Padres hit reset button after 2023 debacle

PEORIA, ARIZ. — Meet the Mea Culpa Padres. They knew their bullish potential in 2023. They reveled in it before learning that winning requires, well, the winning.

Yes, there was noise. Unprecedented noise. Relentless noise. Juan Soto! Josh Hader! Machado and Tatis and Bogaerts! Check out that pitching rotation! All of it, draped in the intoxicating scent of a 2022 NLCS run.

Call the jeweler. Size up those rings.

Oops.

This spring, it’s not the baseball Beatlemania of a season ago, when baseball fans fawned over a collection of talent and payroll flexing that left the game slack-jawed.

Instead of turning a corner almost everyone thought was imminent ... in the spring ... in the heart of summer ... in the critical runway to the fall ... the uber-gifted Padres, the big-bank Padres, cartwheeled off a cliff.

“I’ve been blessed and fortunate to be around some high-profile, Hall-of-Fame players and high expectations,” said new manager Mike Shildt, who spent the past two seasons as a Padres senior advisor. “I’ve never seen anything quite like the buzz, the amount of people, the excitement, the fervor that was last year.”

Shildt was promoted in November to replace Bob Melvin, who went to the Giants.

As spring shakes away the confounding cobwebs, Soto climbs into Yankees pinstripes, Hader is with Houston, Blake Snell stares at his phone and the Padres’ front office ratchets back the spending spree, a new reality has arrived. Normalcy.

Is sane, routine and traditional a better fit in 2024? Because bat-guano bananas certainly was not.

“It feels like we’re more focused on baseball,” veteran pitcher Joe Musgrove said. “There were a lot of expectations last year. I think, whether you believe it or not, they get to everybody in some sense. Even if you’re actively trying to ignore the things, that’s taking a little bit of your attention and focus away from the game itself and you getting ready for the season.

“It was like a production every day. It doesn’t seem like much, but it is a stressor when you’re dodging groups of fans and you’re trying to work on things and people are screaming from every direction when you’re trying to focus on drills. It’s taking away from your bandwidth, whether you think it is or not.”

Trust in this: Musgrove, a hometown guy, without question appreciates the support San Diego invests in this team. That bandwidth, though, as he called it, was tested like never before.

“We had a ton of stuff going on,” infielder Jake Cronenworth said. “We had a huge group of great players and everything going on with the World Baseball Classic. It was a lot of moving parts. We never had everybody on the field at the same time until those last couple weeks.

“Less attention (this spring) provides a better atmosphere for us to kind of focus on the group going forward, what we want to achieve and the goals that we have and the standards we set.”

Count this year’s Padres as more clear-eyed, for starters. Instead of dark shades at a Hollywood premier, this spring feels more like guys with tool belts ready to frame a house.

Less bling. More basics. “I would say that,” Xander Bogaerts said. “I wouldn’t say last year was focused on individuals, the Big Four or whatever. But you see how that worked out. That didn’t work out the way we wanted.

“It feels a lot more relaxed than last year, for sure.”

It’s been a jarring contrast, two springs connected by a season that thundered out of the gate and ended with a thud. Less than 365 days ago, the Padres were the big spenders and certified darlings-of-the-diamond status.

Now, it’s the Dodgers who have sucked up all the offseason oxygen and headlines. They signed megastar Shohei Ohtani, pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow and outfielder Teoscar Hernandez. And in case it slipped anyone’s mind, they still have Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, too.

So, the script flips. The case study on whether raw star power can trump rhythm pushes another team into the spotlight.

“It’s a different roster, but I like the idea that it’s a reset to baseball,” Shildt said. “It wasn’t that last year wasn’t about baseball because it clearly was. We didn’t just show up, sign autographs and take pictures. It wasn’t a dog-and-pony show. But I would say this is a different atmosphere, more traditional.

“We’re grateful for the fans and excitement. We don’t want to mute that, either. But right now, it’s about putting our head down and doing everything we can at every turn to be fundamentally sound and ready to compete.”

It’s mea culpa time.

LINDSEY WASSON/AP San Diego was the talk of baseball last spring. Alas, things did not go well and the Padres finished third in the NL West. Things are more normal this spring, with not much being said about the team.