Padres Should Be Careful With Trade Temptations
(AP Photo/Ralph Freso, File)
With plenty of players that will demand some trade interest, the San Diego Padres need to be careful with trade temptations this winter.
Corey Kluber, Derek Lee, Kevin McReynolds, Roberto Alomar. The list goes on and on.
The San Diego Padres have drafted and cultivated some pretty respectable young players but these men have enjoyed success in another uniform, after leaving America’s Finest City. That is a sad reality. A very tough pill to swallow for some Padre fans.
With the end of the 2018 season near, the Padres are once again at a point where the team could deal some young homegrown players in an effort to compete sooner rather than later.
Austin Hedges, Hunter Renfroe, Franmil Reyes, and Cory Spangenberg are players that grew up in the system and could be made available at some point this winter by A.J. Preller. It all really depends on if another GM meets the asking price the Padres have for each young player. Anything can truly happen.
Then there are the numerous prospects who could be made available by the team in their search for quality players that have a major league track record. The Padres could deal a young player thinking his value is overinflated. Corey Kluber was deal for Ryan Ludwick when he was only in the lower levels of the minors for the Padres. Their assessment of him was clearly wrong. The team cannot make that same mistake again.
We are at a time in Padres history where there is a fork in the road.
Will the team make the continued conscious effort to build the farm and produce talent year after year? Or will they attempt to rush things by acquiring a player who is overvalued and paying him for what he has done, not what he will do for the team in the future? Padres fans can be thankful that the team did not pull the trigger on a potential Chris Archer deal this summer, as the asking price would have easily outweighed what you are going to get from the aging ace pitcher. The Pirates paid that price and had almost immediate remorse.
The Padres do not have to make a deal, but that does not mean they won’t. They have valuable players that should be of great interest to a few teams around the league. Can they resist the temptation to hold out for more value? In my view, the team will indeed be patient in any potential trade. Preller and his staff held out for a huge haul for Brad Hand and they got it in Francisco Mejia. There is no need to rush.
As this baseball season ends, there will be huge questions for the Padres baseball operations staff. Evaluating players is no exact science. Information must be gathered and one way or another the team must make the correct judgments. This Padres franchise is eager for success. The ball is in their court.
James was born and raised in America’s Finest City. He is a passionate baseball fan with even more passion towards his hometown Padres. Editor-In-Chief of EastVillageTimes.com. Always striving to bring you the highest quality in San Diego Sports News. Original content, with original ideas, that’s our motto. Enjoy.
Please…please….PLEASE be patient Padres and don’t just wheel and deal for the sake of wheeling and dealing. We are finally in a place where we could be very competitive for a very long time. Lets keep it that way. Corey Kluber is still stinging. And the pain from Trea Turner is going to get worse if he improves on his numbers from this year. BE PATIENT!!! Stay the course! Don’t overpay for any free agents even those who are putting up big numbers because we have the players who could be doing that very thing in just a few short years. Get it right this time. Keep the farm stocked.
If all of us are to “vote” on “if” we trust our GM to make a good trade and signing, who in the room honestly feels AJ Preller will be the guy to make our Padres better? What do we base it on; the last 3 years? Preller reminds me of the kid who collects fire flies at night. OK, he has built a promising farm system. That’s what we hear all the time. Still, these kids are all “prospects” and “suspects.” Manuel Margot was supposed to be a can’t miss star. Well, what happened? Another case in point is Wil Myers. Many people want the Padres to trade him; that his goofyness, his prone to injury and propensity to utter stupid comments makes him someone we’d rather not have. OK, great! Now try and trade him…. Good luck Preller! Personally, I don’t know what Seidler and Fowler see in the man to justify keeping him. But if he is allowed to remain in place and make the trades we know he has to make, I’m holding my breath.
The Meyer trade for Turner will not be the names people will remember – keep your eyes on Jose Castillo as a regular all-star closer. Jose was the player everyone seems to forget was part of that trade.
Didn’t the Padres get Kevin Brown for Derek Lee. They would not have won the pennant in 1998 without Brown and if Derek Lee had spent his entire career with the Padres they would have still never won a pennant. So that trade is hard to knock.
Sounds like the Padres want to trade for a starting pitcher, but there’s nobody out there that is particularly appealing. Pitchers like Stroman, Fulmer, Duffy, and Bundy are probably attainable, but all of them have struggled badly, and are generally unexciting. Honestly, I would rather sign a Tyson Ross or Trevor Cahill type, and not trade any major prospects.
How about Alex Cobb with the Orioles? He had a horrible year but had pitched well in Tampa. Could be a bounce back candidate.
I would certainly consider it, but he has 3 years and around $45 million left on his contract. Orioles would have to eat a lot of money for that to work for the Padres.
Don’t forget 1989 when the Padres had two catchers, the All Star Benito Santiago, and the prospect Sandy Alomar Jr. They traded Alomar who became an All Star himself for Cleveland. Now the Padres have Hedges and Mejia, and I want to keep them both.
I wouldn’t mind trading Jankowski to ease the OF logjam. Maybe an offense of this:
C: Hedges Mejia
1b: Hosmer
2b: Urias
SS: Stopgap until Tatis is ready
3b: Myers
OF: Cordero, Margot, Renfroe, Reyes
UT: Spangenberg
This is only 11 players, but already I would predict grumbling for playing time. Maybe Mejia can play other corner positions. And maybe just resign AJ Ellis to be 3rd catcher/PH. Having Ellis on the bench allows Green to use the other catchers as pinch hitters. And then we just go with 12 hitters and 13 pitchers. A short bench, but why not? In recent years the Padres have had unusable benches with multiple Rule 5 guys who were essentially useless.
3 catchers? No one does that anymore.
Well other than the Padres. Opening day rosters 2018 = Hedges, Ellis, Lopez. 2017 = Hedges, Torrens, Hector Sanchez, and Christian Bethancourt (Super utility, but wasn’t good at any of them). 2014 = Grandel, Hundley, and Rivera.
I do not believe we need Ellis back unless they are planning to have Mejia play other spots in the field. Which I do not think is a good thing.
Skittles – thanks for the memories
Wasn’t Myers a catcher originally. He could probably at least serve as an emergency catcher.
Emergency catcher is different from 3rd catcher. A 3rd catcher is actually expected to enter a game in non-dire situations. I wouldn’t want to burden Myers with, “Hey, you’re a super trooper for changing positions so often. Can you also catch?”
That seems like a pretty solid/likely lineup. I like Jankowski, but all 4 of those guys are either far better or in Margot’s case, have a much higher ceiling. The odds of them moving on from Jankowski and him being a star are far less than those others. If Jankowski could learn an infield position he would be a better UT guy than Spangy with his speed/contact profile, but he just doesn’t fit in this outfield.
I don’t care to have Ellis on the team anymore, we can get a bench bat from a more valuable UT player and the leadership value at this point should fall on Hedges. Not to mention the Padres need the 40 man space.
The Padres need to figure out who must be on their 40 man roster and protect the players that the need from the Rule 5 draft. The problem is that they have an over abundance of talent at this level at almost all positions that they could lose. The need to trade this excess talent for quality younger talent and keep their lower level farm teams stocked. Forget trading for veterans, has beens and high priced talent – develop from within and just keep reloading.