What would buying look like?

The Trade Deadline is on the horizon. Recent rule changes have eliminated waiver trades, making this the lone deadline on deals. The San Diego Padres are in a very unique situation right now which makes the looming July 31st even harder.

The fact is that there are several approaches the Padres can take that are justified. They could buy, sell, or stand pat and all of them would make sense.

The Padres have options, but there is a way to do this VERY wrong. While they are dancing with a .500 win percentage this year they have to be looking forward, not at the present. That means that any buying needs to be with the future in mind.

By that I mean that if they are to buy, it needs to be a Noah Syndergaard-type that has multiple years left on his deal. One year rentals do nothing for the team. And I will repeat this several times, I do not believe trading this year does much. I do not foresee anything major happening.

One more time for safety...It should be said that buying for the future and losing prospects is a very unlikely scenario. Like, extremely unlikely at this point. But, it is better to be prepared, right?

The flip side to this is that team control also means more expensive. Luckily the Padres have a deep farm that can handle a trade or two.

I will add the caveat that I don’t believe any high level arms will be in discussions. That means guys like Adrian Morejon. Luis Patino, Mackenzie Gore, among others, are safe.

If I were in the GM chair, I would be headlining deals with the infield depth. Between Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado being locked in for the immediate (and not so immediate) future, it does not leave much room for these prospects ready to go. We are seeing that pretty clearly with Luis Urias.

I would say that guys like Ty France, Owen Miller, and Urias are the type of names that could headline deals. If the incoming player is substantial enough, then Urias will have to be the guy. Obviously the other two wouldn’t garner as high a talent as Urias.

Once again, we are looking at a pool of players that are stars and also have multiple years of team control. Outside of the Mets, there might not be a single player who fits that description.

While it is unlikely, it’s still baseball. Anything can happen. I think it is more likely that the Padres deal a player or two rather than bring one in. If they do, however, it won’t be a rental. That makes all of this very unlikely. If I were a betting man, I would say, unless things drastically change, everyone is safe at this point.