thelesterlee
The 2023 San Diego Padres have the most stacked roster off all time. Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr, Jake Cronenworth, Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Gary Sanchez, Joe Musgrave.
And the team is 4th place in the NL West with a 69-78 record and no chance of making the playoffs.
In a recent interview with the San Diego Union Tribute, Manny Machado shared his theory on why he thinks this star-studded team underachieved:
“I think we just didn’t want it. I think overall as a group, we didn’t want it as bad as Seattle did or as bad as some of these other teams. I will say that. I think that’s everyone’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault. We didn’t want it as a team. It falls down to the team. That’s not necessarily one player. It’s not an individual sport. So I think ultimately, it comes down to all of us. We should have wanted it more.”
Oh, is that the only thing stopping the Padres from winning games? They simply do not want it enough?
Wow.
Who knew baseball was so easy? All you have to do is ‘want to win more’ and you will.
I guess now that Manny said this, we can expect San Diego to finish this season on a winning streak since they have assessed their flaws and realized it was their collective lack of yearning.
The Padres are 24th in team hitting because no one in the lineup reallyyyyyy wants to hit.
Trent Grisham has 59 more strikeouts than hits because he wasn’t standing in the batter’s box with his eyes closed super tight thinking to himself “boy, I really really want a hit”.
The Padres just don’t want it enough.
It’s why they’re 6-22 in one-run games and 0-11 in extra innings. It’s all due to their individual character flaws. I’m sure Padres fans love hearing these players admit to not trying that hard.
Personally, I think teams like the Padres and Yankees are behind teams like the Dodgers and Braves because those teams are so advanced in their player scouting and development that it seems like they’re cheating.
The franchises like the Astros and Rays are spending their money on technology and research to get advantages before the games even begin.
It feels like those organizations are creating their stars in sketchy underground laboratories while New York and San Diego are still acquiring unwanted “stars” from other teams and assuming they’ll be able to continue to replicate their previous success despite the league changing around them.
Pitching has changed. The speed and location of their fastballs have changed.
Hitting has changed. Guys are spending all their time in the gym so they can rip homers but instead, they’re ripping their muscles clean off the bone and spending entire seasons on the injured list because most bodies cannot quickly swing bats through the strike zone over and over, night-in night-out without these athletes recovering with secret HGH supplements.
Having a bunch of guys who were good a couple years ago means jackshit in 2023.
It doesn’t help when you look around and realize no one really wants to win that badly.
Everyone try your hardest out there. And try to force a trade to one of the organizations who are probably cheating.
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