Padres Rumors: Padres The Favorites For James Shields?

The James Shields sweepstakes might be coming to an end and the San Diego Padres may be the ones who are signing the San Diego resident. After all the moves in adding bats to the lineup, they may be adding a veteran arm for the rotation as well. According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, the Padres are sitting in the lead position for the right-hander.

Shields can slot right in with Ian Kennedy, Tyson Ross and Andrew Cashner to form a pretty darn good quartet of starters.  The Padres have had interest in San Diego native, but a trade would have the Padres lose possibly Cashner and any of top prospects Austin Hedges, Matt Wisler and Hunter Renfroe as well.

For Shields, it’s the money and the 13th overall pick in the draft.

One of the things that makes a Shields to Padres deal possible is the Matt Kemp trade. As Jon Heyman noted last night, the Padres will only be paying Kemp $3 million this season because of the $18 million payout the Dodgers will be making on Kemp’s salary for the 2015 season.

That flexibility allowed them to go and trade for Justin Upton and possibly land Shields now too. Secondly, we know the Padres payroll will be higher than the $90.1 million it was last year.

Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler said as much in his email to UT-San Diego.

If you read the tea leaves, and take a look at all the evidence, it’s very plausible that James Shields may be a member of the Padres very soon.

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