San Diego, CA
Bryce Miller: Jason Adam pickup solid, but Padres desperately need a starting pitcher
BALTIMORE — The Padres shook loose the dust two days before the trade deadline. They chased down a late-innings setup arm in the Rays’ Jason Adam, someone to help bridge the gap to closer Robert Suarez.
As the clock ticks until Tuesday’s deadline, it’s still not enough.
The Padres need a starter or risk reliving 2021, when whispers about Max Scherzer and others led nowhere.
That’s when Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Chris Paddack and Ryan Weathers all finished as sub-100 ERA+ starters, meaning all were considered below-average big-leaguers that season.
Everything imploded during a 46-game finish — the fourth worst train wreck of that length by a winning team since the 1800s — to kneecap a once-promising season.
“You want to round your team out,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said Sunday in a hallway of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. “We’re still in conversation. We feel like we have internal options that we like. (Adam) Mazur coming up the other day and battling through, getting us in a position to get a win. Jhony Brito.
“We’ve got some guys that we feel good about from that standpoint.”
Internal options?
No, they don’t. Not real, bankable ones.
The Mazur Experiment has been a bust to this point. Preller tried to polish the pseudo-opener role he played in the first game of this series against the Orioles, holding things together.
Faint praise, that.
It was 2 2/3 innings, allowing an earned run in a game that began with back-to-back walks and an ERA that now stands at 7.49. No active arm outside of locked-in starters Dylan Cease, Michael King and Matt Waldron has thrown more than 45 2/3 innings for the Padres this season.
They now have one fewer internal option after this season, considering former first-round pick Dylan Lesko became part of the price tag for Adam.
The Padres could have been guilty of living an illusion that they had four starters because of the recent run of Randy Vásquez. That was before he coughed up six earned runs in two innings Sunday during a wild 8-6 loss to the Orioles.
A few weeks ago, you know the conversations in Camp Padre felt more like this: We have three starters, so we’ve really got to beat the market bushes and find another arm or two.
Then Vásquez rode the wave of historic Padres pitching on this road trip, jumping in the wipeout Conga line with Dylan Cease, Michael King and Matt Waldron.
And if you think you suddenly have four starters, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not that far from five.
Momentum math can be dangerous math.
“The starting pitching, the offense, we’re shutting teams down late in the game,” Preller said of the team, which has roared out of the gates since the All-Star break. “We’re playing good teams. You have to play well, so that’s a good test for our group.
“I think we knew it was gonna be a test coming out of a break, and these guys have answered it.”
Now, it’s time for Preller to answer.
The Padres have done too much on the field, especially without platinum All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr., and starters Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, to watch this thing wither on the vine as innings pile up.
When Tatis returns, when Musgrove returns, if Darvish returns, patching up the rotation now could pay playoff-level dividends later. Preller is enough of a baseball junkie to understand the precarious pitching ledge his team is walking.
Adam represents a piece, but should only represent a start.
The ex-Rays reliever fills a hole the Padres have struggled to patch beyond Jeremiah Estrada and, at times, Adrian Morejon. Adam also is not a free agent until 2027.
Lesko, outfielder Homer Bush Jr. and another prospect represent a hefty price. It also illustrates how many teams are scrambling for arms.
Wrangling a starter will require some elite needle-threading. There’s still the competitive balance tax reset the Padres have worked so hard to reach.
Creativity in the face of roadblocks is Preller’s specialty, however, as early-season deals for Cease and hitting machine Luis Arraez illustrated.
Doing nothing, though, could derail it all.
The 2021 deadline became known for a major swing and miss on Adam Frazier of the Pirates, who promptly forgot how to hit when he arrived in San Diego after leading baseball in hits before the trade.
The year also should be known for skipping the arms and a stretch run too thin on pitching.
This team three years later has shown pop and promise, outstanding yet taxed starting pitching and an ability to fight back that recent seasons lacked.
Short-circuiting that potential now with Tatis and Musgrove waiting in the wings would be tough to swallow.
Trade partners and deals need to make sense, of course, and decisions cannot be driven by deadline panic. Preller, though, has shown the ability to make seemingly complex things happen.
He needs to do it again.
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