Welcome to the off season San Diego Padres fans.

Asking a simple question at this hour.  How do you feel Padres fans about the just concluded 2026-season?

Discouraged?  Disgusted?  Disappointed?  Things Never Change?

Yes, the Friars won 91-games with a spirited sprint to the finish line.

Yes, they won a Wild Card series against a fading Cubs team.

No, they did not play very well against a 103-Brewers team.

Alot to unpack from a roller-coaster ride of a season, where I have told you throughout the course of the summer what I felt.

A highly paid batting order underachieved for some 140-games.

A pitching staff, battered by injuries, got a little bit of help late.

A favorable schedule that saw San Diego beat up alot of bad teams late in the year.

A Padres team that wound up going just (12-12) against good team late in the year.

And then we got to the Brewers series, where the heroic efforts of Michael King and Jackson Merrill should not be forgotten.  And there were some critical defensive plays that kept the Friars in games.

But the scoreboard does not lie about the batting order.  The first week of October boxscores resembled alot of the regular season, when this team was sub-.500.  A look at the big bats who played small vs Milwaukee:

               F TATIS (2-17)

               J MERRILL (3-17)

               X BOGAERTS (2-13)

               J CRONENWORTH (2-11)

               T FRANCE (3-14)

                (.181) BAVG…(.138) 3-LOSSES TO BREWERS.

The scoreboard does not lie.

And there should be truth told about the pitching decisions, not made just by Craig Stammen or Ruben Niebla, but by the Analytics guys too, on who made the pitching roster for the Brewers series.

The Padres did not include part-time starters Randy Vasquez or Griff Canning.  Either, or both, could have served as long relievers, bridge pitchers, in case starters had problems.

Neither was there to be used when Robbie Ray faltered early, or Nick Pivetta was pulled.

The in game decision to start using all the setup guys as early as the 3rd or 4th innings was fatal.  They used up the role relievers who were so good, it impacted every game after the opening night loss.  That led to the decision to ask ‘max effort’ guys Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller to try and get 6-out saves, multiple times.

And in using Robbie Ray as a game one starter (5.05-ERA), was flawed.  He failed, and there was no bridge to keep you in the game.  Vasquez, maybe even Canning, might have offered that and saved Matsui and friends for later in the night.

And Stammen never called on David Morgan, or Wandy Peralta, or even Joe Musgrove (till the final game loss) to buy innings.  The pitching staff was so very short-staffed.  They were good enough to be pitching in must win games in September, why not in October?

So the Friars braintrust, upstairs and in that dugout, has to be blamed.  It’s not second guessing, it is fact.  Much like the efforts to buy quality starts from Ray and Casey Mize did not work out either from the trade deadline out.

And this Milwaukee batting order wears you out.  Need a timely hit, there is Jackson Chourio; need a big home run, there is Will Contreras; ditto for a big game or two from Brice Turang and assorted others.

What a bad outcome, from a Padres batting order that underachieved in October like it did in season, to a pitching staff short on arms again (management decisions).

I felt it was cheap of the 47,000-plus fans to boo the Morejon-Miller combo when they ran out of gas.  They should have directed cat-calls at other people in the management hierarchy. Your team would have never been in the playoffs were it not for the lefty-righty ‘we own the 8th-9th inning’ efforts of those guys.

So we sit here preparing to watch the Fall Classic without a Padres team in it again.

Since 2020, we have been treated to something special at Petco Park.  But with all the spending, all the free agents, all the wild trades, for all the talk about being a World Series team, and the constant ticket price hikes yearly,  the Padres are just (15-19) in postseason play since AJ Preller turned the corner with this roster.

Just do not think the core group we have here is enough.  Just don’t think the formula has worked.  And the stars of this team have the clock ticking on their careers, not to mention the guys who have opt outs or can leave as free agents.

And here’s my haunting flashback.  The last major disappointment we had with the Padres, the 24-straight scoreless inning when they were eliminated by the Dodgers a couple of years back.  And then this past week, the last 23-batters vs the Brewers, without a base hit.  The (224M) payroll of big name bats-goes hitless.  Some memory-again.

My scorecard reads ‘FOREVER DISAPPOINTED’ in Friars baseball at the most important time of the year.  Wait till next year gets very old.  Sorry for the autopsy report.  But someone in the media has a responsibility or a right, to ask questions that demand answers.  Critiquing-not cheerleading is part of my job.

That’s how I feel.  How about you?

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