Padres announce TinCaps 2024 Opening Day roster
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) – The San Diego Padres officially unveiled the TinCaps roster for the start of the 2024 season on Monday.
Top prospects Ethan Salas and Dylan Lesko headline this year’s group.
Salas, a 17-year-old catcher, begins the season as San Diego’s top prospect, and the number eight prospect in all of baseball, according to MLB.com.
Lesko’s the number four prospect in the Padres system.
The TinCaps open the year with 30 players on their roster, 23 of whom have some experience playing with Fort Wayne.
The St. Louis Cardinals will try to avoid being April Fools against the San Diego Padres
After dropping three of four games in Los Angeles against the Dodgers, the St. Louis Cardinals are in San Diego to take on the Padres. The Padres are 3-3 according to Baseball Reference. The split a two-game series with the Dodgers and a four-game series with San Francisco Giants.
Slated to pitch for the Padres are Matt Waldron, Yu Darvish, and Joe Musgrove. The Cardinals are pretty familiar with both Darvish and Musgrove, especially Darvish from his years with the Chicago Cubs. Baseball Savant shows Darvish threw nine different pitches at least one time in 2023. We can break that down into basically two levels of volume: he threw a sinker, sweeper, slider, and four seamer 17%-18% of the time and he threw a cutter, split finger, knuckle curve, and curveball 5%-9% of the time. His best pitch varies from season to season per run value, but when Darvish is at his best, the slider is usually the pitch that is working for him.
Like Darvish, Musgrove also has a large arsenal of pitches. In 2023 he threw a four seamer and curveball around 24% of the time, mixed in a cutter about 20% of the time, and then occasionally place a slider and changeup along with a sinker. His slider was once his best pitch, but in recent years the cutter has taken more of a role. The slider seems to work well off the cutter, dropping perfectly in the outside corner of the zone for a nearly 34% Wiff rate in 2023.
Matt Waldron is the most unfamiliar of the trio to the Cardinals. The rookie pitched just over 41 innings in his debut season of 2023 appearing in eight games. There isn’t much to glean from that short time, but he did throw a knuckleball as his primary pitch, along with a sinker and a four seamer with the occasional cutter. His breaking pitch was a sweeper. I find knuckleballers to be naturally exciting — probably due to the unpredictable nature of the pitch and the rarity to see it thrown with any level of actual success — and I really haven’t seen much of Kyle Gibson yet, so I am interested in Monday’s matchup the most.
On offense last season the Padres were led by Juan Soto, who is now with the New York Yankees. Luis Compusano in just 174 plate appearances had the next best wRC+ in 2023 at 134 and in five games so far this season is batting a 160 wRC+. Where the Padres really excelled is on defense with Xander Bogaerts, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ha-Seong Kim, Manny Machado, and Gary Sánchez all contributing with their gloves while still providing above-average offense. Of those players, only Sánchez is no longer with the team having been fully replaced by Compusano.
Like the Cardinals, the Padres under-performed expectations last season and both teams are under pressure to improve in 2024. The Cardinals, with the injuries the team has already suffered, seem to have a much tougher way to go. The Padres have made some big moves in recent years to become a team that can compete against the juggernaut Dodgers. For an early season matchup, these teams still probably have a lot they want to prove.
