This isn’t our first rebuilding rodeo.

The baseball-loving world has been in this exact position heading into spring training many times before, anticipating a team with a massive overhaul only to watch said team fizzle mightily during the season. The stench of those failures still wafts in the air, and the 2015 San Diego Padres are trying to avoid it sticking to them. 

Padres general manager A.J. Preller took his position on Aug. 5 last year, and soon after the regular season ended and the hot stove started, Preller went to work on the game’s latest rebuild/reload/remake. The Padres are now a hot ticket in San Diego—they’ve already seen a 63 percent increase from secondary ticket sales at this time last year, according to Jeff Sanders of U-T San Diego—and the excitement is understandable.

Preller has added both legitimate and potential superstars to the roster, giving the Padres a realistic chance of earning their first playoff berth since 2008 in the tough National League West…on paper, at least.

“You can say we gambled on [Preller],” Padres managing owner Ron Fowler told U-T San Diego’s Nick Canepa. “We expected a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, and we got it—quicker than we thought.”

The challenge for this Padres revamp is finding different results than the failures we’ve seen in the recent past in Miami, Toronto and New York.

Rebuilds that did not rely on waiting for draft picks to develop into young superstars have been successful lately. The Boston Red Sox in 2013 are the most recent success story, as that project culminated in a World Series title. The 2009 New York Yankees won a title after adding Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Nick Swisher during the previous offseason, and the 1997 Florida Marlins also emptied the wallet in the offseason to end up with a ring.

But the failures are just as documented and certainly more salacious.

The 2012 Miami Marlins hired a charismatic and controversial manager in Ozzie Guillen, signed free agents Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell and traded for Carlos Zambrano. That experiment lasted all of three months before the club started trading off pieces during its first season in a new state-of-the-art stadium. The Marlins lost 93 games that year, fired Guillen and held a fire sale much the same way they did after winning the World Series in 1997.

The 2012 dismantling in Miami directly led to another quick rebuild, this time for the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Marlins finished their teardown in October of 2012 when they traded Reyes, Buehrle, Josh Johnson, John Buck and Emilio Bonifacio to the Jays. That deal, paired with the Jays’ blockbuster trade for reigning National League Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey, brought expectations in Toronto to an all-time high.

In 2013, the Blue Jays lost 88 games and finished in last place in the American League East. The Dickey trade, which cost Toronto catcher Travis d’Arnaud and pitcher Noah Syndergaard, now looks like a big loss.

The following offseason, the Yankees were livid at missing the playoffs and the Red Sox winning it all. Their 2013-14 offseason was an epic one, as they were intent on reloading their roster. The team spent $471 million on new additions, including Masahiro Tanaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. The result was one fewer win than the season before and another missed October.

So how will the Padres be any different this summer?

For one, Preller completed this franchise face-lift by adding players like Matt Kemp, James Shields, Justin Upton, Wil Myers and Derek Norris, yet still managed to keep the team’s payroll at around $100 million, according to Sanders. That total cost is barely up from the team’s $90.6 million payroll last season, when it won 77 games.

Preller also added Shields and low-risk, high-reward guys like Brandon Morrow and Johnson to an already strong rotation. He made his moves without dismantling last year’s rotation or depleting the farm system.

Before a pitch is thrown this season, we can say the Padres have one of the best pitching staffs in the majors after adding to one that was already elite both in the rotation and in the bullpen. We couldn’t say the same thing about the Marlins, Blue Jays and Yankees of recent rebuilds.

That foundation can carry the Padres even if the offensive acquisitions don’t live up to the hype and if the defense fulfills its low expectations.

However, some still don’t see this latest experimental rebuild working. respected baseball writer Joel Sherman of the New York Post is one of these voices.

But something else must be remembered: The Padres did not blow up a competitive team, and none of the newcomers will oust incumbents who should be starting. Even if you don’t like everything Preller has done, you have to admit the Padres are better at every outfield position or in the rotation from where they were at the end of last season.

The Padres also did not necessarily set out to create this massive overhaul when the season ended. Opportunities presented themselves—Shields with his dwindling market and price tag would be one example—and Preller struck.

“Sitting there with [manager Bud Black] and the staff after the season, if you asked if we thought if there would be this kind of volume and activity, that wouldn’t have been the case,” Preller told Canepa. “But one thing led to the next.”

Now, the Padres’ offseason has led to wildly high expectations for this summer and fall. The way it unfolded, we should not be surprised if this club lives up to them.

 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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