The San Diego Padres are clearly on the hunt for starting pitching. Could the answer be just up the road?

The Padres have not been shy about their hunt for rotation reinforcements. Here at EVT, we have looked at trade candidates like Cal Quantrill and Yusei Kikuchi.

Tyler Anderson would be another arm worth considering.

Anderson’s turnaround has been a quiet yet notable story around baseball this season. After signing a three-year, $39 million contract, Anderson struggled to a 5.43 ERA in 141 innings with the Angels last season. His contract was looking like an albatross as recently as six months ago. This season, however, it might look like a bargain.

Anderson has pitched 118 innings in 19 starts thus far, posting a 2.97 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in that span.

The lefty is not much of a strikeout pitcher, with his 16.8% K rate ranking in the bottom 12th percentile of qualified major league starters. However, Anderson has combated that by limiting hard contact, ranking in the 84th percentile of hard-hit percentage and 86th percentile in average exit velocity. He is averaging roughly 6.1 innings per start this season, and this kind of durability could be a valuable asset to a Padres team that has asked a lot of their bullpen since June 1.

There are a pair of possible hesitance factors in Anderson’s game that make him a possibly risky acquisition.

First off, Anderson has walked 9.8% of batters faced this season. For a pitcher without blistering velocity, command is an important element of his game, and his walk rate is above his career average (7.4%) and the MLB average for starters (8.4%). His barrel rates are also above league average (8.5% vs. 7%), and his fastball is being teed off on at a 41.8% hard-hit rate as well. Putting these factors together helps to explain Anderson’s staggering 4.42 xERA and 4.61 FIP. However, the Padres’ pitching lab and Ruben Niebla have shown an ability to help pitchers improve their pitch shapes and spin rates, as they have done with Michael King’s sinker and Dylan Cease’s slider.

Then there is the contract. Anderson is due $13 million for this season and next. This contract falls in line with Nick Martinez’s Reds contract and is below the likes of Frankie Montas and Jack Flaherty. Given the going rates for starting pitching in free agency, adding Anderson would likely check off a need for the Padres in the offseason, but $13 million might be a lot for an arm without consistent success, especially with Dylan Cease and Michael King due raises in salary arbitration. Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove will be due a combined $38 million for 2025, so the AAV of Anderson’s current contract may be an issue.

However, as A.J. Preller has shown, no trade is impossible. The Padres’ farm system has a lot of near MLB-ready pitching, which the Angels are always in search of. Furthermore, the Angels and GM Perry Minasian could swallow a portion of the contract to increase the prospect return. Would San Diego part with a Dylan Lesko or Robby Snelling in this kind of deal?

No. However, an arm like Victor Lizarraga or Ryan Bergert, plus someone like Jackson Wolf, could be a starting point for a trade.

San Diego knows what they need before the trade deadline. While they have several boxes to check off, Tyler Anderson checks off several of them. 

Diego Garcia

A born and raised San Diegan, Diego Garcia is a lifetime Padres fan and self-proclaimed baseball nerd. Diego wrote about baseball on his own site between 2021-22 before joining the East Village Times team in 2024. He also posts baseball content on his YouTube channel “Stat Nerd Baseball”, creating content around trades, hypotheticals, player analyses, the San Diego Padres, and MLB as a whole.

A 2024 graduate of San Diego State, Diego aims to grow as a writer and content creator in the baseball community.