NEWSLETTER
Nobody seems to know what the San Diego Padres are going to do at the MLB Trade Deadline. They lost three of four to the Tigers and Pirates, and that seemed like maybe it would be that, despite how aggressively they had pushed in their chips for 2023. Then they swept a very good Rangers team this weekend, and maybe that was going to be enough to keep them afloat.
That’s *probably* where things stand now, but they just got walked off on by the Rockies in a game they totally should’ve won. That dropped them back to three games under .500, 8.5 games out in the West and 5.0 games out in the Wild Card. The temptation to sell, when you’ve got two of the top rental arms available in Blake Snell and Josh Hader, must be pretty strong.
But, at least as of the start of tonight’s game, it doesn’t sound like the Padres were eager to entertain real offers for Hader:
We’ll see.
I wouldn’t expect the Cubs to be aggressive bidders on Hader even if he were made available. Although the Cubs could definitely use another bullpen arm, and an impact guy at the back of the pen is always desirable (Adbert Alzolay could easily move into the 8th inning and be as important there as he is now), it TENDS to be the case that the elite rentals like Hader go to teams that already know they are definitely in the postseason. Those are the teams that already know they are going to get to use that impact reliever in the most critical innings in a baseball season (late innings in a postseason game), so they should be willing to pay a much higher price to acquire the player.
In other words, if Hader were traded, you would tend to expect him to go to a team with an overwhelmingly strong set of playoff odds. The Cubs, meanwhile, are still more like a 25 to 30% chance team.
