How The San Diego Padres Quickly Lost The Division Lead And Their Narrative

Despite a solid start to 2025, the San Diego Padres hadn't spent the subsequent months of the season being taken all that seriously in matters of postseason chatter. They endured much of June and July in struggling to drum up offense while relying on their pitching staff — namely the bullpen — to scratch out wins. It wasn't so much that a narrative developed around this team being a disappointment, but more an absence of one altogether. So frequently the talk of baseball on the back of A.J. Preller's aggression, they faded into the background as a backend wild card contender (with a middling offense) in the National League. 

That started to shift in August. 

With their acquisitions of Mason Miller, Ramón Laureano, Ryan O'Hearn, and Freddy Fermin ahead of last month's trade deadline, Preller addressed some important components. He fortified the excellent bullpen even further to support an inefficient starting staff while offering stability to left field and third base (the two positions at which the team has struggled so much this year). O'Hearn, meanwhile, provided a bit more pop out of a first base/designated hitter combination than the team was getting out of Luis Arráez. Each move paid immediate dividends as August got underway. 

The Padres scored the seventh-most runs in all of baseball during that two-ish week stretch (64) while striking out at the league's lowest rate (15.1 percent) and walking at a rate tied atop the leaderboard (11.4 percent). Their 123 wRC+ as a collective had them pegged as the fourth-best offensive club to start August and snapped back into success with runners in scoring position in a way that had dissolved altogether in the two months prior (.283 average).

Those new faces were heavy contributors in that run, too. Laureano's 180 wRC+ led the team while Fermin's 152 mark sat third. O'Hearn wasn't quite hanging with his new-Padre counterparts in the advanced metric, but was still reaching base at a .343 clip courtesy of a walk rate over 17 percent. Suddenly, the Padres were back in the national conversation, especially with the likes of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill starting to find their respective grooves at the plate.  

Ahead of their series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday, the Padres held a one-game lead in the National League West. It was a lead that came as the byproduct of that 8-3 start to the month of August against a tougher stretch from the LA side of things. A showdown at Chavez Ravine promised to say a lot about where things could head in this division as we prepare to hit the stretch run.

Just a few days later, though, the lead is gone. And an ascendant narrative with it.

Not only has the minuscule lead immediately disappeared, but the Padres will start Tuesday down 2.5 games to their division rivals following yet another loss to the San Francisco Giants on Monday night. A four-game slide at this time of year can doom a team in the standings. Especially when your competition appears to be hitting its stride as the Dodgers are. 

The Padres of June & July manifested again as the team mustered just two runs on Friday before suffering a shutout loss on Saturday. They hung around for a while on Sunday before a pitch, Robert Suárez to Mookie Betts, landed in the bleachers and sent the Padres back home empty-handed. It's a familiar sight for San Diego in 2025, as they've now beaten their division foes just twice in 10 games thus far. Worse yet, it's a three-game sequence that could have a lot to say about this year's group. 

Many of the things the Padres did so well in the first two weeks of the month evaporated entirely. The team was an absurd 3-for-20 with runners in scoring position and stranded 19 runners in total. They struck out 24 times for the weekend, including a baker's dozen on Sunday. It was the story of the season: the pitching held its own (Suárez's late homer allowed notwithstanding) while the offense didn't have much to offer in support of their arms. That's been the story of the year against Los Angeles, though; they've averaged just 2.7 runs per game in the eight losses. 

Winning the division was always going to be an uphill battle for the San Diego Padres. In fact, was hardly expected. While there was some level of expectation over their ability to hang with Los Angeles, the wild card was the general ambition. The post-deadline Padres had an opportunity to grasp that narrative and suddenly become a serious contender in the National League. One with a robust pitching staff (highlighted by a dominant relief corps) and a now-balanced offense to support them. 

Unfortunately for the Padres, that narrative is back on reserve while the team will have some work to do in order to reclaim their resurgent vibes. They don't have a lot of time to do it, either. The team already laid another offensive egg on Monday against San Francisco. The Dodgers loom again as this weekend's opponent. Either way, a narrative is likely getting locked in a week from now. For the Padres, they'll need to quickly revert to the first half of August's form if they want to avoid it being the one where they're forgotten across the National League landscape once again.