Once the San Diego Padres played well enough to become buyers at the Aug. 3 trade deadline, the starting rotation became an obvious area of need. Beyond ace Michael King, the rotation was full of question marks.
The Padres acquired Robbie Ray and Casey Mize to complement King, Walker Buehler and Randy Vasquez in their rotation. Nick Pivetta and Joe Musgrove eventually returned from injuries to pitch in the postseason as well.
But to call the trades for Ray and Mize a disappointment would be an understatement. Mize didn't even make the Padres' postseason roster for the wild-card or Division Series round. As for Ray, neither his regular-season or postseason performance did enough to justify what the San Francisco Giants got in return.
The deadline-day trade sent a pair of minor leaguers to the Giants organization: shortstop Joniel Hernandez and pitcher Miguel Mendez.
Hernandez, 17, is a shortstop in the Dominican Summer League. Mendez, 24, finished the 2024 season at Double-A, where he allowed 10 runs in 10.2 innings (8.44 ERA) across four starts for the Giants' affiliate.
As for Ray, he went 3-2 with a 5.02 ERA across nine starts for San Diego and walked 27 batters in only 43 innings. He got into two NLDS games almost by default; the Padres had few viable alternatives. Ray allowed three runs against the Brewers on five hits, with three walks and one strikeout over 3.2 innings.
Ray is now a free agent. Considering the dichotomy between his performance before and after the trade, the Padres seem likely to move on from Ray.
Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller won't want to bring back a pitcher who posted a 5.21 ERA in 11 games during the most important juncture of his age-34 season. Ray, by contrast, will want to get paid based on his performance in San Francisco: a 10-6 record and 3.08 ERA in 22 games (21 starts).
Ray signed a five-year, $115 million contract with the Seattle Mariners in November 2021. The Padres only paid a sliver of that, about $8.3 million. That cost, plus whatever Mendez and Hernandez develop into as prospects, wasn't justified by Ray's performance over the final two months of the regular season and postseason.
Had Ray pitched well, the Padres might have been motivated to sign him to their 2027 rotation. Instead, the Padres' rotation is full of question marks again.
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