The San Diego Padres continue to be very committed to making baseball fans everywhere mutter, "The shit is going on with the Padres?" on a daily basis. Today, the team traded a package of young players to the Braves for Justin "The Good Upton" Upton.
This is wild! In just a few days, the Padres have completely overhauled their outfield, bringing in Wil Myers, Matt Kemp, and now Justin Upton, all via trade. They also went out and got thumping catcher Derek Norris from the A's, and reports are that they are also nearing a deal for Will Middlebrooks:
The Padres are apparently very tired of being a team that most people stop paying attention to almost as soon as the season starts. They scored the fewest runs in the league last year, and only the Cardinals and Royals hit fewer home runs than they did. (That wasn't just a park effect, either—they had the worst wOBA, wRC, and OPS+ in the league, and if you invented some new fancy metric this year, they were probably last in that, too.) These new guys should go a long way toward dragging the offense into respectability, and the Padres managed to get all of them without giving up any of their good starting pitchers or top prospects.
It feels really weird to look at a Padres roster that looks downright dangerous—this is a team that has the aura and mystique of an Applebees—but god bless them for aiming high. I fully expect to wake up tomorrow and find out that they have traded for Troy Tulowitzki.