The Padres are close to a deal with veteran reliever José Leclerc, as first reported by journalist Mike Rodriguez. It’ll be a minor league deal for the Munger English Sports Management client once it’s complete, Jon Heyman of the New York Post adds.
Leclerc missed the bulk of the 2025 season after suffering a severe lat strain and eventually requiring shoulder surgery. He threw a bullpen session for interested clubs a couple weeks ago and was said at the time to be targeting a return around July. The Padres will hope his recovery goes well in the next few months, thereby allowing him to bolster their pitching staff midseason.
It’s a buy-low move for the Padres, who are known to be working under some budgetary restraints. The past few offseasons have seen them mostly stick to modest contracts. Even when they have splurged a little bit, such as their deals for Nick Pivetta and Michael King, they have backloaded the money in order to lower the near-term hit.
Leclerc is just over a year removed from earning a $10MM deal from the A’s. That was somewhat surprising at the time but he did have some intriguing stuff on his track record. From 2018 to 2024, he tossed 299 2/3 innings for the Rangers, allowing 3.24 earned runs per nine. His 11.8% walk rate was quite high but his 31.8% strikeout rate was very strong.
In that time, he had worked both as a closer and a setup guy, earning 41 saves and 58 holds. He mixed in six different pitches, with his four-seamer and sinker sitting in the mid-90s as he also threw a high-80s cutter and changeup, a low-80s slider and a curveball in the high-70s.
His 2025 season was mostly lost. He only made ten appearances for the A’s before the aforementioned lat injury put him on the shelf. He will still be recovering from his surgery for another few months. It hasn’t been reported what salary he will make if selected to the Padres’ roster but it is presumably well below $10MM.
The Padres have a strong bullpen, even though they let Robert Suarez walk in free agency. Mason Miller is one of the best closers in the game and he’ll be joined by Adrián Morejón, Jeremiah Estrada and David Morgan. Perhaps Jason Adam can be healthy by Opening Day but he’ll be back in there at some point regardless.
Over a long season, pitcher injuries are inevitable and the outlook will change. As Leclerc is potentially getting back in game shape in July, the Padres will ideally be looking to bolster their roster ahead of the August 3rd trade deadline. If Leclerc looks to be in good form by then, perhaps that will subtract one item from their shopping list.
Photo courtesy of Joe Nicholson, Imagn Images
Mid season bullpen help it looks like. Not a bad pickup and no risk with a MiLB deal.
Did the Athletics give him $10 million last just to avoid a players union grievance?
I think so.
Fangraphs just dropped an article with their bullpen rankings showing the Padres at #1.
It’s interesting to me that Leclerc is trying to crack into this group because it seems like he’d have a more realistic shot at getting onto a roster elsewhere, but its good depth for the Padres to have in AAA when he’s healthy.
Yeah sorta puzzling from the player perspective, but perhaps was his only offer (or the only offer he liked). Even healthy I couldn’t see him beating out Rodriguez for a low/mid-leverage role. Good depth signing tho.
Next year the Padres could use him with Adam and Morejon becoming FAs, so maybe they’re grooming him for that
Maybe because no one else was willing to pay him?
Might need him to rotate in for all of the bullpen games that are on their way.
I think rotation has a good chance to be solid by mid-year (after Canning returns) but it’ll definitely be all-hands-on-deck until then
known budgetary restraints
Can never have enough pitching…