SAN DIEGO — Since we last saw them, lifeless after having reached the doorstep of advancing past the Dodgers in the postseason, the Padres have hardly stirred.

They extended the contracts of their manager and almost the entirety of their coaching staff. They re-signed utility player Tyler Wade. They have added three free agents (part-time catcher Elías Díaz a little more than a week ago and part-time left fielders Jason Heyward and Connor Joe on Friday) on what could only be considered low-dollar contracts.

They have made no trades involving major league players.

They have been involved in two real-life soap operas — getting publicly spurned by Japanese star Roki Sasaki and seeing the widow of their beloved former chairman file a lawsuit against her husband’s brothers that contests control of the team.

Barring a settlement, this season (at least) will be played under the specter of Sheel Seidler’s lawsuit against Matt and Robert Seidler, who have served as trustees of Peter Seidler’s trust. The season will also be played under the direction of another Seidler brother, John, who was on Thursday approved as the team’s new control person pending his officially taking over as trustee of the trust.

That is expected to happen in the first part of March. We almost certainly will not hear from the new chairman until after that. The team has cited concerns over the ongoing litigation and the pending nature of Seidler’s appointment as reasons for his not speaking publicly.

At best, the Padres’ offseason has been stagnant. In the worst light, it has been grim.

So, anyway, yay! Spring training is almost here.

Padres pitchers and catchers report to the Peoria Sports Complex on Wednesday. Five days later, the full squad is due.

The “full squad,” such as it is.

There are bound to be changes over the next six weeks before the Padres open the season March 27 against the Braves at Petco Park.

There almost has to be. They have said there will be.

It is not that it would be impossible to field a team that could conceivably compete for a playoff spot with their current roster.

But not adding at least one starting pitcher and at least another bench player would not be in line with what has essentially been the only public messaging from management in recent months (in the form of written statements): that they remain committed to Peter Seidler’s vision of fielding a team capable of winning a World Series.

They argue that they are doing so by virtue of their ongoing investment. They expect to have a payroll ranked in the top 10 among MLB’s 30 teaams. They say they are sinking every dollar they bring in back into the running of the team.

It is an argument with both merit and holes, both promise and peril.

The issue as it stands a little more than a week before the “full squad” assembles is the squad that will cost about $200 million this year is actually missing some important pieces from last year’s roster that ended up costing about $170 million.

The good news is that several of the team’s top players remain. The burdensome news is that those players are far more expensive in 2025.

Jake Cronenworth, Yu Darvish and Fernando Tatis Jr. alone are collectively making $18 million more than they did in ‘24, as the salaries in their long-term deals rose. Jason Adam, Luis Arraez and Dylan Cease realized a combined $23 million increase via one-year contracts agreed to in lieu of arbitration. In all, 11 players on this year’s roster account for more than $47 million in salary increases (plus the nearly $6 million in buyouts of mutual options almost certainly due Michael King and Díaz after the season).

Further bad news: Kyle Higashioka, Ha-Seong Kim, Jurickson Profar, Tanner Scott, and Donovan Solano left via free agency and Joe Musgrove is out for the year. That is upwards of 11 WAR (wins above replacement) to find somewhere.

Now, any significant late additions will likely come with a significant subtraction. The Padres’ estimated projected payroll, according to FanGraphs.com, is $207 million. That almost certainly means the Padres will continue shopping some of their higher-priced players.

So far, they have not lined up on trade talks regarding Arraez, Cease, King or Robert Suarez. Those talks have been conducted with varying degrees of actual interest in getting something done, and it is difficult to gauge intent and veracity when Preller engages in talks about virtually everything and everyone.

The Padres are also said to be open to moving Xander Bogaerts or Cronenworth and a significant portion of the money they are owed over the next several years. The substantial hurdles there involve finding a trade partner willing to take on that money, that partner having adequate big-league talent to offer in return and which prospects the Padres would have to part with to sweeten the deal.

Multiple sources have said King is essentially off the trade block, and word is Cease is increasingly likely to stay. But Suarez appears to be another story.

It would be a stretch to say the Padres are intent on trading their closer. But that is the move that appears most probable, according to two people familiar with the tenor of the team’s discussions. The Padres like their bullpen depth at the back end with Adam, Jeremiah Estrada, Stephen Kolek, Sean Reynolds and left-hander Adrián Morejón and are finding it more likely Suarez fetches them a return they need while taking $10 million off the books for this season.

This situation — having such finite financial flexibility — is years in the making. It is not a new development brought on by turmoil among the team’s primary owners.

Multiple sources said the 2024 payroll number is in line with the long-term projections the team outlined years ago. Those claims are consistent with statements made by Peter Seidler and others when the Padres were ramping up payroll in 2022 and ‘23 that the franchise would not always be in the top five in spending and would transition to a roster in which younger (cheaper) players balanced out the big contracts.

The Padres’ payroll peaked at $253 million, third highest in the major leagues, in 2023. Under the leadership of temporary control person Eric Kutsenda, the team shed about $90 million in payroll in 2024 and got back in compliance with MLB’s debt ratio limits, which it had run afoul of in ‘23 when it had to take out a loan to cover expenses at the end of the season.

The Padres also won 93 games in 2024, the second most in franchise history.

Padres manager Mike Shildt, virtually always a veritable evangelist of positivity, spoke recently of “the gratitude of what I have in life and with our team. And what we have is pretty darn good.”

Even if it doesn’t paint a complete picture, this is difficult to dispute.

Filling in the edges of the picture, however, will need to be done.

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