Padres Seek Clarity As They Pursue Offseason Storylines

The San Diego Padres have a lot of needs to meet this offseason, and it’s a confusing situation. Most of their old rotation is currently available in free agency at the moment, plus they need to fill a hole in their bullpen and at least add a bench bat, so there’s a lot to sort out right now. 

AJ Cassavell of MLB.com broke all this down into four storylines, starting with the possibility of reunions. It’s a clever take on the likes of pitchers Michael King and Adrian Morejon, not to mention first baseman Ty France. 

There are a bunch of other names that fall into this possible storyline, but they’re not all that great. The Padres could bring back Jason Adam and/or starter Walker Buehler, but everyone else on the list is either negligible or expandable. 

That leads to the second storyline, which is the rotation. Virtually everything leads to the rotation when you start asking personnel questions, and GM A.J. Preller referred to it as a “blank canvas.” 

He needs to start filling it up in November. We saw what happened last offseason when Preller couldn’t make moves due to the impending sale of the team, and a lot of it was pretty ugly. No one wants to see that repeated, least of all the GM and the fan base. 

The market for a bat was Cassavell’s third choice, and it’s certainly a viable question. But the market is thin in this particular area, not to mention overall, so things get dicey if the Padres decide to punt on France, who would cost a lot more this time around. That’s another mystery that Preller is going to have to solve, and one option he’s been considering is to look at Japanese players who have had success in MLB. 

Finally, there’s the staff question. This is a minor storyline for sure, but it’s not nothing. The Paders lost bullpen coach Ben Fritz to the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he’ll become a pitching coach, which make sense for him because he was blocked in San Diego by Ruben Niebla. 

The Padres also lost A.J. Ellis to the New York Mets, and he’ll be a strategy coordinator for them. This isn’t an earth-shaking move, either, but it is unusual to see a pair of staffers leave from a highly-successful playoff team that nearly made a surprising run to win the NLDS.