Rosenthal: Why Padres GM A.J. Preller's trade deadline approach will be as urgent as ever

New York Times

4 days ago

Some rival executives contend that San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller needs to act with urgency at the trade deadline. Their premise is not unreasonable.
Future Hall of Fame third baseman Manny Machado, 33, is still in his prime. Several top Padres pitchers are likely headed to free agency. And the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers look more vulnerable than expected.
Advertisement
Here's the thing, though: Preller always acts with urgency. He would do that if he were under contract through 2036 instead of 2026. He also would do it if every Padres pitcher were eligible for free agency. Pitching turnover is not something Preller frets over. It's actually part of his plan.
As usual, Preller will be one of the prime executives to watch at the deadline, pricing every available player, including his own. He will buy. He will sell. He again will distinguish himself as one of the few lead executives who operate without fear.
What exactly does he intend? Check back Aug. 1. Preller might trade potential free-agent right-hander Dylan Cease and replace him with another starter. He might move closer Robert Suarez, who can hit the open market by declining a pair of $8 million player options, and pick off some other high-leverage reliever to keep his bullpen a strength. How much payroll flexibility Preller has — the Padres, according to FanGraphs, are slightly over the second, $261 million luxury tax threshold — is not known.
Preller's stated goal, in an interview with MLB Network Radio, is adding 'a bat or two.' Left field, where the Padres ranked 28th in OPS entering Thursday's play, and catcher, where they ranked 26th, are the obvious positions to upgrade. But rarely does Preller follow a straight line.
The Padres, since the offseason, have fielded offers on all of their potential free agents, including right-hander Michael King and first baseman Luis Arraez. When they are open to trading a player or interested in acquiring another team's player, it never qualifies as a surprise.
What is surprising about the Padres is that they entered Thursday ranked 25th in runs per game, despite Preller's long-term commitments to Machado, right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr., shortstop Xander Bogaerts, center fielder Jackson Merrill and infielder Jake Cronenworth. Machado and Tatis are the only Padres with an OPS above .800. The lineup's lack of depth only adds to the pressure on the other supposed anchors.
Advertisement
Many in the industry expect the Padres to eventually crash under the weight of their big contracts. Bogaerts, 32, is earning $25 million per season through 2033. Machado, 33, has a backloaded deal that will pay him $35 million annually from 2027 to 2033. Tatis, 26, has a similar structure and will earn $36 million annually from 2029 to 2036.
Those contracts may or may not prove albatrosses. But Preller's ability to continually regenerate his pitching staff, largely at club-friendly rates, is a big reason the Padres might reach the postseason for the fourth time in six years — and keep their competitive window open for the foreseeable future.
The need for Preller to win with Cease, King and Suarez is no greater than the urgency he faced in 2023, when Blake Snell, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha and Nick Martinez were headed to free agency. How did Preller recover from their departures? By trading Juan Soto for pitchers King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vásquez and Jhonny Brito, then flipping Thorpe in a package for Cease.
Preller doesn't exactly view pitchers as expendable, but he knows few stand the test of time the way a position player like Machado will. His long-term contracts for starters — five years, $100 million for Joe Musgrove, and six years, $108 million for Yu Darvish — were reasonable gambles (well, as reasonable as a deal extending through Darvish's age-42 season can be). Nick Pivetta's four-year, $55 million deal, which pays him only $4 million this season and gives him the ability to decline a player option after 2026, looks like a bargain.
Yet, for all of Preller's best-laid plans, the Padres' rotation this season is not at all what he envisioned. Cease has been inconsistent. Musgrove is recovering from Tommy John surgery. King and Darvish also have missed huge chunks of time. Not to worry. The Padres entered Thursday ranked 12th in rotation ERA, in part because Preller keeps coming up with new arms.
Advertisement
Three relatively unheralded pitchers — Vásquez, Ryan Bergert (sixth round pick in 2021) and Stephen Kolek (Rule 5 pick from Seattle in 2023) — have combined for a 3.79 ERA in 204 1/3 innings. The Padres are drawing trade inquiries on Bergert and Kolek as well as Double-A prospects Henry Baez and Braden Nett, according to a source briefed on their discussions. All could contribute to next year's rotation, provided they are still with the team.
Cease, a top-five Cy Young finisher in 2022 and '24, obviously has greater value, particularly in a market starved for top-of-the-rotation starters. To interested teams — which is to say, pretty much every contender — his 4.59 ERA matters only so much. His 3.48 expected ERA is more than a run per nine innings lower than his actual figure. His average fastball velocity (97.1 mph) and strikeout rate are in the top 12 percent of the league.
Preller could use Cease to get the hitter he wants or to acquire prospects who would enable him to upgrade his offense in a larger deal. His farm system, ravaged by the Soto trade and other deals, includes two top prospects — shortstop Leodalis De Vries and catcher Ethan Salas — but little else beyond the lower levels. And Salas has been out since April 26 with a stress fracture in his back, effectively putting his trade value on hold.
The Athletic's Keith Law and Baseball America ranked the Padres' system 26th before the start of spring training. Padres officials take such evaluations only so seriously. In 2022, the year the Padres acquired Soto and Josh Hader at the deadline, Law had them 15th before the season started, Baseball America 21st.
Preller will figure out something. He always does. Let other teams sweat their models, fuss over surplus values and engage in paralysis by analysis. Urgency is Preller's default setting.