Padres Likely To Keep Trading, Could Deal Seth Smith

After reaching agreement on their deal to acquire Wil Myers, the Padres are likely to keep trading, and Seth Smith is one player who might be moved, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick tweets. As Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan notes, the Padres have a huge number of outfielders, with Myers, Smith, Matt Kemp, Will Venable, Cameron Maybin, Abraham Almonte, Rymer Liriano and Carlos Quentin.

Assuming the Kemp trade goes through as planned (which doesn’t appear entirely certain at this point), Smith’s role with the Padres, in particular, would seem to be open to question. Smith and Myers are almost exclusively corner outfielders, and while Kemp is nominally a center fielder, he is very weak defensively there, so an outfield headlined by those three players would leave the Padres vulnerable. Smith, though, was one of the Padres’ few effective offensive players last season, hitting .266/.367/.440 in 521 plate appearances and earning a two-year extension in July. Following that extension, Smith faded in the second half, hitting .243/.340/.346 after batting .283/.387/.508 in the first.