Padres: With Josh Donaldson off the board trades should be coming

Now that the top free agent left has come off the board, expect the San Diego Padres and other teams to be much more active in trade talks.

Things for the San Diego Padres and most have baseball have been pretty stagnant since the Winter Meetings when the top three free-agents came off the board.

Part of that was because of the holidays, but it was mostly because teams were waiting for Josh Donaldson to come off the board.

The third baseman was by far the best free-agent bat left on the market. But with him gone, teams will now start exploring options available through trades to improve their team.

Teams like the Atlanta Braves, Texas Rangers, and Washington Nationals who missed out on Donaldson now have to find other ways to upgrade their team.

Those teams who have assets to trade and are rebuilding like the Pittsburgh Pirates and Seattle Mariners should now be getting even more calls this morning.

There really wasn’t a lot of motivation for them to trade their players until the free-agent market became clearer. I expect talks on Starling Marte and Mitch Haniger to pick up, and the Padres should be a part of those discussions.

Of course, there are still two pretty prominent free agents left out there in Nicholas Castellanos and Marcell Ozuna. We may have to wait until they sign for the trade talks to really increase, but I don’t think either of them will hold up the market they way Donaldson was.

This means we could finally start hearing some more rumors about the Padres possible trade partners.

We know A.J. Preller has been looking to move Wil Myers all offseason. Other players who have been rumored to be available include Austin Hedges and Manuel Margot.

The past month of this offseason has been dragging along, but with the one big domino left on the board now going down, I expect the end of January to be much more active. And Preller and Padres should be right in the middle of it all.