Mets landing Peralta left a painful lesson the Padres still can’t shake

Freddy Peralta moving felt inevitable. What didn’t feel inevitable was watching the Mets land him while the Padres weren’t even part of the conversation — not because A.J. Preller suddenly forgot how to trade, but because the Padres don’t have the currency for deals like this anymore.

Milwaukee traded a premium asset and asked to be paid in the only thing that matters when you’re a development-driven organization: prospect depth. The Mets could do it. They sent a real position-player prospect in Jett Williams and a high-upside arm in Brandon Sproat. That’s how you win a bidding war without touching your major-league roster.

That’s also exactly the kind of trade the Padres can’t consistently match right now.

Mets’ Peralta deal still lingers as a harsh reminder for the Padres

San Diego’s problem isn’t whether it can stomach an $8 million salary or whether it can massage the tax line. The problem is that the Padres’ minor-league system doesn’t have the same “throw-in-a-second-blue-chip-and-still-sleep-at-night” ability that teams like the Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees do. When you spend years living on aggressive deadlines, the bill eventually shows up. When another team can casually outbid you with prospects you don’t have in bulk.

Last summer’s deadline was the clearest example. The Padres pushed hard, shipped out a wave of minor leaguers, and tried to buy certainty for October. That’s a defensible approach if you’re honest about the trade-off: the next time a true top-of-the-rotation arm hits the market, you’re showing up with a lighter wallet than everyone else.

The Padres’ rotation could’ve used Peralta. Could’ve used MacKenzie Gore who was recently shipped to the Texas Rangers. Michael King and Nick Pivetta are credible front-end pieces, Joe Musgrove is still the heartbeat when healthy, and the bullpen can shorten games. But a real contender needs innings and dominance behind the headline names. Peralta is the kind of arm who makes you feel safer in April and scarier in October.

Instead, the Padres are back in the part of the market where you don’t buy aces — you buy solutions. That’s not inherently bad. It’s just different. It means chasing the next tier of starters, hunting value, and hoping you can manufacture a rotation instead of acquiring one. It means living in the Bassitt/Kelly/Gallen universe.

This is the harsh reminder: the Padres’ biggest vulnerability isn’t one rotation spot. It’s the lack of organizational depth that turns every upgrade into a high-wire act. Preller can still make moves. He just doesn’t get the same margin for error anymore — because the system doesn’t have the same margin to spend.