Dylan Cease to the Blue Jays may have triggered the Padres’ worst free-agent problem

The Padres didn’t just lose Dylan Cease when he took that seven-year, $210 million deal to Toronto. They may have lost the version of this offseason where starting pitching was going to come with anything resembling a reasonable price tag. 

Here’s the ugly little ripple effect: Cease’s contract didn’t simply remove a top arm from the board — it helped re-anchor the market. And once a market gets anchored, agents don’t argue from a pitcher’s weaknesses. They argue from the biggest check anyone cashed.

Padres may have lost more than Dylan Cease when he left for Toronto

That matters for San Diego because the remaining “high-end” starters aren’t clean, perfect ace packages. They’re the kind of pitchers contenders talk themselves into: maybe the stuff is elite but the durability is squishy, or the 2025 line looks great but the résumé has dents, or the fit comes with a qualifying offer tax that makes teams wince. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand basically laid out the trap: Cease’s deal may have boosted asking prices/expectations for the other top starters, several of whom also carry QO compensation penalties — and teams can always pivot to trading for arms instead. 

That’s the Padres’ nightmare this offseason. San Diego is in that middle ground of adding pitching to be competitive, but you can't risk having each decision turn into an expense of the future. Guys who declined qualifying offers like Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez, and Zac Gallen are going to come with draft pick compensation attached as well. The Padres have never been afraid to pay for wins; it's just "paying for wins" is very different from "paying for wins" and then also paying additional costs in the form of picks and pool money, when you're trying to preserve a farm system you’d prefer not to put on a milk carton. 

Now layer in the second problem: the trade market. If enough teams decide they’d rather deal for pitching than lose picks, that shrinks the bidder pool for those free agents… and weirdly can make negotiations even more annoying. Fewer teams, fewer true bidding wars, more posturing — and still, the asking price stays high because Cease set the reference point. 

And yes, the Padres did bring back Michael King on a three-year, $75 million deal with player options that could let him test the market again soon — a very Padres solution to a Padres problem. But that deal also highlights the broader issue: San Diego can be creative with structure all day. It can’t creatively wish the pitching market back to where it was before Cease got paid like a pillar of the offseason.

So if you’re wondering why this starter market is moving like it’s stuck in traffic, don’t just look at who’s left. Look at who left first — and what his contract just told everyone else they should be asking for.