Tarik Skubal trade rumors prove Padres should pause their chase of deadline stars

Jeff Passan spent a few minutes on Foul Territory this week talking himself into a Tarik Skubal blockbuster for the San Diego Padres. To his credit, he talked himself right back out of it, all within a little more than a minute. Padres fans probably didn't love hearing it, but they should listen anyway. 

The pitch is pretty clear. The Padres could go get the best left-hander in baseball, slot him in front of Michael King, lean on their incredible bullpen, and go beat anybody. It’s a really fun thought. It’s also probably the wrong one, and the more you sit with the Skubal rumors, the more they might be a warning instead of an invitation.

A Tarik Skubal trade wouldn't fix what's actually broken in San Diego

We know what Skubal is. He’s the reigning two-time American League Cy Young winner who, before elbow surgery cost him a few weeks, was having another outstanding season. His first start back was a mixed bag, but nobody doubts what he is. He’s also a rental. He’ll be a free agent after the season and will be looking for the richest pitching contract in baseball history, and deservedly so. So we’re talking about two or three months of arguably the sport’s best, at a steep price, for a team with a much deeper structural issue.

The rotation isn’t great, but it also isn’t the issue in San Diego. It’s not like adding a top-flight starter wouldn’t be attractive, but King has been steady. Randy Vasquez has been good. Walker Buehler has been fine. Lucas Giolito has struggled, but there’s some upside there. Yes, Skubal would help (he’d help literally every team), but the part of the roster that Skubal doesn’t touch is the part that’s actually bleeding, the lineup.

Bleeding may be putting it lightly. San Diego has spent the majority of this season at the bottom of the league in pretty much every offensive category. It’s a broken record to say this at this point, but it’s because the stars are bringing everyone down. Fernando Tatis Jr. has gotten hot and is finally just now carrying an above-average wRC+ (102, heading into play Thursday). Xander Bogaerts is sub-90. Jackson Merrill is sub-80. Manny Machado is close to 70. That’s not a depth problem that a frontline starter fixes. That’s the core, completely underwater.

So, yes, they could rent Skubal. And if they make the playoffs, they’d have a terrifying Game One starter, but the same lineup that had scored two runs or fewer in 27 of its first 73 games. Nobody has been shut out more than the eight times the Padres have been shut out through Wednesday. A rotation upgrade is nice, but it doesn’t change the math when the math problem is the bats, which is the whole reason this deadline keeps circling back to hitters.

And if Passan is right, and the reporting backs him up, the only way the Padres get into the Skubal conversation is to put Ethan Salas on the table. That’s where walking away should be pretty easy. The Padres have already mortgaged the farm by trading Leo De Vries for Mason Miller. Nobody is arguing they shouldn’t have made that deal with how dominant Miller has been, but they still traded a massive prospect for a closer.

Salas is basically what’s left now. He’s a 19-year-old catcher who has reclaimed his prospect shine at AA with some impressive numbers, and he’s now back on the top-100 lists he fell off last year. He’s the closest thing the system has to a genuine building block, and he isn’t even slated to get to San Diego until next season. Cashing him in for a few months of a rental to chase a Wild Card spot is the kind of move that feels bold in June, but looks pretty awful in October. The Padres don’t need to subtract from a thin farm. They need to add bats to a lineup that is totally broken.

Passan also made sure to point out how brutal the National League is. The Padres have to compete with the Dodgers, the Braves, the Brewers, the Phillies, and more in a stacked field where a flawed roster plus one ace might still not be enough. And he’s right. Skubal would make the Padres better, but he wouldn’t make them complete. The lineup would still be the lineup, and this club hovering around .500 doesn’t simply become a juggernaut because of one pitcher, no matter how good he is. If they had him for more than the rest of this season, it’s a different story, but he puts himself into a bidding war five days after the World Series ends.

That’s why they should pause. These rumors aren’t a reason to shove all their chips in. This should be a sort of stress test to show how little a star rental actually solves with this team. Hey, AJ Preller could certainly pull a rabbit out of the hat before the deadline. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. But if the price for Skubal is Salas, he might need to look for another rabbit.

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