San Diego Padres add pitching depth, but will the move impact the 2024 rotation?

It is no secret that the San Diego Padres will have to find some answers to holes in the rotation for 2024. The Padres took a step toward building some depth on Friday, but will the signing make any kind of impact on the MLB roster next season?

In simplest terms, it's unlikely.

What the San Diego Padres signing Ryan Carpenter means for 2024

According to a reporter covering the Detroit Tigers, the team that Carpenter called home during the 2018 and 2019 seasons, Carpenter has inked a minor league deal with the Padres. The 33-year-old left-hander hasn't pitched for an MLB team since those 15 games with the Tigers before the pandemic, honing his skills in Taiwan (2020) and Korea (2021-2022) in recent seasons.

Carpenter will get a chance to show that he can make an impact on an MLB mound again with this deal with the Padres, but San Diego is likely looking at the signing as more minor league depth than a chance at finding the answer to Blake Snell and other defections in the rotation.

In those 15 games with the Tigers (14 of which were starts), Carpenter put together an 8.57 ERA/7.10 FIP/1.778 WHIP over 63.0 innings of work. The numbers have certainly improved over his last two seasons in the KBO (3.83 ERA/1.314 WHIP) in his 35 games (34 starts) spanning 188.0 frames (with the vast majority of that coming in 2021 at 170.0 innings that year), which provides some hope for the Padres that he can duplicate that success for San Diego.

However, Carpenter has much to prove before ever stepping foot inside Petco Park, and that includes showing what was working for him in Korea can work for him in the States as well.

Will this move make much of a difference for the Padres? It's unlikely but not impossible.