A.J. Preller: Padres Plan To Add “A Bat Or Two,” “An Arm Or Two”

Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller spoke to the crowd at today’s FanFest event about the state of the club’s roster and his plans for the remainder of the offseason, as relayed by MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell. In his comments, Preller indicated that he plans for San Diego to enter the start of the season with a “championship-caliber ballclub” and that in order to reach that goal the club will need to add “a bat or two” and “an arm or two” before the season begins.

It’s hardly a surprise that Preller plans to make additions to the club given the state of the roster. The only move of note the club has made this winter was re-signing Elias Diaz earlier this week. Diaz’s return removes one question mark from the positional mix, as he’ll solidify things behind the plate alongside Luis Campusano for the time being while Padres fans eagerly await the arrival of top prospect Ethan Salas, who reached Double-A late last year during his age-17 season but is far from guaranteed to be ready for any sort of big league exposure in 2025.

With the catcher position more or less sorted out, the Padres can now turn their attention to the rest of the lineup. Luis Arraez appears likely to be the club’s everyday starter at either first base or DH, but the club will need to add at least one other player to that mix alongside him. Additionally, the club has no clear successor to Jurickson Profar in left field after the fan favorite signed in Atlanta last week. Given those two holes in the lineup, Preller acknowledging that the club is in need of an additional bat or two before Opening Day rolls around late next month is to be expected.

His comment about adding another arm or two is more interesting, however. The Padres have a well-stocked bullpen as things stand and seem unlikely to make a significant addition there, but there have been some questions surrounding the club’s plans regarding their rotation. As things stand, the front of the rotation figures to be anchored by a one-two punch of right-handers Dylan Cease and Michael King with veteran righty Yu Darvish slotting in third. The fourth and fifth spots in the rotation, however, appear to be up for grabs. Matt Waldron, Randy Vasquez, and Jhony Brito could all be in the mix for starts, as could relievers like Stephen Kolek or Bryan Hoeing who have been floated as potential rotation converts.

That’s certainly on the thinner side in terms of a rotation mix, but it’s not substantially thinner than the 2024 rotation. Joe Musgrove won’t pitch in 2025 after undergoing Tommy John surgery back in October, but he made only 19 starts for the club last year. A full season from Darvish, who made 16 starts last year due to injury and a personal leave of absence, would make up those lost starts almost entirely. That’s made the rotation a less obvious target for upgrades than the lineup this winter, and has even led to questions about whether the club could look to deal from its rotation in order to upgrade other areas of the roster. Both King and Cease are poised to become free agents following the 2025 season, with Cease in particular drawing plenty of buzz in the rumor mill.

It’s far from ideal for a club with the stated goal of being a championship-caliber team to deal a front-line starter like Cease, but considering trades of players like Cease, King, and even Arraez is the reality San Diego’s front office faces as it tries to navigate a major budget crunch. San Diego doesn’t appear to be under a mandate to cut payroll below its current levels this winter, but they still appear to have little to no room in the budget for upgrades without first clearing payroll space elsewhere. Trading a rental player with a larger salary like Cease ($13.75MM) or Arraez ($14MM) would go a long way to improving the club’s ability to sign a player or two in free agency, to say nothing of the return package which could also be used to directly supplement the roster.

As shown by the club’s creative deals with King and Diaz in the past week, the Padres are willing to think outside-the-box on contract structures and could use that in order to bring in a handful of veteran role players even within the confines of what is clearly an extremely tight budget crunch. Those role players could either be used to supplement the roster’s needs directly, as was the case last year when the Padres signed and got significant production from extreme budget options like Profar, Donovan Solano, and David Peralta who lingered on the free agent market before landing in San Diego, or could instead be used to help replace the production of a player who was traded for a return that addresses other areas of the roster.

It’s difficult to speculate on specific players the Padres could target without knowing which player(s) will be traded and where they’ll be traded to, but free agency has a number of interesting veterans still available who could be fairly affordable or in some cases may even consider signing non-roster deals. Anthony Rizzo, J.D. Martinez, Jason Heyward, Mark Canha, and Alex Verdugo are among the many free agents who could be at least speculative fits for San Diego’s current needs and are unlikely to break the bank. As for the rotation, starting pitchers can often garner high annual salaries even late in free agency. That could make adding to the rotation difficult to accomplish without a trade that frees up payroll, though it’s possible that a swing man such as Jakob Junis or Jose Urena could linger on the market and sign at a discount as Michael Lorenzen did last winter.