Padres trade Colten Brewer to Red Sox

The stove is warming up! In the first significant transaction of the offseason, the Padres have traded Colten Brewer to the Red Sox. In return the team is getting minor league infielder Esteban Quiroz, but more significantly to today’s news, the move clears a spot off the 40-man roster.

Colten Brewer was signed nearly a year ago to the day as a free agent after spending six years in the Pirates and Yankees organizations. His signing was of the major league variety, so he went straight onto the 40-man roster but was optioned to El Paso to start the season. The 6’4” righty reliever was first recalled on April 12th in the first of five separate trips to the majors. His results were mixed and his final line with a 5.59 ERA and a 2.28 WHIP in 9.2 innings of work are probably a bit unfair given the sparse opportunities where he racked up a bunch of frequent flyer miles on the El Paso Shuttle.

Esteban Quiroz is a 26-year-old infielder who was signed by the Red Sox out of the Mexican League in November 2017, coincidentally a day after the Padres signed Brewer. In 43 games of affiliated ball between Rookie, AA, and the Arizona Fall League, he’s played second base exclusively, but in his Mexican League career he ranged all over the diamond. He’s a bit undersized at 5’7” but he posted an impressive .299/.413/.598 slash line with Boston’s AA affiliate Portland Sea Dogs in 104 plate appearances. Whether he’s a “late bloomer” or just an organizational player remains to be seen, but Quiroz is an interesting player who will likely head to the Amarillo Sod Poodles to start his 2019 campaign.

Today is the deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters in preparation for the Rule 5 draft. In recent years the Padres were working to open spots so they could snag players from other teams such as Luis Perdomo, Jabari Blash, Miguel Diaz, and Allen Cordoba. This year the team is in a much different position, with at least a handful of prospects eligible for the draft who need to be added to the roster if the team wants to hang on to them. Expect to see some more moves throughout the day, as the team needs to clear at least four more spots off the roster for guys like Chris Paddack, Austin Allen, Anderson Espinoza, Pedro Avila, and others.