‘We have a team that we feel like can win’: Why the disappointing Padres doubled down at the deadline
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
Nearly 2,800 miles separate Petco Park from Citi Field, but it often felt as if the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets were adjoined, connected — spiritually — through their expensive rosters and their disappointing outcomes, perceived cautionary tales by their sport’s frugal owners.
This weekend, they seem very different.
While the Mets are playing out the string with a stripped-down roster in Baltimore, the Padres are hosting their bitter rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in front of sold-out crowds in San Diego, holding on to faint hopes of catching them in the division. The Padres and Mets each began this season with top-three payrolls and had posted identical 49-53 records as the MLB trade deadline approached. On the morning of July 28, four days before the deadline, the Padres were 6½ games out of the final playoff spot in the National League and the Mets were a half-game behind them. And yet while the Mets proceeded to trade Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander and a handful of others in an effort to reset for as late as 2026, the Padres doubled down.
Blake Snell and Josh Hader, pending free agents who would have been highly coveted within a market devoid of pitching, stayed. Rich Hill, Ji-Man Choi, Garrett Cooper and Scott Barlow, depth pieces that cost more prospects from a farm system that has been depleted in recent years, arrived.
The Padres, who also briefly checked in on Verlander, approached this deadline with the same aggression that drove them in the summers of 2020, 2021 and 2022, their place in the standings be damned. They were underwhelmed by the offers for Snell and Hader, invigorated by a timely sweep of the first-place Texas Rangers and motivated by an essential truth:
They’re actually not the Mets.
The Padres — 54-56, four games out of a playoff spot and 10 games behind the Dodgers in the division, with two others in front of them — own a plus-70 run-differential that stands as the fourth-highest in the NL. They’re baseball’s best defensive team based on outs above average, which grades them out at plus-25. Their 3.72 ERA leads the majors. Their offense boasts a healthy Juan Soto, Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts and Fernando Tatis Jr. And they’ve been hampered mostly by elements some might consider fluky — a dreadful record in one-run games (6-18), a strange inability to win in extra innings (10 straight losses) and subpar results with runners in scoring position (a .712 OPS, ranked 24th in the majors).
It’s what makes them so confounding, but it’s also what makes them so compelling.
“We have a team that we feel like can win,” Padres general manager A.J. Preller said about an hour after Tuesday’s 6 p.m. ET deadline. “And if we were able to add to the club and give us a good chance here in the next two months, it’s gonna be a good pennant race.”
The Padres arrived in Canada the week of July 17 uncertain about their direction, on the heels of three straight losses in Philadelphia to begin the second half. Back-to-back series wins over the Toronto Blue Jays and the Detroit Tigers merely allowed them to split a 10-game road trip. They returned home and lost two of three to the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, at which point the industry buzzed about the Padres potentially trading players.
Interested suitors were told to let the weekend play out and wait until Monday, sources said, at which point the Padres would finally pick a side. Then they swept a Rangers team that had established itself among the sport’s most dominant this season, outscoring them 16-4 in the process — and any faint hopes of Snell and Hader getting traded were suddenly dashed.
“We just never got anything that was that compelling for us from that standpoint,” Preller said. “We were open-minded, very prepared from a scouting group, from a front office group, but ultimately there wasn’t anything really on that side that was last minute or really over the course of the last few days that pushed us strong in that direction. It came down to a team that we have belief in, and also some deals that we liked.”
Hill, Choi, Cooper and Barlow don’t bring the appeal of Hader and Soto, who arrived last summer, or even Adam Frazier and Daniel Hudson, who arrived two summers before that. But Hill provides some much-needed rotation depth in the wake of Friday’s news that Joe Musgrove, one of the team’s most important starting pitchers, will miss the rest of the month with shoulder inflammation. Choi and Cooper can bring more offense to a DH spot that has provided next to nothing all year. And Barlow brings a much-needed weapon to the back end of the bullpen. The next two months will determine whether they were enough — and whether a chance at better sustainability was missed by not following the Mets’ path.
The Mets were able to land three premier — though not necessarily blue-chip — position player prospects in Luisangel Acuna, Ryan Clifford and Drew Gilbert by sending Scherzer to the Rangers and Verlander to the Houston Astros. But their owner, Steve Cohen, had to pay down as much as $88 million of the roughly $151 million still owed on their contracts. The only upper-tier prospect obtained for a rental starter appeared to be Double-A catcher Edgar Quero, acquired in the Lucas Giolito trade between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Angels.
Trading Snell and Hader, who would have represented the best available rental starter and reliever, respectively, by a wide margin, would have infused the Padres with some much-needed talent for the upper levels of their farm system, an essential element to sustainability. In Preller’s mind, it wasn’t enough to justify punting on 2023.
“When it comes to rental players, currently teams are pretty conservative on that front, even with impactful rental players,” he said. “We weren’t going to make moves just to make moves.”
The Padres, with FanGraphs playoff odds now at 40%, continue to sell out Petco Park on a regular basis, while on pace to draw more than 3 million fans for only the second time in their history. On the outside, industry executives note that their overly generous owner, Peter Seidler, will nonetheless lose significant amounts of money this year and stands to lose even more of it without any broadcast revenue next year, a result of Diamond Sports Group’s ongoing bankruptcy. In San Diego, though, some of those who know Seidler believe none of it matters. He wants to leave a legacy, they’ll say, and no amount of money trumps his desire to deliver the city its first major championship.
And that brings us to right now, and why this maddening, confusing Padres team was not broken up.
“If they find a way to get into the playoffs,” a rival executive said, “they’re going to be dangerous.”
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Dan Wetzel
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Dan Wetzel
ESPN
- Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting, news analysis and feature storytelling.
The University of Michigan has commissioned a full investigation into the practices and culture of its athletic department, centering on how numerous scandals have both occurred and been handled in recent years, a source told ESPN.
The firing of football coach Sherrone Moore this week will be a particular focus.
The investigation will be handled by Jenner & Block, a Chicago-based law firm that has done business with the school in recent years, including conducting the investigation into whether Moore had an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.
The Detroit News first reported the authorization of the investigation.
The firm opened an inquiry earlier this fall about the conduct of Moore and a staff member after the university received an anonymous tip, multiple sources told ESPN. Both Moore and the staff member denied the relationship and not enough evidence emerged to confirm it.
That changed Wednesday when, according to prosecutors in Washtenaw County, Michigan, the staff member told investigators it did occur and presented corroborating evidence. The staff member had, on Monday, broken off the multiyear relationship, according to prosecutors, but became concerned when Moore sent a flurry of texts and calls that were unreturned.
The university promptly fired Moore on Wednesday for the relationship. Soon after, Moore went to the staff member’s apartment just outside Ann Arbor and, according to prosecutors, barged in, grabbed kitchen scissors and some butter knives. He then threatened to kill himself.
“I’m going to kill myself,” Moore said, according to first assistant prosecutor Kati Rezmierski. “I’m going to make you watch. My blood is on your hands. You ruined my life.”
Moore, a married father of three, was charged Friday on three counts, including felony home invasion and misdemeanor charges of stalking in a domestic relationship and breaking and entering. Moore pleaded not guilty, and a probable cause hearing was set for Jan. 22, 2026.
Friday evening, after spending two nights in jail, Moore was released on a $25,000 bond with a GPS monitoring system and an order to receive counseling.
This is the latest in a series of scandals that have hit both the athletic department and the university as a whole. It includes a federal indictment in March of former offensive coordinator Matt Weiss, who is facing 24 charges of unauthorized access to computers and aggravated identity theft.
Prosecutors from the Eastern District of Michigan allege that Weiss ran a vast, multiyear effort to access the personal accounts of thousands of NCAA student-athletes across the country. He is charged with targeting specific female athletes to access personal and intimate photographs and videos.
Some of the alleged crimes, the feds say, occurred while Weiss was working inside the school’s football facility, Schembechler Hall from 2021 to 2022, and during a previous stint with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens.
There have been additional run-ins with the NCAA rules, including the high-profile 2023 advanced scouting operation centered around former football staffer Connor Stalions. The NCAA hit the program with four years of probation and a fine that could reach over $30 million.
Former football coach Jim Harbaugh was sanctioned with numerous suspensions in his final years at the school for both the advanced scouting situation and recruiting violation. Harbaugh left to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers in January 2024. Moore, who was promoted from offensive coordinator to succeed Harbaugh, has also twice been suspended by the NCAA. He still owes a one-game penalty, which was to be served in 2026, for deleting a thread of text messages sent to Stalions.
The series of scandals have put a spotlight on athletic department as a whole, including on director Warde Manuel, an alum and former player for the Bo Schembechler-led Wolverines of the late 1980s. Manuel has been on the job since 2016.
A high-level meeting of university officials was held Thursday evening, sources told ESPN, leading to intense speculation about Manuel’s future, but he remains on the job. The university would owe Manuel, 57, who signed a new five-year contract in December 2024, about $6.75 million if it dismissed him without cause.
On Thursday, interim university president Domenico Grasso, in a letter to the campus community, asked anyone with knowledge of the Moore situation to provide it via a confidential reporting system.
“Together, we will move forward with integrity and excellence, and reaffirm our dedication to serving the public good,” Grasso wrote.
Despite all of the tumult, the Wolverines’ athletic department is mostly thriving in competition, including the football program winning the 2023 national title. Currently both the men’s and women’s basketball teams are ranked in the top six nationally. Hockey is No. 1.
Meanwhile, the university has consistently set institutional records for the undergraduate application numbers in recent years, hitting 98,310 for the incoming freshman class this year, per federal filings from the university. That is up from 79,743 for 2022, an 18.9% jump in just three years.
Jenner & Block has a long-standing relationship with the university, including, in 2022, investigating an inappropriate relationship between then school president Mark Schlissel and a university employee that led to Schlissel’s removal from office.
CHICAGO — The Chicago Blackhawks have recalled high-scoring forward Nick Lardis from the minors a day after Connor Bedard got hurt in the final seconds of a loss at St. Louis.
Lardis, 20, could make his NHL debut as soon as Saturday night against Detroit. He had 13 goals and 13 assists in 24 games with Rockford of the American Hockey League.
“He’s a guy who’s scored a lot of goals throughout his young career, going back to junior,” coach Jeff Blashill said, “and he’s had a pretty good start to his American league. I know for sure Connor’s not playing tonight, so we just felt like it gives us another potential offensive guy that can come in and provide some scoring punch.”
Blashill had no update on Bedard, who leads the team with 19 goals and 25 assists in 31 games.
With 0.8 seconds left in Friday night’s 3-2 loss at St. Louis, Bedard attempted to win a draw to give Chicago one last chance, but he was knocked down by Blues center Brayden Schenn. He grasped at his right shoulder and immediately headed to the locker room, accompanied by a trainer.
Any significant injury for Bedard would be a major blow for Chicago. It also could take the 20-year-old center out of the running for Canada’s roster for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
“We’ll know more in the next couple days,” Blashill said. “I just don’t want to say stuff that’s not super accurate, so I don’t see any reason to guess.”
Lardis was selected by Chicago in the third round of the 2023 draft. He had 71 goals and 46 assists in 65 games last season with Brantford in the Ontario Hockey League.
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