Padres News: Joe Musgrove Looks Back at the Season of What Ifs

All they can do is learn from this season and move on.

It was a rough year all around for the entire San Diego Padres organization and a season that they would love to forget about. However, there is some optimism going forward for this club, and that starts with building a better game plan entering the year.

It felt like a wasted year for this team, and they blew an opportunity to be great. But, with the offseason starting for them, they can only look back on what they could have done differently. Starting pitcher Joe Musgrove believes that there were plenty of chances missed for this team.

“You look back and you look at how many games we were right there, and if you do one little thing right — if you get one hit, if you make one more play or make one more pitch, it changes the course of your whole season,” pitcher Joe Musgrove said. “So that’s where people start to look back and see the importance of really preparing and trying to win every single game.”

Per Joe Musgrove via The SD Union-Tribune

San Diego coasted throughout much of the season and was forced to play catch-up in the standings because of it. It ended up costing them down the line, and they couldn’t climb out of the hole that they dug for themselves.

“I think everybody has their own kind of fluky stat or unlucky story from this year,” Padres President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller said this past week. “But I’m a subscriber to the belief that you are what your record says you are, and ultimately we’re not playing baseball right now in October.”

Per A.J. Preller via The SD Union-Tribune

The Padres finally found some momentum in the last few weeks of the season, but it was too late. All they can do now is learn from what went wrong this year and move on to 2024. 

It was a year of "what ifs" for the Padres, but they know they can't bank on that going forward. They need to be better from the jump and will work this entire offseason to make sure that this type of season doesn't happen again to them.