A.J. Preller loves him some Opening Day trades for stud closers, eh? Seven years ago, the Padres GM acquired Craig Kimbrel from the Braves in a shocker of a deal, and now he’s trading for Twins reliever Taylor Rogers.
It’s the other shoe in the whole acquiring-Sean-Manaea-after-the-Mets-deal-fell-through thing, with Chris Paddack now out the door to the Twins instead of the Mets:
Heading to Padres: Taylor Rogers, earning $7.3M this season, is a potential free agent. Heading to Twins: Chris Paddack, earning $2.25M, is under club control for three seasons. Emilio Pagan, earning $2.3M, is under club control for two.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) April 7, 2022
Outfielder Brent Rooker is heading to San Diego in the Padres-Twins trade, sources tell @TheAthletic.
— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) April 7, 2022
For the Padres, the trade is about upgrading Pagan (who has been pretty bad in San Diego after being a stud for the Rays in 2019) to Rogers, which should be a significant bump. They also get Rooker, who may or may not wind up contributing in the big leagues, but he’s hit at Triple-A and has options remaining.
For the Twins, it’s about taking the short-term downgrade on Rogers in exchange for getting three years to try to unlock Paddack. His results just haven’t been there, but if you watch him pitch, you can see why teams believe in the talent. The Padres had a starting pitching surplus, so the trade makes plenty of sense in that regard, too.
It’s weird to see this happening on Opening Day, but the trade is entirely understandable. In a normal timeline, this deal probably gets done in January or early February.