MIAMI -- The Padres entered play Tuesday with a 3.60 team ERA -- the best mark in the National League. They’ve managed it, somehow, despite a revolving door at the back of their starting rotation.
Yu Darvish missed the first 3 1/2 months. Michael King has missed the last two. The Padres have asked for major production from Randy Vásquez, Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert -- and they've gotten it. Their bullpen has been lights-out as well.
There's credit to go around. Pitching coach Ruben Niebla deserves plenty. The pitchers themselves do, too.
But the Padres seem eager to make sure one other aspect of that success gets its due: The work of their catching tandem behind the plate. It’s a light-hitting tandem, to be sure. But they insist Martín Maldonado and Elias Díaz have been integral in the team’s run-prevention success.
“Yeah, the offense shows up,” said manager Mike Shildt recently, when asked to assess the performance of his catchers through the All-Star break. “It's on the scoreboard. It's something that gets magnified, understandably.
“But the catcher's going to get three or four at-bats. As an example, [last Sunday] we faced 38 batters. ... The catcher has a say in every single one of them. I can confidently tell you that Maldy and Díaz have done a really good job. It’s a hard job, also.”
All of which makes the Padres’ catching dynamic a fascinating one to watch this trade season. Make no mistake, the front office is actively looking at catching upgrades. General manager A.J. Preller isn't one to leave any stone unturned.
But, well, good-hitting catchers are hard to find on the trade market. If you can find them, they're usually expensive. And if you have the pieces to trade for them, they aren't always quick to assimilate, given the nuances of learning a pitching staff.
There's little doubt the Padres need to reinforce the depth of their offense. That was the first thing Preller brought up when first he talked about the team's Deadline strategy earlier this month.
“You’ve got to be deep one through nine,” Preller told MLB Network Radio. “And I think probably adding a bat or two is something that we’re going to look at here in the next few weeks to try to help our team get to October.”
Right now, the Padres are not deep one through nine. Their .585 OPS from the bottom third of their lineup is better than only the White Sox. They need bats. Plural. It would qualify as a major surprise if the July 31 Deadline came and went and there weren’t at least two new hitters on the roster.
But here’s the question currently being mulled by team officials: Does one of those bats need to be a catcher? Or can the Padres upgrade their offense enough elsewhere to work around the current deficiencies behind the plate?
If they were to add a bat to their bench, for instance, they could deploy it on a nightly basis in place of Maldonado or Díaz in a crucial at-bat. Instead, with the game on the line Tuesday night and the tying run at second base, the best option to hit for Maldonado was the slumping Trenton Brooks. He popped to short, ending a 4-3 Padres loss to the Marlins at loanDepot park.
The other obvious area of need is left field. Gavin Sheets has filled in admirably. But he’s best suited in the DH/1B role where he spent the early part of the year. In the next nine days, Preller will almost certainly add a left fielder.
The rest of the lineup is settled. San Diego’s one through seven hitters have all been league average or better, per wRC+, an all-encompassing hitting metric. But Díaz has a .577 OPS and Maldonado, despite doubling for the second time in as many games Tuesday, is at just .550.
Clearly, it wouldn’t take much for the Padres to upgrade their offensive output at catcher. But at what cost? They haven't been willing to use Luis Campusano behind the plate, and he continues to toil at Triple-A. Neither Maldonado nor Díaz rates all that favorably by most defensive metrics. But the Padres are quick to cite the intangibles of their game-calling and game management. And the pitching numbers are hard to argue with.
"There’s nuances of it -- the preparation, the strategy going into a game, the awareness to make adjustments during the game, the ability to give guys confidence, the ability to make a trip and say the right things,” Shildt said. “Those catchers have done a great job partnering with our pitching group. ... They’re a big reason why we sit there and have one of the best staffs.”