San Diego Padres: 3 more moves to win the NL West

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In order to make a big splash and build a division title contender in 2020, the first thing that needs to happen is the Padres need to shed some payroll and get rid of some bad contracts.

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this in every article this offseason, but Wil Myers has to be traded this offseason anyway possible.

The $22.5 million that he’ll make over the next three seasons is not worth the 1 WAR seasons that he’s likely to put up.

Ian Kinsler is set to make $3.75 million in 2020 and needs to be moved as well. Those two are taking up $25 million of the 2020 payroll and really aren’t giving you much in return.

Preller has to find a way to move both of these players to shed some money, and to do that he’s either going to have to take on a bad contract in return or give up some good prospects.

It really doesn’t make much sense to take on a bad contract in return unless it’s someone like David Price who can be a frontline starter, so let’s look at attaching some prospects to them.

The team I’m looking at is the Detroit Tigers.

That’s the team I was able to work out a Wil Myers trade with in our Mock Winter Meetings.

But for the sake of this experiement, I’m going to be a little more greedy and try to dump Myers and Kinsler on the Tigers.

Detroit has had a high payroll in the past, and they aren’t expected to contend for at least two or three more seasons. At that time Myers will be off the books, as will Jordan Zimmermann for them. And they’ll have just one more year of that terrible Miguel Cabrera contract.

Package Myers and Kinsler with a couple of top prospects (maybe Trammell or Morejon and another top 15 prospect in the Padres system — the cost will be high) and I think you can get a deal done.

And depending on the prospect package, the Padres might still have to eat some of Myers’ contract.

But with this move, the Padres now have the flexibility to go out and make major improvements this offseason.