Joe Musgrove says Padres are a good team without Josh Hader and Blake Snell

Blake Snell and Josh Hader are going to be free agents at the end of the year so their names are getting thrown out there as possible trade pieces for the San Diego Padres, which makes sense not just because of their contract situation but because the team is well under .500 with less than two weeks to go before the trade deadline.

Their teammate, Joe Musgrove, spoke yesterday in Toronto about the possibility of them being gone:

Musgrove’s comments might not go over well inside the minds of Snell and Hader but I have no problem with what he said.

It’s not like Musgrove said Snell and Hader stunk. In fact, he made sure to mention that the Padres wouldn’t be the same team without them. But is he wrong to say San Diego still would have a good team without those guys?

Let’s be honest. When Snell (2.71 ERA, 139 K) and Hader (1.03 ERA) are on the mound they have been really good for the Padres this season. However, they still provide minimal impact because Snell pitches once every five days—and went into his last start with essentially his own pitch limit—and Hader almost never pitches three days in a row and isn’t in a ton of save situations this year because the Padres aren’t winning very many games.

Without Snell and Hader, the Padres would still have Musgrove, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth, Ha-Seong Kim, Yu Darvish, Seth Lugo and Robert Suarez (when he returns), among others. That’s a lot of good names to have on one roster.

If some of those guys play up to their potential, then Musgrove is correct. The Padres are still a good baseball team without Snell and Hader. Are they better than without them? I doubt it. Still good? Yes. That’s all Musgrove is saying.