After coming just one win away from eliminating the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers from the playoffs, the San Diego Padres may be going for the reset button.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports this week that the Padres are listening to trade offers for three star players. They are infielders Xander Bogaerts (a four-time All-Star) and Luis Arraez (a three-time batting champ) as well as pitcher Dylan Cease (a two-time All-MLB selection).
Arraez, 27, is entering the final year of his contract and remains perhaps the game’s single best contact hitter. Cease, 28, is also going into the final year of his deal and has elite swing-and-miss stuff that could foreseeably fetch a significant trade return. Bogaerts, 32, would obviously be the hardest to move of the three as an oft-injured player who is still owed $229 million through the 2033 campaign. But his power profile as a middle infielder might still be enough to get some needy team to bite.
The Padres are still very much a World Series contender after finishing up last season with 92 victories and still having the likes of Fernando Tatis Jr, Manny Machado, Yu Darvish, and Jackson Merrill to go along with their aforementioned stars. But they have slowly been working to trim payroll (most notably, trading away Juan Soto and letting Josh Hader walk in free agency last winter), and they may be trying to create more flexibility to take swings at younger stars like this guy.
