Michael King could give the Padres two nights to look forward to in their rotation

Tarik Skubal at Petco Park on Opening Day? Yeah, that’ll play. Then we’d look at who’s taking the mound the following night. If it’s not Michael King, things would get very interesting for the Padres.

AJ Cassavell reported that the Friars remain interested in bringing King back while the club is among the teams expected to meet with Skubal. The most interesting question for A.J. Preller is what he could build for roughly the annual cost of one Skubal. There’s a version of this offseason where the Padres bring back the guy who led their staff in innings and add a left-hander who threw 169 of his own.

Michael King and Trevor Rogers could give the Padres two real answers

ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel projects Skubal at eight years and $352 million, an average of $44 million a year. He has King at three years and $79.5 million, or $26.5 million annually. His projection for Baltimore left-hander Trevor Rogers is four years and $76 million. Put King and Rogers together and you get $45.5 million a year in average annual value, just $1.5 million above the Skubal projection.

That extra $1.5 million is kind of a big deal. So is the qualifying offer Baltimore extended to Rogers. If he declines it and signs elsewhere, acquiring him would carry draft-pick consequences for his new club. And how the Padres structure either contract would affect what they actually pay in 2027. Preller has talked about having some flexibility under new ownership, with the dollars depending on the player. The projections give us a way to compare the two routes while we wait to see what ownership is willing to spend.

Still, Rogers is the kind of pitcher we’d want Preller pricing alongside King. The 169 innings were a career high, and his velocity ticked up in 2026. It’s a pairing that could work. King can take the first game of a series. Rogers can take the second. Randy Vásquez can pitch farther down the order, and Joe Musgrove can build back up on a timetable that makes sense for him.

King has some unfinished business of his own when it comes to durability. Shoulder and knee injuries held him to 15 starts and 73 1/3 innings in 2025. He came back with 32 starts, 185 innings and a 3.21 ERA in 2026, then held opponents to one earned run in 14 postseason innings.

We saw him answer the workload question for a full year and still have something left in the tank for the postseason. That’s enough to pay him like a frontline starter. It’s also a good reason to get him some help. We’ve seen what both versions of a King season look like, and the Padres are too thin to build around the assumption that they’ll get the better one every year.

There’s a version of the Skubal plan we’d happily take. If ownership is prepared to pay him and still put a proven starter behind him, go get the best pitcher on the market. At McDaniel’s numbers, reaching that same $19 million tier for a second starter would take the two spots to roughly $63 million a year in average contract value. Maybe the new owners are willing to go that far. Until we see that kind of spending, we’d put more weight on a plan that can fill both spots for around $45 million.

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