This Will Define EVERYTHING for the Padres this season...

All right, folks. The next 10 days are going to have huge impact on not just this season, but the next couple of years for the San Diego Padres. I want to break it all down for you. Yep, that's right. Hyperbolic overreaction, or maybe even underreaction for just how big this could be on this episode of Padres. Digest what's happening, everybody. Christian Pedersen back with another episode of the show that is finally back to talking about actual baseball. The next, let's call it just a round number two weeks between now and the it's a little over two weeks until the trade deadline, but the next two weeks worth of games are going to have such a direct impact on the Padres that I want to break that all down because we've had AJ Preller come out and say that right now, everything's on the table and they don't want to get too committed one way or another in terms of, are we going to sell? Are we going to buy right now? They want to wait and see until where they are at following the road trips. I'm not even going to show you the NL West standings because that's not what we're talking about. It's these right here, the wild card, the Padres three and a half back. Three and a half is doable. Three and a half. If we were, if we were three and a half back of the NL West, I think we would be all in on being buyers and we'd be like, hell yeah, man, that's just a weekend series that we can get back in this wild cards a little bit more complicated in that we're not going to play Cubs, Phillies, Marlins, Cardinals, Pirates, Diamondbacks with the same level of regularity that we will against our own divisional opponents. And so we can't have at like the, the destiny is in their, their destiny is in their hands type of vibes on this. That being said, we are going to play the Marlins. And so there is some degree of control, but it's also just, we're going to play, we're going to play good teams. We're going to play teams that we need to beat. We're going to just, some of it is we're just going to need to win in order to maintain that momentum and have AJ want to acquire players. Starting against the Royals and then the Braves. Braves are currently leading the NL East, so they are a good team and therefore a good test for us to see if we are capable of beating good teams. It seems this season we've been at best on beating good teams, but, uh, you know, I guess that's neither here nor there. So like I said, three and a half back right now, as we head into this stretch of playing teams that we're going to need to decide what we're doing with the trade. And like I said, I think it's not just going to impact this year. I think it's going to impact the next couple of years because to me, worst case scenario is doing nothing right now because doing nothing, um, like if we stay, say we stay four back or somewhere between two and four back of the wildcard and AJ does like either absolutely nothing or very little in terms of like crazy move-the-needle type, like just doesn't do much, then you continue to bank on the fact or the hope that Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. are going to like just keep getting better and that you then have aging stars in Cronenworth, who is hitting a significantly better amount right now than he had been, I guess, well, mostly because he hadn't been here all season, but then he had been before his concussion. But wrong side of 30 for Zander, for Machado, for Jake, just like definitely wrong side of 30 for our entire starting pitching staff. And then our bullpen, you have Mason Miller under control for a long time, but Adam and Maury Hone are both going to be free agents and either going to cost us a ton to retain or we're going to lose them. And so to do nothing is not fantastic. So the first chunk of those games, like I said, Royals, Braves, and then it goes Braves, Marlins, and then Rockies and Diamondbacks. So that's where, like you can round it out to a little bit about two weeks and we, between the Marlins and Diamondbacks, will play teams ahead of us. If we can rip off some wills and knock the Marlins out of that spot and get ourselves, if we're two games or less, like if we're in it, and then AJ's like, okay, allegedly the Seidler group has said Greenlight to go operations is normal and AJ wants to start doing his AJ thing and there's a trade for, you know, one of the twins stars, like a Joe Ryan or something like that, probably not the Byron Buxton deal, but, you know, if there are moves to be made and had because we have closed that gap and if we're two, if we're a game and a half, something like that, back in the wildcard, because not only have we played well, but we've played well against teams like the Braves and the Marlins and the boys are hitting and there's this core that like, okay, there's a little, where there's smoke, there's fire and the team is starting to play well, then I think AJ can get himself in a position to go make some deals. Andrew and I have talked about a myriad of those deals, but their deals hopefully will be for non-rentals and get us in a position where we can make a push this year, but then also have still Ethan Salas coming up next year because I hope that he's untradeable based on the fact that he's in the Futures game and he's hitting, but you know, if Cash Mayfield ends up getting dealt, if X, Y, or Z, other players from the minors go and AJ da-da-da-da-da makes these deals and the Padres sustain their consecutive years in the playoffs streak, I think that you're then looking at a team that approaches the offseason. Even if we go again into the wildcard round and we lose, but if we make it again and if we're a team that's now, it's like, hey, four years, five years, six, like we start being like, okay, we can make this every year. I think you go into the offseason with new ownership, so hopefully money to spend pending the, you know, we all take off our tinfoil caps and the conspiracy ends and they let them buy the team, but an ownership group that's ready to spend some money and look at, instead of like, oh, you know, we need to really stick a dynamite, blow this up and rebuild, just being like, okay, we need to go spend $600 million to get Scooble or go X, Y, like go get some guys on that rotation, retain Mori home, retain, I don't think we need to retain Jason Adam, great all-star year last year, a lot of home runs this year, I'm indifferent on it, but I like spending on Mori home to have an elite setup guy who can also be the closer on days where Mason Miller needs to have a day off. But if we then, on the other side of this, if this goes into free fall and the boys don't hit and we end up off of this graphic, or if I would have to expand this graphic so it's so small that none of you can read it when we are done with this sketch or with this stretch, then I think we talk about, they ship out Mason Miller, they move Mori home, they get rid of Adam, they do a, you know, God forbid they go as far as to trade Tatis, but they do something close to a fire sale, and then we, I didn't, you know, granted I am just a YouTube host so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but if you game plan it out the same way that if you play out the winning version of that scenario, if you play out the losing version of that scenario, we go into an off-season where new ownership comes in and goes, man, for the first time in a couple of years we didn't make the playoffs with this, we need to move on from some of this, and I would be curious if that wouldn't mean shipping out and retooling in a major way that whether that's retooling internally with product, or with prospects and products returned to us from Mason Miller and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera type trades, and low-key being like next year's a rebuild year, or if that's retooling and going out and just being like trades and signings, splash, splash, splash, like we're, you know, our rebuild takes one off-season, but still a rebuild, like a change in the fundamental DNA of this team, and that's where I think the next two weeks is going to really set us up for like two very divergent paths. Curious what you think, let me know in the comments section, keep the faith everybody. Lenny, we're going to get you a championship before this all ends. Until next time, we'll talk to you soon.