the Dodgers paid $18 million of Kemp's salary this year, L.A. will eat only about $3.5 million of his salary for each of the next four years.
In other words, the credit-card bill is coming due for the Padres; they owe Kemp, who turns 31 in September, about $18 million for each of the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons. Kemp's .629 OPS is the fifth worst among the 60 MLB outfielders that qualify for the batting title, and his defensive metrics also place him among the worst outfielders.
The Padres back-loaded Shields' four-year, $75 million deal as well, giving him $10 million for this year, then $21 million for each of the next three seasons (with a $2 million buyout option in 2019). Shields can opt out of his contract after the 2016 season, although rival evaluators wonder if he would do that, considering he'll be almost 35 when he has to make that decision.
Kimbrel, whose performance has regressed this year, will make $11 million next season and $13 million in 2017, and in order to get him, the Padres took on the remaining salary of Melvin Upton Jr., who will make $15.5 million in 2016 and $16.5 million in 2017. All told, the Padres will owe those core four players -- Kemp, Shields, Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr. -- $65 million in 2016 and $68 million in 2017.
Additionally: Justin Upton, the Padres' best position player, is headed to free agency in a few months, with the industry fully expecting him to sign elsewhere for big money. Starting pitcher Ian Kennedy also is headed to free agency, fellow starter Andrew Cashner will be eligible for free agency after next season, and Tyson Ross can hit the market after the 2017 season.
The Dodgers and Giants haven't played well of late, which has helped keep the Padres in the NL West race, and if San Diego makes the postseason, well, then it's mission accomplished for a team that worked to make a splash during the offseason.
But the cost in prospects for San Diego's summer bash was extraordinary. Really, it appears that the Padres surrendered a generation of major leaguers. After the Diamondbacks effectively sold former No. 1 pick Touki Toussaint to the Braves the other day, and in the critique of that deal, Toussaint's value was placed somewhere in the range of $20 million. Apply that estimate to the boatload of players San Diego traded and you get a rough idea of how much value went out the door in the offseason moves.
The team's future roster holes are glaring, in the rotation, the infield, center field, catcher. The contracts of Kemp and Melvin Upton Jr. are viewed as dead money. None of it has worked, and some rival evaluators have rendered macro and micro diagnoses on the Padres' series of moves.
"Total disaster," one high-ranked executive said.
Said another: "Shipwreck."
However …
As some of the rival evaluators have noted, the Padres still have an opportunity to recoup some value quickly in the next 37 days and put the team in a far better position for 2016 and beyond.
There's nothing they can do about the Kemp deal, and the Braves and Nationals certainly wouldn't give them their prospects back, and they almost certainly won't be able to retain Justin Upton. They also can't get back likeable and respected manager Bud Black, whose firing has some Padres players grumbling.
But if the Padres take advantage of what is perceived to be a market that is thin in sellers, there's still time for them to flip some veterans to restock their farm system and make the future payroll situation more workable.
They could introduce Justin Upton to the trade market as the best available slugger, at a time when teams are starved for power.
The highly respected Shields would have a niche all his own as a sale item: a veteran pitcher under contract beyond this year, as opposed to Johnny Cueto, and less expensive in terms of prospects and salary than Cole Hamels. They could move Cashner as well, although there is some doubt among other teams whether Cashner can be better than a No. 4-type starter given how he executes his pitches. Some rival officials wonder if the Cubs would be a perfect landing spot for Shields, or maybe the Dodgers (although the Padres would have to swallow hard to make another deal with L.A. after the relatively acrimonious Kemp negotiations).
Kimbrel could be a younger, hard-throwing market alternative to Jonathan Papelbon, for roughly the same price, and he doesn't carry the off-field baggage of Francisco Rodriguez, which is a concern for some teams.
Two things would have to happen for the Padres to take this dramatic right turn in the middle of a season in which they intended to win:
Padres GM A.J. Preller's offseason makeover hasn't worked out to this point. Andy Hayt/San Diego Padres/Getty Images 1. They'd have to give up on their dreams of last winter, when they led the majors in columnist kudos. They'd have to implicitly acknowledge their win-now plan didn't work, which is never an easy thing.
The Padres wouldn't have to execute the course shift right away, but the sooner the better, because the expectation among GMs is that by July 20, more and more teams will jump in as sellers, and San Diego's pieces wouldn't look quite so exclusive.
But this is the right thing to do, to get the franchise back onto a more sustainable course.
The work of the Pirates, Royals and Rays isn't dynamic; it doesn't get headlines, doesn't make for sparkling news conferences. But these are the models for a team with middling resources: Pick your players effectively, through trades or through the draft; manage your payroll dutifully, always avoiding the type of contracts that can turn into money pits; and remain patient and circumspect.
This is how the Padres should be thinking.