Latest Cardinals trade rumors are music to desperate Padres' ears

The San Diego Padres found a stopgap in Freddy Fermin, but that doesn’t mean they found a long-term answer. That’s the crux of San Diego’s offseason riddle. A.J. Preller patched 2025 with a midseason deal for Fermin, and the veteran delivered competent at-bats and steady game-calling. Still, if the Padres are serious about contending in 2026, they need more than “competent.” They need a catcher who can steal strikes, deter the run game, absorb 110–120 starts, and give the bottom third of the lineup some real oxygen. Fermin helped stabilize the room; he didn’t solve it. (He hit .244/.278/.339 with San Diego across 42 games.) 

Meanwhile, the rest of the catching group has only amplified the urgency. Luis Campusano’s sporadic MLB cameos never translated into sustainable production or defense, and his 2025 stint was rough enough that he shuttled back and forth to El Paso; at one point he was 0-for-18 in the bigs. Top prospect Ethan Salas still looks like a future pillar, but a back issue wiped out key development reps this year and introduced risk into any 2026 expectations. Add in that Martín Maldonado is expected to retire and Elías Díaz was a one-year bandage with a 2026 mutual option, and it’s clear: San Diego should be aggressively shopping for catching.

What Cardinals’ trade rumblings mean for Padres’ backstop puzzle

Enter the St. Louis Cardinals, where a familiar rumor drum is beating. The Cardinals have real catching depth and, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, other clubs are already calling about it. That tracks with what they did down the stretch: they carried multiple backstops and even weathered injuries by promoting from within, a luxury San Diego doesn’t currently enjoy. The short version: the Cards are well-positioned to deal from surplus, and the Padres are exactly the kind of buyer who should be at the front of the line. 

So who are the realistic fits? Start with Iván Herrera. He’s pre-arb, under team control for years, and has shown a major-league bat while toggling between catcher and DH. For a Padres club trying to lengthen its lineup without lighting more money on fire, that combination — bat-to-ball skill, cost control, and enough glove to pair with Fermin, checks a lot of boxes. The sticker price won’t be light, but impact and control tend to cost, and Herrera offers both. 

If St. Louis prefers to keep Herrera, Pedro Pagés fits a different blueprint: defense-first with catch-and-throw stability and enough contact skill to keep the line moving. He’s also pre-arb. And if the Padres want to buy low on a depth piece, Yohel Pozo has toggled between Triple-A and the majors and could be the third-catcher safety net San Diego lacked for stretches in 2025. None of these names are headliners, but pairing one with Fermin would raise the floor, and likely the staff’s comfort. 

Two younger names complicate the market calculus: Jimmy Crooks and Leonardo Bernal. Crooks reached the majors after winning the organization’s Minor League Player of the Year in 2024, and Bernal is now a top-100 prospect with standout arm metrics in the high minors. That combination — recent MLB look for Crooks and rising industry stock for Bernal, suggests St. Louis will be choosy about moving either, which in turn makes Herrera/Pagés/Pozo the more plausible trade targets. 

What would a deal look like? The Cardinals aren’t just dumping salary; they’ll want talent that maps to their broader needs. Could they explore packaging a catcher with a pricier veteran in a bigger framework? Maybe — but that’s more theory than reporting, and St. Louis has little incentive to attach premium prospects simply to move money. For the Padres, the cleanest path is the simplest: pay a fair prospect price for a controllable backstop and stabilize a position that’s been a revolving door. The rumor mill says the catchers are available; the standings say San Diego can’t afford to wait. For once, need and opportunity might actually be in the same place.