Padres’ Okamoto chase gets a twist after the Angels finally tap out on Rendon’s deal

The San Diego Padres don’t have the luxury of waiting around on Kazuma Okamoto anymore — not with his posting window set to slam shut on Nov. 4 at 5 p.m. ET. And now, just to make the final weekend extra annoying, the Angels went and did the most Angels thing possible: they found a way to turn the Anthony Rendon saga into new roster flexibility.

Per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, Okamoto and Tatsuya Imai are both holding meetings in Los Angeles this week as the deadline pressure ramps up. That’s already a “bring your best offer” moment for San Diego. But it hits different when one of the teams in the room just freed up a massive financial headache.

Padres can’t ignore the Angels anymore after the Rendon reset sparks Okamoto buzz

The Angels and Rendon have reportedly agreed to a contract restructure that defers the remaining $38 million he’s owed over the next three to five seasons, and the big headline is simple: Rendon won’t be coming back. The Angels may still be sorting out the roster/transaction specifics, but the message is loud: they’re done pretending this was going to end with any resemblance of a comeback tour. 

Which… honestly, it’s kind of poetic. In a few fan bases, Rendon’s contract has been a running punchline for so long it started to feel like part of the background music of baseball discourse — “Angels wasted Trout’s prime,” “Ohtani had to do everything himself,” “Rendon’s making $245 million to be a trivia question.” And now we’ve officially arrived at the inevitable destination: the Angels are essentially paying him to not show up anymore. 

The worst part of it is that the initial idea wasn't absurd; Rendon was meant to be the missing link — the guy that helped the Washington Nationals win a World Series and then roll into Anaheim as the solid, middle-of-the-lineup base alongside Mike Trout (and later Shohei Ohtani) for years to come.

In his last season with the Nationals, Rendon earned a third-place finish in the NL MVP vote after slashing .319/.412/.598 with 34 home runs and 126 RBIS — the very kind of production the Angels paid top dollar for.

However, the Angels instead signed him to a contract that essentially served as a roster ankle weight. Rendon ultimately logged only 257 games throughout the life of the deal and produced nowhere near the value of the price he was paid. As such, the deal became a representation of the Angels' inability to put the brakes on a period where the team had all-world star talent in place, but continued to lack momentum.

Now here’s why Padres fans should care: this restructure is being framed as giving the Angels more spending power/flexibility this winter — exactly the kind of late-cycle curveball that can matter in a tight posting race. Okamoto has already been linked to both the Padres and Angels among other teams in this final stretch. If the Angels can walk into these L.A. meetings with a cleaner balance sheet (or at least cleaner cash flow) and a newfound willingness to be aggressive, they look a lot less like “background noise” and a lot more like a real threat.

For the Padres, the takeaway is simple: the Okamoto chase didn’t just get tighter — it got messier. And with the clock ticking toward Sunday evening, San Diego’s pitch has to land aggressively, or the Angels could turn the end of the Rendon era into the beginning of a bidding war.