MLB personality floats Padres trade deadline scenario with Orioles fans will love

Ben Verlander threw a pretty spicy trade-deadline grenade into baseball social media this week, and Padres fans are allowed to dream on it for a few seconds.

Adley Rutschman in San Diego? Sounds great. Elite pedigree. Switch-hitting catcher. Former face of the “Baby Orioles” era. He could instantly make the Padres’ lineup feel deeper, while providing a lot less guesswork behind the plate. 

That fantasy is easy. The hard part is how it could possibly get done. Verlander posted that he thinks the Padres will trade for Rutschman at the deadline, calling it a hot take and planting the flag early in case it actually happens. It’s interesting to think about. Baltimore already extended Samuel Basallo. Rutschman has limited club control left. The Orioles have enough young position-player talent to at least make the question worth asking.

But from a Padres perspective, this idea runs into a wall almost immediately. What exactly are they giving Baltimore? And instead of that just being a small story, the more you think about it, the more it becomes the entire story.

The Orioles are not a teardown team looking to collect prospects just to say they did something. They still have Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Pete Alonso, and Basallo. 

If they’re even entertained in moving Rutschman, the ask would almost certainly start with pitching. But it would be real major league arms that could help them win now.

The Padres’ Adley Rutschman dream falls apart once Baltimore asks for pitching

The Padres have pitching problems of their own. That’s why they had to bring in Lucas Giolito during the season in the first place. They’re a team looking at its rotation and admitting it needed another real option.

So now we are supposed to believe the Padres are also the team best positioned to solve Baltimore’s pitching issue? That’s a really tough sell.

Joe Musgrove’s name still hangs over everything, but waiting for him to return healthy, sharp and dominant is not exactly a trade-deadline strategy.

That plays because the Orioles would be shopping Rutschman for a return that actually matches the risk of moving a franchise-level catcher while they are still trying to compete.

Kash Mayfield and Kruz Schoolcraft are interesting prospects. But what are the Orioles supposed to do with that if the goal is to win soon? Great high-upside arms are fun for Baseball America. But that won’t get the Orioles into the playoffs in 2026. 

The Padres have other names. Very few that the O’s would eat salary for. They may have just enough prospect shine to make fake trade machines look busy. But they don’t have a clean, obvious pitching surplus Baltimore would probably want in a Rutschman deal.

Rutschman, to his credit, has made the conversation more complicated by playing his way out of easy buy-low territory. Through 38 games, he is slashing .268/.340/.500 with seven home runs and 26 RBIs. That is a pretty loud correction from last season, when injuries helped drag him down to a .220/.307/.366 line with nine homers and 29 RBIs.

So this isn’t some fading star Baltimore would be trying to dump before the rest of the league notices. Rutschman has started to look much closer to the version of himself that once felt like the safest building block in the Orioles’ entire operation.

Right now, it is hard to see the Padres being that team without making a trade package that hurts in a way they may not be able to afford.

So, we can enjoy the image for a minute. Rutschman in a Padres uniform would be a monster acquisition. It would be aggressive, and very much in line with the kind of front-office chaos AJ Preller has never been afraid to explore.

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