The Padres are going all in on their starting rotation this offseason.
President of baseball operations A.J. Preller has made the unit its top priority, and the Padres put teams on notice at the general managers meetings in Las Vegas earlier this month. San Diego is reportedly considering all starting pitchers on the market, from Tarik Skubal and beyond.
In recent years, the Padres have been limited in their spending under former ownership. Preller essentially had to be creative with constraints on the budget.
It doesn’t look like that will be the case for the 2027 season.
The Dodgers are at an interesting point of their dynasty as the team’s three-peat aspirations didn’t work out. The direction of the NL West champions is sort of in limbo, and the Padres can capitalize on their rivals’ ambiguity this offseason with a couple of big splashes on the free agent market.
Dodgers free-agent relievers Evan Phillips and Alex Vesia have garnered interest from San Diego’s front office, and the latter remains available. But the starting rotation comes before anything else this winter.
The Padres have added quick fixes or temporary additions to the rotation since 2023, but that appears to be on the cusp of change as the team is looking to invest in starters.
“The last three years, really, since, you know, since Peter (Seidler) passed, it’s been, in terms of our budget and our payroll, it’s been pretty much — haven’t had a ton of ability to go add on the free-agent market,” Preller told Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune this week in Las Vegas.
“You know, we were able to line up with Michael King last year, but a big part of that was what Yu Darvish did. He knew he probably wasn’t going to be able to pitch this past season and wanted to give us the opportunity to go spend money elsewhere. Kind of unheard of.
“But I think for us, the last three years have been more about making our money work for us and finding some players that are hungry that might maybe overperform the contracts that we gave them. That part doesn’t change.
“You’re always looking for players that you feel like are gonna outperform what we’re paying them and guys that go out and overachieve. But hopefully [the ability to spend more money on players] just opens up some other doors and avenues that we haven’t had in the last three years.”
