Padres' trade deadline gamble looks bleaker after latest injury update

This is the part the San Diego Padres never want to admit lives inside every July dice roll: the downside. You talk yourself into upside, you picture the version of Nestor Cortes that diced the AL East with angle, tempo, and carry at the letters, and you convince yourself a change of scenery plus a clean bill of health can buy you postseason outs. The math looks fine on the whiteboard. Then September shows up with a medical update that turns the whole bet into a cautionary slide for next year’s front office meetings.

Because here’s where the story actually lands. On the heels of an injury-plagued season, Cortes announced he underwent surgery on his throwing arm, with Francys Romero reporting a tendon repair and a nine-to-ten-month recovery window. That isn’t just a delay; it’s a reframe. 

Latest Nestor Cortes setback makes Padres’ deadline swing look ugly

Even if everything breaks right, you’re looking at a lefty who won’t pick up a ball until around the All-Star break, then needs a runway of flat-grounds, bullpens, and live BPs before the rehab clock even starts. Add it up and a minor-league mound likely doesn’t happen until the back half of August. Maybe there’s a late bullpen cameo if the stars align, but the sober read is simple: he’s a ’27 target, not a ’26 solution.

Cortes’ year was already wobbling long before the knife. Traded from the Yankees to the Brewers in the Devin Williams/Caleb Durbin swap, he wore a five-homer Milwaukee debut against his old club, briefly stabilized with six shutout innings versus Cincinnati, then hit the injured list with a flexor strain. That made two flexor issues in two years (he finished his last season in the Bronx with the same problem), which is the kind of medical breadcrumb trail that forces teams to start budgeting contingency innings.

And yet, you understand why San Diego talked themselves into the profile. Cortes  lived at the top of the zone with deceptive life and mixed looks to keep barrels off schedule. From 2021–24 he ran a sub-4.00 ERA in three of four seasons, punched out more than a quarter of hitters from ’21–’23, and finished eighth in the 2022 Cy Young race. That version plays anywhere, especially in a division where neutralizing right-handed thunder is a weekly assignment.

The problem is the version the Padres actually got. In six appearances with San Diego, Cortes posted a 5.47 ERA over 26 1/3 innings, completed six frames just once, and ran below-average strikeout and walk rates. He never quite found the late life that makes 91 look like 94, and the margin for error vanished whenever he fell behind. By early September, the Padres shut him down with what was termed a biceps strain.

So what does the market do with this? Cortes is an impending free agent, and the surgery timing all but guarantees a major-league deal. For the Padres, this is the hard lesson hiding inside the phrase deadline gamble. The opportunity cost is real (roster spots, innings that could have gone to internal arms, the simple fact of attention), and the payoff window just slid another year down the road. None of this makes Cortes a bad bet in a vacuum, his track record will always tempt, but it does make the July calculus look bleaker in hindsight.

San Diego swung for a creative fix and got a medical project. If there’s a silver lining, it’s only this: the front office now has clarity early enough to build a rotation plan that doesn’t depend on a miracle.