The San Diego Padres made big moves at the trade deadline, but GM A.J. Preller also took a big risk.
San Diego Padres GM A.J. Preller was lauded this week for returning to his crazy deadline ways, and he definitely made big moves by acquiring starters Casey Mize and Robbie Ray.
The moves should help the Padres stay in contention for a wild-card berth going forward, but this wasn’t the usual Preller appraoch to the deadline, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic noted in his breakdown of the trades Preller made.
The typical Preller deal, according to Rosenthal, is for players who still have a significant amount of time under team control, and he noted that the trade for reliever Tanner Scott back in 2024 as one of the few, if not the lone exception.
But Mize and Ray are both classic rentals, and they added a combined $5 million to the payroll. The prospect drain continued unabated from Preller, of course, but this was a situation where the team played well enough to earn the pitching additions and the outcry from the fan base would have been furious if he hadn’t done something.
The unique spin on all this was the ownership situation, with the sale of the team announced early in the season. But financial approval has been slow to come, which means Preller got hung out to dry and left in limbo with news that the sale wouldn’t be finalized until after the trade deadline on Monday.
According to Rosenthal’s sources, Preller actually listened to offers on his two top end relievers, closer Mason Miller and setup man Adrian Morejon. The Miller rumors were always a bit far fetched, but they might have come to fruition if the Padres had tanked during their big road trip to Kansas City, Atlanta and Miami before the deadline.
The Morejon trade possibility was much more realistic. The New York Yankees made a viable deal, but the Padres swept the Marlins to help take the trade off the table, and Preller struck again on Monday with his two big moves.
There are still questions about the trade going forward, however. Both Mize and Ray had bad starts in their respective Padres debuts but travel and pitching schedules almost certainly had a lot to do with that.
The bigger question beyond that is ownership’s spending plans after the season. These trades will become very bad deals if the Padres can’t keep at least one of the two starters, but the Padres are alreaday luxury tax payers with an impending lockout on the horizon, so it’s really impossible to grade Preller’s latest moves until at least some of those issues get resolved.
