BREAKING: Padres trade for SP Sean Manaea
The San Diego Padres have added LHP Sean Manaea in a trade with the Oakland A's, although what they sent to Oakland in return has not yet been revealed.
Good morning!
Maybe my favorite non-Padres pitcher to watch last year is now a member of the San Diego Padres, reuniting with manager Bob Melvin after being traded away by the Oakland Athletics.
Manaea is set to make just shy of $10M this year before hitting unrestricted free agency, so this is definitely a move with 2022 in mind for A.J. Preller.
The lefty starting pitcher likely takes a spot away from MacKenzie Gore (or Chris Paddack or Nick Martinez or Ryan Weathers) in the starting rotation to begin the season, further building depth at a position that has lacked it for the last few years in San Diego.
Manaea is coming off the best season of his career, where he started 32 games and finished with an ERA of 3.91 and an ERA+ of 104.
Manaea isn’t an ace, but he’s a really solid mid-rotation guy that might end up being the de facto #5 starter in San Diego. The Padres might now legitimately have the strongest rotation in baseball heading into the season.
It will be very interesting to see what the Padres ended up sending back. The A’s are in rebuild mode and looking to shed salary, and a guy with only one year until he hits unrestricted free agency probably doesn’t have a ton of value, so my uneducated guess is that it’s a good (but not top 5) prospect heading back to Oakland in exchange.
The real question is whether the Padres have decided to go into the luxury tax to add Manaea or, if after yesterday’s rumors about another Eric Hosmer trade, they have found some other way to clear salary from the major-league club to stay under that threshold.
I’ll keep this post updated with any minor news. If the return ends up being a big deal, I’ll write a whole new post about that.
Update (8:21AM): Called it
Okay, so Feinsand says the return to OAK is Euribiel Angeles and Adrian Martinez, neither of whom makes much $...this would mean we're in the luxury penalty box, right, unless we shed some payroll elsewhere?