For the last two months, Aroldis Chapman was expected to be the best reliever traded this summer. Boston’s 15-game win streak has put them in Wild Card position and probably takes him off the market. That coincided with increased chatter about the possibility of a Mason Miller blockbuster for a second straight year.
The Padres take a 50-51 record into tonight’s game in Atlanta. They’re 2.5 games back of a Wild Card spot but have five teams to jump. The various postseason odds from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference have them in the 10-20% range to play October baseball.
Although only the Rockies, Giants, Mets and maybe Reds are truly out of it in the National League, there might only be one spot up for grabs between Pittsburgh, Arizona, Miami, Washington, St. Louis and San Diego. The Dodgers and Brewers are definitely getting in. The Braves would need a disastrous final two months to squander a playoff berth. The Cubs and Phillies have work to do but are a few games clear of the competition in the Wild Card race.
What does that mean for baseball’s best reliever? Miller has a 0.86 earned run average with a monster 48.8% strikeout rate, nearly 10 percentage points higher than any other pitcher (minimum 30 innings). He’s 25-25 in save tries. He and Louis Varland are the only pitchers with at least 20 saves who haven’t blown a lead all year.
Miller is playing on a $4MM salary, around $1.2MM of which will be owed after the August 3 deadline. He’ll be eligible for arbitration for three seasons after this one (barring changes to the service time structure in the next collective bargaining agreement). If he’s traded, it’ll likely be for the most significant prospect return of any player who moves this summer The Padres would get more for three and a half seasons of Miller than Detroit would for a couple months of Tarik Skubal, for instance.
We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the Padres acquiring Miller and depth starter JP Sears from the Athletics. San Diego gave up their top prospect, Leo De Vries, whom Baseball America now considers the #2 minor leaguer in the sport. Most outlets had De Vries in the 5-10 range overall at the time of the trade.
It’s the kind of prospect whom teams essentially never trade anymore. De Vries is at least the best prospect moved since the Padres gave up CJ Abrams (and James Wood) in the 2022 Juan Soto deal. San Diego president of baseball operations A.J. Preller has a well-earned reputation as one of the sport’s boldest executives. There were presumably no other teams willing to give up a headliner of De Vries’ caliber.
San Diego certainly anticipated having Miller at the back of a contending bullpen for the foreseeable future. The relief group has been excellent, but inconsistent offense and one of the league’s weakest rotations have kept them around .500. Speaking just before the All-Star Break, Preller didn’t rule anything out but suggested their preference is to hold him.
“Obviously, Mason is the best in the game. So you’re always going to have people that are going to be interested in somebody that’s the best in their craft and at what they do,” he told reporters (link via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). “Since we made the deal last year, he’s performed as good as you could want somebody to perform. We made the deal with the intention that Mason is going to be here for a long time. He’s done an unbelievable job. And our intent is still the same as when we made the deal last year.”
That put a lot of emphasis on coming out of the Break strong. They’ve started 2-3 against the Royals and Braves. They have two more against Atlanta (including Wednesday’s game) before a crucial weekend series in Miami. The Padres will host the Rockies for two and the Giants for four leading up to the deadline. That’s about as winnable a slate as they could get to build some positive momentum.
It probably points to the Padres taking this right up to deadline day. Bob Nightengale of USA Today wrote over the weekend that some front office personnel from other clubs expect Miller to move. If that happens, the return haul would need to be massive. Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic spoke with a rival executive who opined that Preller would demand multiple top 100 prospects for his closer.
That’s entirely unsurprising but still leaves a broad range of offers. They’re presumably not going to be interested in trading Miller for two prospects in the 90-100 spots on a public prospect list. They may not command a De Vries-caliber headliner, but it’d be a surprise if they don’t get at least one player who’s a consensus top 25-50 prospect or a controllable big leaguer of comparable value.
San Diego’s controllable starting pitching, in particular, is lacking. Players like Bubba Chandler, Andrew Painter, Kumar Rocker and Jackson Jobe aren’t far removed from being elite minor league talents. They’ve all graduated from prospect rankings but have yet to emerge as top-of-the-rotation arms. Could the Padres look for a young big leaguer of that ilk alongside one headlining prospect?
Last week, Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune also floated the possibility of using Miller to offload some of the Xander Bogaerts contract. That’s more difficult to envision, as Bogaerts’ deal — which also includes a full no-trade clause — is among the worst in the league from a team perspective. He’s still owed $175MM over the next seven seasons, his age 34-40 campaigns. Bogaerts is hitting .220/.312/.327 and would be looking at a one- or two-year deal if he were a free agent.
The contract is conservatively $150MM above market value. Fantastic as Miller is, that’s probably more than he’d be worth in free agency. No reliever has topped $100MM in net present value. The Padres would need to eat a significant portion of the Bogaerts money and/or take back a bad contract even if they attached him to Miller — while of course diminishing some of the young talent they’d get in return.
The 2018 Edwin Díaz/Robinson Canó for Jarred Kelenic blockbuster between the Mets and Mariners would be the closest analogue. Díaz is a reasonably close comparison point for Miller, as he was among the league’s best closers and under team control for four seasons. Canó was a better player than Bogaerts is at this point. The trade saved Seattle $64MM while bringing back Kelenic, who was a few months removed from being selected sixth overall and a back-end top 100 prospect. There essentially hasn’t been a trade like that in the eight years since that stunner.
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