Padres “in talks” with Jorge Soler, per report

The San Diego Padres have struck out on plenty of guys this offseason. Nelson Cruz, Kris Bryant, Seiya Suzuki, Joc Pederson, Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, and Jesse Winker are all players that went to other teams despite the Padres expressing some level of interest in them. Another player could end up going to another team as well—or this time actually come to Petco Park—and that’s Jorge Soler.

I am not going to come out and say the Padres won’t strike out tonight because we’ve been teased too many times to have a bunch of optimism. But whenever there’s a report out like there is right now where it seems like there’s only two teams really interested in a player and San Diego is one of the two teams interested, it’s just the normal fan reaction to want to believe that this player will actually end up coming here.

However, as we’ve seen post lockout, that optimism means nothing. At the same time though, eventually A.J. Preller has to get someone right?

While Soler had a negative WAR last season, he still hit 27 home runs in the regular season between Kansas City and Atlanta. The Padres obviously are a team looking for power and Soler fits that description. The downside of Soler, though, is that he is likely a DH and not an outfielder, which limits some flexibility in the Padres group of position players and still doesn’t fix the issue of not having a real outfielder.

I’ll be discussing this tonight live on YouTube at 7:15 pm PT. Come join if you want to talk Padres baseball!