Mason Miller: to acquire him, you’ll also have to take Xander Bogaerts

Félix Forget
Mason Miller: to acquire him, you’ll also have to take Xander Bogaerts
Credit: CP

At the last trade deadline, the Padres made a monstrous move to acquire Mason Miller. The club paid a high price, sending top prospect Leodalis De Vries to the Athletics.

It was a huge price to pay for a reliever, even if he still had four and a half years of control at the time.

Right now, the idea of Miller leaving San Diego this winter is gaining ground. It would allow the Padres to regain some value… but they could obviously use it for something else.

According to Erik Kratz, who spoke about Miller's case, we can expect that any transaction involving Miller would also involve another player: Xander Bogaerts.

The reason? The Padres want to free up their payroll, and Bogaerts' contract is a real drag.

All of this illustrates something pretty glaring: right now, the Padres' priority isn't to improve the club or fetch as much value as possible for Miller. Instead, they're looking to use Miller's value to give away a bad contract.

Because let's be clear: if Bogaerts is part of a deal that involves Miller, the return won't be nearly as significant as the price the Padres paid for the reliever.

We know that Miller still has four years of control, so there's theoretically no reason for the Padres to rush to trade him. But for a team desperate to pay less, we find ourselves thinking about using our best assets to pass on our bad contracts.

And above all, it limits the market enormously: few teams will want to take on Bogaerts' contract, even if it comes with Miller. Fewer buyers and less value: not a good mix.

The Mets, to make up for their difficult offseason, might go for the big one… and you'd think one or two other big-market teams might be open to making such a low-cost deal.

But what's clear is that we're not looking to do what we did with Juan Soto by trading him at a high price a year before his full autonomy and going for maximum value. Yes, priorities have changed in San Diego since the death of Peter Seidler.

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This content was created with the help of AI.

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