Padres News: Friars' Front Office Weighing Multiple Financial Obstacles

The Padres are facing a rather perilous financial situation, as their high-priced moves have not paid off as they hoped.

So far, things haven't gone as well as the San Diego Padres had hoped.

The Padres were expected to contend in the NL West this season, and quite possibly have a look at bigger things, given that they'd pulled off a rather convincing series win in the NLDS last season over a Los Angeles Dodgers team that had previously dominated them.

With a core that includes, among others, Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Jake Cronenworth, and a formidable top two in the starting rotation in local product Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, a return to the playoffs was supposed to be as sure of a thing as there could be in the sport, and a run through the entire National League wasn't that far fetched.

Unfortunately for the Friars, that is not where things stand.

As of Friday afternoon, the Padres are eight games out of first in the division, three and a half out of the second Wild Card spot, sport a 29-33 record, and are very much closer to irrelevancy than they are to any sort of contention.

And with the combination of the team's high-priced acquisitions and the club's mediocrity, the Padres are staring directly at a house of cards that's dangerously close to toppling.

Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune took a deep dive into the team's outlook, and if things don't turn around rather quickly, they might be faced with an incredibly bad return on investment and the need to unload things quickly in order to make up for it.

"And while there is time in the Padres’ current situation, it likely isn’t on their side. If the clock strikes midnight sooner than expected, there is a great potential for job losses and perhaps even a tectonic shift in the franchise’s philosophical direction."

No, the Padres be on the move or anything like that -- a la their former neighbors in the Chargers and the Oakland A's  -- but if they can't engineer a fast 180, things may just have to change dramatically for the franchise.

San Diego took a big roll of the dice, changing their strategy almost overnight when largely turned away from homegrown prospects to big-name free agents.

And while there is some time for things to take a turn for the better, so far that roll is coming up empty.