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

With the Winter Meetings underway this week, we look at three moves the San Diego Padres still need to make to finish the offseason.

A.J. Preller has already been very active this offseason in improving the San Diego Padres roster for the upcoming 2020 season and beyond.

Going into the offseason two areas of need were outfield and starting pitching.

Preller has made moves to improve both of those positions with the additions of Trent Grisham, Tommy Pham, and Zach Davies.

It’s starting to look like the Padres won’t be able to sign any of the top free agents like we were hoping when the offseason began.

And because of that, Preller has had to move a lot of prospects to try and improve this team for 2020 through trades.

The payroll for 2020 is already around $140 million, which is what the Opening Day payroll is projected to be.

If that’s the case, then there is obviously not much room to do anything else this offseason.

And that’s why I think the Padres will have to subtract in order to add.

With the moves that have been made, I don’t think anyone is ready to crown this team the favorites to win the NL West.

In order for that to happen, they still need to acquire a big bat for the outfield and a frontline starter.

I’m not sure they’re going to be able to pull that off this offseason. So the question for A.J. Preller the rest of this offseason is — do you want to build a Wild Card contender or an NL West contender?

If the goal is just to stay competitive and compete for a Wild Card spot, then not much else needs to be done.

But if you want to make a splash and compete for an NL West crown, then here are 3 moves to help get that done.

Subtract to add

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.

Stephen Strasburg

After moving Myers and Kinsler, let’s assume the Padres payroll is now down to around $120 million.

In my opinion, there are really only three pitchers left on the free agent market that are worth going after. And honestly, I don’t think there is anyone being mentioned in a trade that interests me more than these three that I’m about to mention.

Gerrit Cole is about to get a record deal from either the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Angels — most likely — so he’s not an option for San Diego.

That leaves Stephen Strasburg and Madison Bumgarner as the only two free agents left that I feel give the Padres a shot at winning the division in 2020.

Bumgarner would be nice and more affordable, but it looks like even he could be pushing a $100 million contract.

There is a chance that Strasburg could get close to a $200 million contract.

And even though there are reports that the Padres are not even going to talk to Strasburg, we’re playing hypotheticals here.

And even to do this in our exercise, the Padres would have to be willing to go over what they are projected to spend — and I think they should.

The Padres go out and get their ace on a 6-year $180 million contract.

That would push the payroll to $150 million with one more move left to go.