rewrite this title Padres already demoting one of their trade-deadline acquisitions

The Padres announced they’ve optioned JP Sears to Triple-A El Paso. They recalled reliever Sean Reynolds and will go with a nine-man bullpen in the short term. Sears will spend at least 15 days in the minors unless he’s brought up to replace a player going on the injured list.

San Diego acquired Sears alongside Mason Miller in last week’s massive deadline deal. The 29-year-old southpaw made his team debut Monday night. He allowed five runs in as many innings on 10 hits and a walk against the Diamondbacks. Sears took the loss in a 6-2 defeat. He’d carried a 4.95 earned run average over 22 starts with the A’s. Monday’s performance pushed his ERA to 5.12 across 116 innings. It’s a bottom-10 mark among pitchers to log at least 100 frames. Sears had the highest home run rate among that group, offsetting his nearly league-average 20.3% strikeout rate and solid 6% walk percentage.

This is the first time in two-and-a-half years that Sears heads to the minors. He broke camp with the A’s in 2023 and has been in the majors since then. Sears has also avoided the injured list for that entire time. As a result, he’s tied for fifth in MLB with 87 starts since the beginning of the ’23 season. The durability is the big selling point, as his production (4.62 ERA/4.56 SIERA) over that stretch is that of a fifth or sixth starter.

The demotion shouldn’t have any impact on Sears’ service trajectory. He has already surpassed the three-year mark and will qualify for arbitration next winter. He’s under team control for three seasons beyond this one. While he’ll probably be back up at some point this year, it may require an injury elsewhere in the rotation.

San Diego optioned Randy Vásquez over the weekend. They have a four-man rotation of Dylan Cease, Nick Pivetta, Yu Darvish and deadline acquisition Nestor Cortes. Darvish and Cortes will get the ball for the next two outings. San Diego is off Thursday and could turn back to Pivetta and Cease on extra rest for their first two games of the weekend series against the Red Sox.

That’d point to the series finale on Aug. 10 as Michael King’s return date. King threw 61 pitches in what is expected to be his final rehab start on Sunday, via the MLB.com injury tracker. He’d be on six days’ rest for his first MLB appearance since he went on the injured list in late May with a nerve problem in his throwing shoulder.