The Padres and Rays already announced last week’s trade, one that saw outfielders Hunter Renfroe and Tommy Pham switch homes, but some complications have arisen since then. Specifically, even though 31-year-old Pham “effectively passed a series of physicals this weekend,” per Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune, there are concerns over his right elbow. The joint kept Pham out of action for some of 2019, and according to Acee, the Padres’ medical staff still hasn’t cleared him. The trade’s currently “in limbo” as a result, writes Acee. However, Padres general manager A.J. Preller suggested Monday that it should still go through. “We’re still working through some final details but hope to have some clarity on that in the next 24 hours,” Preller said. “When we made the trade, we made the trade with the players involved. I don’t expect anything to change between now and the time we move forward. But we just have to finish the process up.”
- The Dodgers have their eyes fixed on “roughly” a dozen acquisitions, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told Pedro Moura of The Athetic and other reporters Monday. What’s more, Friedman indicated the already loaded Dodgers are primarily looking at elite talent. The rotation and third base have been rumored areas of interest for the Dodgers, and both spots do feature top-tier free agents (Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon and Josh Donaldson, for instance). Great free-agent relievers are harder to find, but upgrading there is a focus for the Dodgers. That’s their only “omnipresent” need area, Friedman observes (via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com). As of now, though, Friedman does expect Kenley Jansen to continue as the Dodgers’ closer in 2020. Formerly automatic, Jansen had a difficult year (by his standards) last season.
- The rotation-needy Giants expect to sign at least one starter to a major league contract, possibly before the Winter Meetings conclude, per Kerry Crowley of the Bay Area News Group. They at least appear to still be in the mix for their No. 1 free agent, Madison Bumgarner, whom they’ll sit down with during the meetings. While pitching’s a priority for the club, they don’t seem to be focused on picking up a backup catcher to take over for Stephen Vogt (now with the Diamondbacks), Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area suggests. Vogt’s replacement could be Aramis Garcia, to whom they’d like to give a chance, Pavlovic reports. They also have standout prospect Joey Bart waiting in the wings as the potential heir apparent to Buster Posey.
- Josh Bard will serve as the Dodgers’ bullpen coach next season, Gurnick tweets. Bard worked in that role from 2016-17 before leaving to join the Yankees’ staff as their bench coach. The Yankees and Bard parted ways after last season. The Dodgers’ previous bullpen coach was Mark Prior, who’s now their pitching coach.
The Padres shouldn’t take a damaged Pham. Undo the trade. Or at the least take back Edwards.
A please would be nice.
I think the trade is still very likely to go through. My guess is that Pham has some semipermanent defect in his elbow that he has been successfully overcoming and playing well in spite of for some time. It kind of reminds me of R.A. Dickey when the Rangers drafted him and found out he was born without an elbow ligament. They cut his signing bonus down to $400k and he still won a Cy Young later. The same thing happened when the Braves spent the #8 overall pick on Carter Stewart because of his dominated curveball and incredible performance. It turns out he had damaged wrist ligaments from a skateboarding injury but that all happened before he even started playing baseball anyway. The Braves didn’t sign him but that’s likely only because they got the #9 overall pick in the following draft as compensation. The Padres have no such compensation in this trade with exception of the players they were already willing to give up. Unless they believe Pham has performed well with this injury for some reason that is going to magically disappear when he puts on a San Diego uniform it seems like Preller is saying he plans on keeping the trade.
Then again… We are talking about AJ Preller here. He could just be making an unpredictable stupid decision.
All he asked for was a please.
AJ doesn’t care this is his last year as GM, he’ll do any deal to save his backside including leaving the next GM with a damaged team
All we want for Christmas is a please, please.
All I wanted was a Pepsi.
A. J. Preller will finish the last two years of his contract at minimum. Ron Fowler said “heads will roll” but included his own. He’s a minority owner, is 75, and this might be the last year he’s Chairman, no matter what happens.
Peter Seidler (Peter O’Malley’s nephew) is the managing general partner, the control man, and he loves the farm, scouting and evaluation team, and professional front office Preller built. All it will take is a winning record this year, not contention, and Preller will be golden.
All the Dude ever wanted was his rug back.
Preller has proven he knows nothing about winning in the Major Leagues, including the ability to acquire big league talent, and get big league value in trades involving big league players.
If Edwards isn’t in it then it isn’t happening!
totally agree however your talking about AJ who will take Pham even with a damaged elbow that hasn’t healed, let’s hope common sense steps in and nixes the deal, Fowler stand up and tell AJ no deal
take back Edwards and give them another AA player who is in the bottom 100 list or walk away,
Haven’t heard Pham’s eyesight discussed.
Maybe that’s next anything else we should know about Pham, I guess the Cards dumped him when they saw this and now the Rays want to dump him if we take him we need to drop the PTBNL and if its bad enough just kill the deal
Pham might be stuck in TB… karma for trashing talking?
No way Pham is stuck in Tampa lol for one he wouldn’t be stuck it’s not like we wanted him gone and for two they knew about the elbow before the trade. Everyone knows he’s hurt and can’t throw, peeler still made the deal with the players involved knowing this. Speaks to the brilliance of the Rays FO
Deception from the Rays, if that was not in the player report stating how bad this injury is prior to the trade and the elbow hasn’t healed then the Padres need to walk away
I mean it was no secret his elbow wasn’t healed, he’s been in rehab working on it. There was no deception
Doesn’t sound like Preller has his eye on the ball with Pham’s elbow. He seems focused on wrapping up the paperwork and getting the deal done.
The Dodgers are the one team that should be laser focused on Gerrit Cole.
Kershaw is not the answer. They know this.
He’s not expected to be. Buehler is.
ForestCobraAL has a point here though. The Dodgers had Buehler last season. If he was “the answer” the Dodgers wouldn’t have been knocked off in the first round. Now the Dodgers are likely going to lose Ryu to free agency. If they lose Ryu and keep Buehler, that doesn’t bring them any closer to a championship. The Dodgers spend spend money like top tier clubs. They could replace Ryu with Cole if they wanted to. Buehler and Ryu was clearly not the answer. Buehler and Cole might be. Buehler’s presence can be taken for granted next season because he is already under contract. The question is who will push the Dodgers over the top? Cole might be the answer.
Buehler gave up 1 run in 12.2 innings. He is absolutely the guy but he can’t do it alone.
The Dodgers are not going to get Cole. Dodger fans will count themselves fortunate to get Ryu back. That’s how this FO has conditioned Dodger fans to think.
Walker Buehler has given up 2 runs in his last 24.1 postseason innings, including outdueling Strasburg in G5 this year.
He also pitched the tiebreaker in 2018 for the NL West title, and gave up 1 hit.
First career World Series start? 7 inninings of shutout ball on 2 hits.
I hope they add Cole. But they have the guy that we hoped Kershaw would be in the postseason (and that’s kind of insulting to Kershaw, who has had plenty of brilliant postseason starts).
The postseason is all about having a 1-2-3 punch in the starting rotation. For the Dodgers that’s Buehler, Kershaw, and who else? It if isn’t Cole, it’s nobody, and it isn’t going to be Cole.
Padres fans better hope that some unforseen issue arise that nixes the Pham trade entirely.
AJ wants this trade so bad he’ll take an IL Pham I agree if the doctors say its not healed Fowler needs to kill the deal period
“Jake Cronenworth is a better prospect than Xavier Edwards” XD XD XD
I agree look at Jakes stats in AAA, Edwards still down in A ball
That one went further over your head than a fly ball headed towards Josh Naylor…
Go away
You’re new here, and comment a lot. A lot of annoying obsessive Preller comments. So you’re probably someone who was banned and has multiple accounts. You’re more annoying than WCR, Showmeyourtatis, and Red rooster…and that’s really hard..big boy kiss kiss
Wow! it’s almost like you’ve been talking about the same person on his 4 different accounts.
You”re right. He”s probably going to wind up needing Tommy Pham surgery.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
So the Giants paying Madbum over $20 million a year for the next 5 years will deeply hurt their rebuild. That will leave no money for the bullpen and no money to pay future players. Of course some Giant fans don’t care they just want to relive the glory years over and over.
The Giants aren’t rebuilding. Leadership has come out and said that multiple times. And they have 75m available under the cap this season. They can add Bumgarner and several other pieces (inc their bullpen) without issue.
Management can say whatever they want. They’ll vocally be “retooling” when it’s pretty clear they’re rebuilding. Re-signing Bum feels like nothing but a fan-appeasing move at this point.
Anybody know how much Nike is paying MLB to have their ugly swoosh on every players chest next year?
Sad Nike needs to move on into bankruptcy
Nike’s market cap is $150 billion. Not sure why you think they’re sad, but they’re on top of their game right now. I doubt they’re going anywhere.
People radially overpay for their average stuff as much as people here believe the manufactured rumors they think are fact.
Vandals, I see you’re using the Samuel account nowadays huh , partner???
Mark Prior was the previous bullpen coach, not bench coach.
I’m glad to finally here a report of the Dodgers acknowledging that there bullpen and pitching staff is not as good as they think it is. The need to beef up that bullpen and starting rotation instead of trying to acquire a bat. I mean I don’t mind Anthony Rendon, but.. Pitching wins World Series. And there pitching has been terrible in the postseason.
Terrible? Massive stretch. Their pitching had them well in position to advance but the bats failed. If they simply scored 1 run from the 3rd-9th inning of game 5 they win.
I agree another bat would be nice. But the pitching is overrated. Game 4 they lost 6-1 and game 5 they lost 7-3. Is that good pitching? I don’t think so..
You forget, that was the NLDS, not the World Series, and they were beaten by a team they bested by 13 games in the regular season. Three reasons why they don’t win a World Series even if they squeak by in the NDLS:
1. Not a good enough top three in the rotation.
2. Not good enough relief pitching.
3. Hitters unprepared for how they’d be pitched in the postseason and unable to adjust.
Look for more of the same next year.
The sad thing is we’ve said that the last 3 offseasons and done nothing about it…hopefully this year is different
I agree @mcdusty49 It is very frustrating that they have put absolutely no effort to upgrade there bullpen these last 3 years. I honestly do think the Dodgers should of won the World Series in 2017 though with the evidence that the Astros were stealing signs. We were up almost every game in the World Series in 2017 and Astros all of sudden mash when there’ll we’re down.
If the trade is nixed maybe we revisit but swap out parts.
Padres get Meadows, Croenworth, Joe Ryan
Ray’s get Renfroe Patino Abrams and 1 mlb ready pitcher from Baez Morejon Quantril Bolanos Lucchessi.
Meadows fits the Padres better long time rays get 2 high end prospects long term.
Have you seen what high end pitching is going for nowadays? Trading Gore or Patiño is a non-starter.
TANSSAAPP. There ain’t no sure thing as a pitching prospect.
You can look through previous top 100 lists and find many former top 100 pitchers who never panned out or had careers derailed by injuries. Anderson Espinoza being a primary example. Cal Quantril was also a former top 100 prospect. Ask braves fans about Kyle wright koby Allard. They had many top 100 prospect pitchers and seems like soroka is the only one that’ll pan out if he can stay healthy.
Padres can develop pitchers. Or find cheap pitching. They’ve proven that through the years. They can’t develop hitters and if you’re gonna waste prime years of Machado and esp hosmer hoping waiting for young guys to develop they won’t be winning a WS.
Austin Meadows has 5 years of team control fills a glaring hole in cf immediately and let’s the Padres package trammel to either get a tor arm or unload Myers contract off the books.
Everyone knows Blake Snell called SDP and anonymously reported to management to “focus on the elbows” during the physical.