With MLB Opening Day right around the corner, the San Diego Padres are still in need of starting pitching.

After their flurry of moves to sign starting pitching depth, none of the candidates have inspired much confidence.

With returning starter Joe Musgrove starting the season on the injured list, Walker Buehler will make the team. It appears that German Marquez will nab the final rotation spot as well. The aforementioned Musgrove will have a spot waiting for him when he recovers from his injury. The final rotation spot will likely go to Griffin Canning when he recovers from his Achilles injury.

At their best, these options can be very good, but fortifying the rotation early on allows some breathing room for the Padres going into 2026.

General manager A.J. Preller has the opportunity to trade from strength to balance out the team

The Padres’ bullpen unit is clearly the team’s biggest strength in terms of talent and depth.

Counting minor leaguers that either have MLB experience or are reasonably penciled into the plan for 2026, the Padres have at least 15 relief pitchers that can be used at the MLB level. This number includes Logan Gillaspie, Marco Gonzales, and Triston McKenzie, who may be long relief options as well. Fringe players like Alek Jacob, Ron Marinaccio, and Matt Waldron are easier to trade off due to a lack of options and without a clear spot in the bullpen. The Padres, however, should aim higher and go bigger.

The Padres should trade Jeremiah Estrada for Luis Gil and Jasson Dominguez

Jeremiah Estrada has been a core member of the Padres bullpen for the last two seasons. In his Padres tenure, Estrada has thrown 134 innings with a 3.22 ERA and has a 13.9 K/9. Per Fangraphs,

The right-hander ranks as the 13th most valuable reliever in the last two seasons by fWAR. His ascension in the Padres system is a huge reason for the relief corps’ success, and a big credit to his work with pitching coaches Ruben Niebla and Ben Fritz. Given the outlook of the team’s bullpen depth, Mason Miller is the team’s closer with Adrian Morejon and Jason Adam as setup men. Estrada is an overqualified sixth-inning reliever who would fit as a setup man or even a closer on other teams.

With that notion, the Padres also have other pitchers on the wings that could replace that production. David Morgan in 2025 showed that he might be a similar story to Estrada in that slot. Bradgley Rodriguez is another highly regarded prospect who could take that spot as he has seen early success and impressed in spring training. As valuable as Estrada has been, the Padres can be confident in their ability to replicate that level of production from their other arms to parlay Estrada’s success into trade value. 

The New York Yankees have not addressed their bullpen needs

The New York Yankees have had bullpen struggles for a few years now and did not address this problem during the offseason.

Their best reliever, David Bednar, is projected for about the same fWAR as Estrada, and the depth falls off pretty quickly beyond Camilo Doval as their setup man. No one in the Yankees bullpen is projected to have a K/9 as high as Estrada’s in 2026. Estrada also comes with some control as he is still a pre-arbitration player with years of control left. The acquisition gives the Yankees an opportunity to be better in 2026 and beyond.

Former Rookie of the Year and Top MLB Prospect

In this hypothetical trade, the Padres should target former Rookie of the year winner Luis Gil and former top prospect Jasson Dominguez.

Estrada alone may not be able to net these two players, but any added relievers and lower-level prospects should supplement any extra need in a deal. In this package, the Padres would be targeting two reclamation projects that they can afford to take a risk on. 

Luis Gil

In Gil, the Padres would get a 28-year-old stud starting pitcher who is signed through his age 31 season.

In his short career, Gil has a 3.50 ERA and a 117 ERA+. Gil’s struggles so far have come with his command and his health, as he has spent time on the injured list the last two years with back issues. Some of Gil’s pitches suffered last season due to this, and his spring training has not yielded great results yet.

As a flyball pitcher with strikeout stuff, his profile fits Petco Park a bit better than at Yankee Stadium. As with any pitching acquisition the Padres make, how Ruben Niebla can squeeze the most out of Gil is very enticing. The Dominican’s pitching profile is a bit reminiscent of another starter the Padres acquired from the Yankees, Randy Vasquez. Vasquez had less stuff in his pitches than Luis Gil, but his finesse style has yielded success. With added velocity on his pitches and firmer mechanics, Vasquez is slated to have a breakout year for the Padres.

Since Gil already has decent stuff, working on his command and adding more looks to his three-pitch arsenal could unlock more out of the former Rookie of the Year. Given all the years left of control and the time to develop, the Padres could be adding a future ace who is starting the year in Triple-A for the Yankees.

The Martian

A controversial player who is getting a lot of discussion as a prospect bust, Jasson Dominguez is less of a need in this deal but a fascinating reclamation project.

Coming out of the Dominican Republic as an extremely highly touted prospect, Dominguez was getting compared to Mickey Mantle before even playing a single minor league game. As often happens with the Yankees system, Dominguez has suffered from lots of hype and very little development. The switch-hitter made his MLB debut in September 2023 in a season that was lost for the Yankees as they were out of a playoff spot.

Just eight games into his career, Dominguez was injured and required Tommy John surgery. The 2024 season saw the switch-hitter tear through the minor leagues and only get into 18 games in the big leagues, where he heavily struggled. In 2025, Dominguez was a league-average hitter who struggled defensively and was never able to get consistent playing time due to the emergence of Trent Grisham for the Yankees. While his defense has been a heavily criticized aspect of his game, Dominguez feels like a player who has not been allowed to properly develop, as he has not had a lane for everyday playing time, nor has he rounded out his game in the minor leagues. 

The player who scorched Earth in 2023 played with a level of freedom and lack of expectations that allowed him to be himself. Since then, the expectations of being a superstar have weighed heavily on the perception of Jasson Dominguez. Just past his 23rd birthday, Dominguez is now optioned back to Triple-A and is already being perceived as a bust at such a young age.

Although his defense has been well below league average, and his offense as a righty against left-handed pitching matches, Dominguez has only played 149 games at the MLB level. That is just short of a full season of MLB games in parts of three years,s where most of them have come without consistent playing time,e taking everyday at bats and coming back from injuries. The pattern here with the Yankees is one we’ve seen with almost every top prospect they’ve had. The Yankees either rush a prospect or take too long to call them up, have them blocked for playing time by someone who is making more money, and completely tank their trade value while refusing to trade them. Current Padre Miguel Andujar is an example of that, and it has taken him years to get back on track with where his career was headed after early success with the Yankees. 

In Dominguez, the Padres have a chance to take a young player and remove all of the pressure he has to perform, and help him get back on track to salvage his career. With a career .790 OPS against righties, he clearly has talent in the bat, even if it means he should be a full-time lefty. The defensive aspect of the game is one he’d have to improve on as well, but the Padres have had success with left fielders who did not grade out well defensively. With Ramon Laureano’s impending free agency, Dominguez can be a very good insurance option to go cheaper as well. Along with a team that has a lot of leaders, specifically Dominicans Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr, to guide him, Dominguez’s lane to improve without the pressure of expectations appears possible. 

This hypothetical trade allows the Padres to move with more flexibility going into 2026, but also for the future. In a strategy similar to the Ramon Laureano trade, A.J. Preller making this move would solve some future offseason shopping during the season. With the depth the Padres have in their relief corps, filling out other parts of the roster allows the team to be more rounded out for years to come and provides depth in other places. The Padres and Yankees have made quite a few deals during this decade, and this is one that may easily be a win-win situation for both teams. 

Brian Ferreira

30

East Coast Based

Dominican