Former Padres trade pickup could cash in with quietly frugal team in free agency

Former San Diego Padres trade pickup Ryan O’Hearn popping up on the rumor mill as a target for one of baseball’s most notoriously tight-fisted franchises says a lot, and none of it is especially flattering for San Diego.

Reports out of The Athletic have painted a pretty surprising picture this winter: the Pittsburgh Pirates, of all teams, are suddenly poking around the middle of the free-agent market. They reportedly made a serious run at Josh Naylor before he chose to stay with the Mariners, have been linked to Kyle Schwarber, and are kicking the tires on bats like Jorge Polanco, Kazuma Okamoto and O’Hearn as “more realistic” options. 

Padres may watch Ryan O’Hearn sign with a Pirates club acting more aggressive than they are

For Padres fans, that last name hits a little different. O’Hearn was the midseason trade pickup who did exactly what he was supposed to do: bring left-handed thump and lengthen the lineup. Now he’s on the open market, and a franchise that practically has “we don’t spend” tattooed on its forehead is sniffing around a bat San Diego could actually use.

That’s where this gets uncomfortable. If the Pirates — a team whose recent idea of “going for it” has been pushing their payroll into the low nine figures — are even entertaining the idea of a multi-year deal for O’Hearn, it suggests the price tag isn’t exactly prohibitive. Recent estimates peg his market somewhere in the two-year, low-to-mid-20s range.

The Padres are a club that still needs real juice behind its core and has more questions than answers at first base. That’s the exact profile you’d think they’d want to keep in-house.

Instead, the messaging out of San Diego keeps hinting at a winter built more on trades and internal promotions than actual spending. That’s not inherently wrong — there’s a world where you shuffle the deck creatively and still come out ahead — but it does set fans up for a frustrating offseason. Every time a mid-tier bat like O’Hearn gets linked to another club, especially a historically frugal one, it reinforces the idea that the Padres’ days of trying to punch up with the Dodgers in the financial weight class might be on pause.

If a “quietly frugal” team decides Ryan O’Hearn is worth stretching for and the Padres don’t even bother to be in the room, that’s as clear a signal as any of where the franchise’s new line in the sand really is.