FRIAR MALAISE

With about 40% of the regular MLB season in the books (63/162) the San Diego Padres are experiencing an offensive malaise that affects almost the whole team.  7 of the 10 players with 100+ AB's are racking up surprisingly bad numbers:
                                                            AB       AVG      WAR
Everth Cabrera       SS      254       .232       -0.3
Will Venable           OF      177       .203       -0.2
Yonder Alonso        IB       205       .210       -0.1
Alexi Amarista         IF       105       .200       -0.1
Yasmani Grandal    C        120       .183        0.0
Chase Headley      3B       159       .195        0.4
Jedd Gyorko          2B        204      .162       -1.1
                                         1224      .200       -1.4   

The entire Padres infield plus Amarista (utility) and Venable (a semi regular outfielder) is collectively at the "Mendoza Line" in over 1200 AB's and the group comes up with a negative offensive WAR (-1.4) .  This means they're playing below replacement level and perhaps a team of AAA players could come up and do as good or better.  San Diego ranks last (30) in offensive WAR (1.7) behind the Phillies who have 2.8.  Petco Park is not a hitter's park despite some recent adjustments to make it more hitter friendly.  The offense is .219/.278/.342 at home and .216/.275/.352 on the road showing no real difference saying the offense is just really bad.  Some of these hitters have a better track record but they have been up and down showing little consistency.  Saving face for Padres offense is Oakland import Seth Smith (.301/.402/.532  1.8 WAR) and Cameron Maybin with .291/.330/.405  .9 WAR.
 

Seth Smith the only very good offensive Padre  (zimbio.com)

The Padres are a small market team with limited payroll (86 million) that seems willing to sign relatively small affordable contract extensions to provide some stability but no one is stepping up.  They did with Gyorko after a promising 2013 (6/35.5M) but they'll have to wait to reap benefits as Gyorko has tanked this year.
GM Josh Byrnes and Sr. VP of Baseball Operations, Omar Minaya, the first Hispanic GM with the Expos in 2002 and later with a bad tenure in New York with the Mets (2005-2010), have a lot of work to do here and steer the team in the right direction.

With a 28-35 record the defense and pitching is keeping San Diego alive while they wait for the offense to click.

According to Fangraphs, Everth Cabrera, the Padres SS is rolling along the bottom of the MLB SS rankings at 29th out of 30 with a -.3 WAR only ahead of Andrew Romine of the Tigers with a -.6 WAR.  Last year he was top 10 in MLB and top 5 in the NL.
This was supposed to be a consolidating year for Cabrera to prove to Padres brass that he was worth keeping as a valuable top of the order hitter with great base running skills.  Everth is not alone as there is a list of MLB shortstops (10 of 30) that are negative or hovering just above replacement level:
Negative:   Everth Cabrera (-.3) Andrew Romine (-.6) Adeiny 
                  Hechavarria (-.2)
Zero Value:Yunel Escobar, Brad Miller, Ruben Tejada, Jordy 
                   Mercer.
Hovering: Derek Jeter (0.1) Jonathan Villar (0.1) Jean Segura (0.2)

Everth Cabrera after a strikeout in Washington  (zimbio.com)

Cabrera's .232 average and .264 OB% is not acceptable as a table setter after a .283/.355 line in 2013.  His walk rate has dropped (9.4 to 4.1%) and is strikeout rate has skyrocketed (15.9 to 23.1%) while his 12 stolen bases in 18 attempts (66%) is bad.  Everth has a contact problem dropping from 86.3 to 79.8% especially out of the strike zone 71 to 62.1%.  Less contact and few walks is a bad formula for small ball players.  He is swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone (24.6 to 29.6%) showing less plate discipline.  A lot of stuff wrong with Cabrera at a time when he should be making strides to secure a nice multi year contract.  He is a hard worker and there is still time to right the ship.