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Padres make trade for former Yankees reliever in deal with White Sox

Eric Cole
Eric Cole

Friars On Base

Texas Rangers v New York Yankees - Game One / New York Yankees/GettyImages

Contrary to previous offseasons, the San Diego Padres have been painfully quiet in the lead up to the 2025 season. While this wouldn't be too terrible if the Padres were actually stacked from top to bottom, San Diego has clear roster holes that they really need to address and they have been unable to do so. The official departure of Jurickson Profar has only made things feel even worse.

Well, the bad news is that Friday's move isn't likely to move the needle all that much. However, it does create some useful depth in the Padres' bullpen which could use a boost as the Padres decided to strike a deal with the White Sox to acquire Ron Marinaccio.

Padres acquire Ron Marinaccio from the White Sox in yet another minor move

Don't get too excited, Padres fans, because Marinaccio is not the Tanner Scott replacement (probably) you were hoping for. While Marinaccio was a serviceable reliever with the Yankees from 2022-2024, he walks a lot of guys and New York thought that he was expendable enough to designate Marinaccio for assignment back in September and Chicago scooped him up soon after.

The good news is that Marinaccio does miss bats and if San Diego can just get him to find the strike zone a bit more, he does have a fastball/changeup mix that has upside out of the bullpen. There is nothing intrinsically bad about making this move whatsoever.

However, it is a move that feels like a nothingburger given the context of this offseason. The Padres' ownership situation is a mess, they brutally missed on Roki Sasaki, and they are going to be without Profar, Scott, Joe Musgrove, and Ha-Seong Kim next season. The Padres are still going to be a good team, but they are going to need to do more than acquire a middle reliever to be anymore than that.

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Eric Cole

Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.