Clint Barmes. Matt Kemp. Derek Norris. Wil Myers. Justin Upton.

James Shields.

The best offseason is baseball is the quick reload. There’s really nothing like it, not just for fans of the team doing it but for people who appreciate the game as much in the offseason as much as they do during the regular season. The current style is the long rebuild; the self-flagellation of three or four straight losing seasons, the high draft picks, the rapturous celebration of said high draft picks, the confidence and ecstasy of placing two or three or five young men in top 20 lists league wide by virtue of winning 55 or 61 or 66 games – this does not interest me. If a team given even $80m a year and four years of last place cannot muster a good young team in year five, their continued franchise deserves a hard examination. I say this as someone who experienced the Baltimore Orioles in the first ten years of this century.

The team that can do what other teams want to do in five years in one offseason – that is interesting. It is interesting because it’s risky as hell, and it very rarely works. The Cleveland Indians tried it in the winter of 2012 with a protected first round pick and new “qualifying offer” rule in a Collective Bargaining Agreement only a few months old – they gambled in free agency, burning picks to sign outfielders Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn for far less than they wanted on the open market, trading for future contributors like catcher Yan Gomes and allowing non-roster invitee Scott Kazmir to rekindle his career in Cleveland. Swisher and Bourn weren’t world-beaters, but they allowed the Indians to say farewell to replacement players like Casey Kotchman and Shelley Duncan – and the emergence of a cultivated group of prospects led by Jason Kipnis, Danny Salazar, Corey Kluber and Michael Brantley, along with standby Carlos Santana, got the Indians into the playoffs for the first time in six years.

The Chicago White Sox tried the same gambit last offseason, acquiring Adam Eaton from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for sending Hector Santiago to the Los Angeles Angels in what remains one of the most confusing three-team trades in recent memory. They signed Cuban slugger Jose Dariel Abreu in part thanks to the deep commitment that organization has made in recent years to the Cuban free agency market – Alexei Ramirez is another product of the franchise’s investment there. Chris Sale has benefitted from an aggressive starter program that was widely met with horror when first implemented, due to worries about his elbow health; with Carlos Rodon and Tim Anderson headlining their farm, they’re still a top heavy system, but the acquisition of Jeff Samardzija this offseason adds dependability to a rotation that sorely needs another No2 after Jose Quintana. They too are a team that has made moves on the current major league market to invest in the future as well as the present.

The 2012-13 Blue Jays were a team that tried to make this leap and failed. Culminating a massive 12-player trade with the Miami Marlins in November 2012 followed by a prospect-laden trade to acquire then-reigning National League Cy Young Award winner RA Dickey from the Mets a month later, the Jays went into the season having decisively “won” the transaction war over winter – I thought they had one of the three best projected rotations in baseball – and thanks to injury and ineffectiveness ended the season with 74 wins, in last place in the AL East. Now their best pitching prospect from that time, Noah Syndergaard, awaits his first sustained major league action with the Mets, while their best catching prospect, Travis d’Arnaud, enters his second season as New York’s full-time backstop. The Jays, to their credit, have continued to make moves; former Oakland Athletic Josh Donaldson and ex-Mariners outfielder Michael Saunders are excellent complements to a core with some youth but a lot of inherited age.

Which brings us to this offseason’s darlings: the San Diego Padres. They just signed James Shields to a four-year contract with a fifth-year option, if you hadn’t heard. They took a team whose lineup repudiated the promises of growth it made in 2012 and, under new ownership and new management, made the most sweeping changes the market would sustain. They began spending. Shields will receive $75m in guaranteed money over the next four years, and his option is for $16m. The largest previous free agent contract in San Diego history was current closer Joaquin Beniot’s 2014 $15.5m deal over two seasons, with a third year option; Shields’s almost quintuples it without his option added in. This is less an extravagance than it is a sign that a team is joining the modern baseball economy. Spending money, in and of itself, is only laudable insomuch as it demonstrates ownership’s understanding that it must fairly compensate labor on its own terms if it wants to improve its team quickly. What the Padres have been willing to spend their money on demonstrates their new leadership’s committment to fielding a winner now.

Upton, Kemp and Myers might not be the best outfielders in the National League. Both Kemp and Myers have weaknesses in centerfield, with Myers being the better option there until he proves he’s not; the division rival Dodgers’ addition of Joc Pederson might be a seamless replacement of Kemp, or he might have growing pains. The Cardinals have Matt Holliday and Jason Heyward in the corners, one of the best oldest outfielders in the NL and one of the best youngest. The Brewers, Nationals and even the New York Mets have good, competitive threesomes atop their depth charts. But last year, the Padres gave most of their playing time in the outfield to ... do you remember even one of them?

Seth Smith, Cameron Maybin, and Will Venable. Xavier Nady and Abraham Almonte featured in supporting roles. They were a bad group on a bad team, with Smith’s hot bat being the only thing that distinguished the lot of them. Maybin, for all his potential, might be better suited to being the best fourth outfielder in the league – which he is now, no offense to whoever draws the short end of the stick in Los Angeles – and suddenly the Padres have a legit outfield core with both established performance and upside, instead of having to pray that Maybin and Carlos Quentin finally stay healthy for a full season.

Barmes can’t hit, but he’s probably not going to get popped for PEDs like the erstwhile Everth Cabrera, and he provides stability in a middle infield that needs Jedd Gyorko to bounce back from a miserable 2014. Yangervis Solarte continued to be a league-average bat after his trade to the Padres from the Yankees, and is looking like a fine replacement for Chase Headley. Yonder Alonso remains a bit of a disappointment, but he’s got more breathing room to develop now that the outfield contains three legit possible middle-of-the-order bats.

Meanwhile, the idea has been for years that just anyone can come into San Diego’s Petco Park and be a league-average or better pitcher. It’s high time San Diego capitalized on that by getting a good-to-great pitcher in there and seeing if he can turn in an absolutely elite season. That’s what both Shields and Andrew Cashner can offer the Padres next year; Shields is probably the surer bet, having turned in almost a decade of 200-inning campaigns with reliable results, but former Cubs prospect Cashner still has some upside left in him – the only question is if he can stay healthy. Tyson Ross is also trying to build on a good 2014, and the two guys at the bottom of the rotation, Ian Kennedy and Brandon Morrow, have had flashes of steadiness and brilliance respectively. It’s not a great rotation; it would benefit a lot from aging prospect Casey Kelly finally showing his stuff at the major league level or recent top draft pick Matt Wisler speeding through the system, but the Padres have a good infield defense, an outfield with the potential to rake, a new catcher in Derek Norris who is coming off the best season of his career at 26 years old, and a rotation that’s been given the best home-field advantage in baseball.

They probably won’t win the NL West in 2014; the Dodgers are too good on paper, and the San Francisco Giants are coming off a World Series. But they’re a strong wild card contender, benefitting from a weakened NL East in that regard – and they’re the hottest, most talked-about, most interesting team in the National League. I no longer want to hear a single word about the Chicago Cubs. San Diego won 77 games last year.

Long live the quick reload. Long live decisive risk.

