Padres' Trade Deadline Plans Will Be Unfurled By Michael King

[N.B. Lindberg]

As a true .500 team entering the second half, the San Diego Padres are right on the buy/sell fence. They’re close enough to the playoffs where pushing their chips would be defensible, but so would a calculated retreat. And the player who sits atop the proverbial fence is Michael King.  

King has been at the forefront of the modern reliever-to-starter conversion. Between 2019 and 2023 with the Yankees, King made 19 starts against 96 relief appearances and excelled. As a spot starter and multi-inning reliever, he pitched to a 3.38 ERA and amassed 4.7 fWAR and 5.6 bWAR. For just 247.2 innings of work, those are excellent figures, and continuing as a bullpen fireman would have been an apt career choice. Why zig when the zagging is so swell? Well, the Padres had other, better ideas. 

King arrived in San Diego in 2024 as part of the Juan Soto trade, and instead of trotting out of the bullpen 50 times a season, the Padres decided to see if he could toe the rubber every fifth day. At the time, there was significant skepticism that King could make the transition, but he quickly and emphatically put those to bed. 

In 2024, King made 30 starts and earned a 2.95 ERA across 173.2 innings. It was good for 3.9 fWAR and 4.1 bWAR. That’s not quite ace-like production, but if that’s your number three starter, you’ve got yourself a great rotation. His 2025 wasn’t quite as sterling as injury limited him to 15 starts, but he still finished the season with a 3.44 ERA. And now in year three of his major league starting career, he has made 20 starts with a 3.34 ERA over 113.1 innings. 

King has been, without a doubt, the Padres' best starter. He leads their starting rotation in innings, ERA, fWAR (1.7), and bWAR (2.6), with the latter figure leading the entire team. If he were to seriously be available at the deadline, he’d be one of the top pitchers on the market, but he’d also be the proverbial white flag raised from the white picket fence. However, the decision to trade King isn’t as simple as quitting on this season, as he has a player option for the next two, which makes his trade candidacy a compelling thought exercise. 

The first place to start with a King trade is with that player option. The deal he signed with the Padres was an act of creative accounting. After so much success in San Diego, the Padres re-signed King to a three-year, $75 million deal this offseason, but it was really a one-year deal worth $17 million with an option for two years and $58 million. 

His average annual value of $25 million is spread evenly over the contract for luxury tax purposes, while the cash payouts escalate rapidly. The deal was structured this way to help offset their massive luxury tax figure of $258.4 million against just $230.6 million in projected cash payroll. Due to the Padres being above the $244 million competitive balance tax, they are set to pay $4.34 million in luxury tax. King, by only making $17 million in cash this season, helped offset the Padres' luxury tax payments and reduce their total cash expenditures for the 2026 season. 

Unfortunately, everything changes in 2027 and 2028. King’s cash payout increases to $28 million in the former year and $30 million in the latter, but that’s just the tip of the financial iceberg the Padres are steaming towards. Starting in 2027, Manny Machado’s salary bumps up to $40 million from $21 million, against the flat $31.8 million luxury tax figure for the life of his deal. While Jackson Merrill’s contract helps alleviate this spike, the Padres functionally built this roster to have a financial crunch in 2027, and King’s contract structure is a prime example. 

If King were to opt into his deal for 2027 and 2028, the Padres would very likely feel compelled to offload salary, so why not get ahead of disaster and move one of their most moveable contracts early? The financial motivations to trade King ahead of the deadline are massive, and while his contract structure might be a hindrance to a less cash-rich franchise like the Padres, his lower competitive balance hit, compared to his salary, might be awfully enticing for a franchise that prints money. 

Now, you can’t move a player as important as King just for financial reasons. He’s your best starting pitcher, and you’re still in the playoff picture. However, the return for King could help restock a depleted farm system. With Machado’s looming salary explosion and drop in production, the Padres' best hope of competing over the next half-decade is to receive an infusion of young, cost-controlled talent to offset an underwater contract. 

While there will undoubtedly be massive interest in King, presumably from the Cubs, his value league-wide will be incredibly interesting. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I keep mentioning his fWAR and bWAR, with his bWAR always being superior, and there’s a reason for that. King has spent the past three seasons continuously beating his ERA estimators, which fWAR (Fangraphs) is based upon, while bWAR (Baseball Reference) uses ERA with a team defense weight.

*2026 stats capture only the first half

After a certain point, if a player keeps beating their ERA estimators, you have to believe they’ll keep doing so. Unfortunately, the team trading for him has to believe that as well, and front offices have never been more sophisticated in their player analysis. Landing a starter who can give you a mid-threes ERA over 180 innings is game-changing, but getting that level of bulk with an ERA at or above 4.00 is more of a backend starter. 

Over the past three seasons, among starters who have thrown 300 or more innings, King has the sixth-largest gap between his actual ERA and the average of his ERA estimators. This has been great for the Padres, but it will undoubtedly scare some teams off.

The other confounding issue has been the erosion of his strikeout rate. In 2024, King posted a 27.7% strikeout rate, but that fell to 24.7% in 2025, and currently sits at 20.7% in 2026. Even if we view his 2024 season as a career year, the drop in strikeouts, combined with a corresponding increase in walk rate (a career high 9.7% this season), is likely to mute his market. However, based on King’s underlying contact, zone, and swing data, he’s probably underperforming his strikeout and walk rates a tad. 

If an enterprising team believes they can get his stuff to play better out of the zone, King should see his strikeout rate skyrocket, as it’s unusual for a player to miss bats in the zone, but not out of it. As for his walk rate, no player who is in the zone this much, throwing a league-average number of first-pitch strikes, should have a below-league-average walk rate. 

The question for any team trading for King is whether or not they think they can continue to get the same level of performance despite some yellow flags. With how pitching-needy teams are by the trade deadline, teams will certainly be interested in a relatively durable and stable starting pitcher under contract for the next two seasons, but is he worth moving if he can only net one back-end top-100 prospect? 

There are more reasons to move King than keep him, but waiving the white flag is something front offices should always do with caution. And even if the move makes long-term sense, if the Padres execute a quick turnaround or Machado, Jackson Merrill, and Xander Bogaerts start playing up to their usual standards, then King is the exact type of steadying mid-rotation force they’d need. All told, the case to keep or move King is as on the fence as the Padres’ season. But whatever they decide to do with him will tell us what they really think of this team.

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