In Mason Miller, JP Sears Padres Gain Essential Medium-Term Stability

Never count out A.J. Preller. 

The San Diego Padres had been quiet in the days and hours leading up to the trade deadline. Turns out, it was only so that Preller could stun us all the more with yet another blockbuster move. Preller was able to poach Mason Miller and his 104 MPH fastball away from the West Sacramento Athletics in what will surely go down as one of the louder moves of the 2025 deadline. 

Immediately, our mind goes to the cost. The Padres were light on marquee prospects and feature a system that, overall, sits near the bottom of the league. Prior to Thursday, we'd heard that the team was disinclined to include top prospect Leo De Vries in any deal. The same largely applied to catcher Ethan Salas, though we had heard whispers that he'd been floated as part of discussions with the Boston Red Sox surrounding Jarren Duran. Outside of those two, the Padres' top prospects aren't exactly a list full of names. Braden Nett was seen as a riser this year. Henry Baez, perhaps as an arm that could contribute as early as 2026. 

Preller included three out of those four — De Vries (no. 1), Nett (no. 3), and Baez (no. 13) — as part of the package to acquire Miller and starting pitcher JP Sears. Eduarniel Núñez (no. 17) was also included. Four of the top 17 prospects in a thin system seems like a wild price to pay for even a closer of Miller's caliber and a back-end starter in Sears, especially for a relief pitching-rich team like San Diego. To say nothing of the additional prospect cost in the later deal with the Baltimore Orioles.

But in doing so, Preller was able to buy his team some medium-term stability. 

In more recent weeks, I've floated the idea that the Padres could soon find themselves in a sort of baseball purgatory. Given some of the offensive struggles we saw throughout May, June, and July, the Padres were without clear reinforcements on the position player side. The pitching staff wasn't immune to that line of thinking, however. Michael King & Dylan Cease are free agents, with the latter remaining a trade candidate. Robert Suárez can opt out of his deal and become a free agent, which seems even more likely now. Yu Darvish's first three starts on the Injured List looked objectively bad. It's been a lot of patchwork in '25, particularly on the starting side. 

But what Preller did in acquiring both Miller and Sears in this deal is help to mitigate some of that. Suárez will either depart on Thursday via trade or free agency. Miller becomes the team's closer for the foreseeable future, as he's under team control for four additional years; he's not a free agent until 2030. Sears doesn't have remotely the same kind of upside, but he's the kind of stable backend arm that this team has yearned for this year. He's not a free agent until 2029. 

So there's a lot of logic in this deal. The prospect cost was, on paper, intense. It's difficult to stomach that at first blush, for a team already struggling to keep up on the farm with so many of their National League counterparts. But someone like De Vries remains at least a couple of years away. Manny Machado is touching his mid-30s. You've got Fernando Tatis Jr and Jackson Merrill in their respective primes, with the latter likely leaving room to grow into even greater heights. There is a lot of talent on this roster in need of medium-term supplementation. 

Preller was able to get it. You might not like it, perhaps even more as we get closer to the end of the decade. My instinct was to loathe it, given what it required and where the system stands. But there's too much logic in it to be ignored. Preller succeeded with this one, both in the short term and in the medium term.