Cleveland's latest bizarre DFA could turn into Padres' surprise Christmas gift

The baseball gods have a funny way of delivering presents in December — and for the San Diego Padres, it’s rarely wrapped neatly with a bow. Sometimes it’s a splashy free-agent signing. Sometimes it’s a trade rumor that makes you refresh your phone like it owes you money.

And sometimes… it’s Cleveland looking at its 40-man roster, deciding it really needed Justin Bruihl, and then punting Jhonkensy Noel into DFA purgatory like they accidentally clicked the wrong button.

Jhonkensy Noel’s DFA could hand the Padres the right-handed power bat they’ve been missing

Yes,”Big Christmas” is on the market. The 24-year-old outfielder with 19 career MLB homers in just 351 plate appearances. A player who also comes with a batting line that makes your eyes do that slow blink: .193/.242/.401, with a 32.8 percent strikeout rate and a 4.8 percent walk rate. The power is loud. The on-base skills are… whispering from another zip code.

However, the Padres have a way of taking odd swings on players like this, and as long as those players do not cost them future talent, it could happen again. If A.J. Preller likes what he sees with a "24 years old + right handed power + available for almost nothing," theres a chance he'll be in on making a waiver claim in a heartbeat.

Noel isn't a finished product yet. After last season (.162/.183/.297, 6 HRs in 69 games), it's hard to call the last year Noel had a slump; it was more of " please stop showing me my Statcast page." However, prior to that dismal performance in 2025, he showed why teams should be  interested in signing him (13 HRs in 67 games) and he has an element of raw pop that cannot be taught.

And that’s exactly why this could be a sneaky Padres fit.

San Diego’s lineup, for all its stars and all its “this is the year the offense clicks” optimism, still has a recurring issue: right-handed thump that can punish mistakes. Noel wouldn’t need to be “the guy.” He wouldn’t even need to be an everyday starter right away. The best-case Padres version of this is simple:

• claim him
• stash him as a bench/rotation power bat
• let the staff work on the swing decisions
• and see if you can turn “all-or-nothing” into “mostly damage”

Petco Park doesn’t exactly hand out cheap homers like party favors — but real power plays anywhere. If Noel’s tool is legitimate (and 19 big-league homers in a limited run suggests it is), the Padres could do a lot worse than taking a low-cost flier on a 24-year-old who still has time to be molded into something useful.

The risk is obvious: the strikeouts, the lack of walks, the possibility he’s a Quad-A slugger who never solves big-league sequencing. But the price is the whole point. This isn’t a blockbuster. This is the kind of move that looks tiny in December and feels massive the first time he runs into one and sends it into the Western Metal building’s personal space.

Cleveland’s “puzzling choice” might just be San Diego’s holiday loophole. And if the Padres are going to hunt for upside on the margins, they could do a lot worse than betting on a right-handed bat with real pop suddenly falling into their lap like an unwrapped gift under the tree.