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With Spring Training just around the corner, the Padres held their annual FanFest event yesterday and the impending return of baseball was a hot topic. With trade rumors surrounding right-handers Dylan Cease and Michael King while veteran Joe Musgrove figures to miss the entire 2025 campaign after undergoing Tommy John surgery in October, the club’s rotation has been under particular scrutiny in recent weeks.
However, the Padres end up filling out their rotation come Opening Day, one potential candidate to start has been eliminated at this point: left-hander Adrian Morejon. According to a report from Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday, club manager Mike Shildt spoke about Morejon’s place on the roster yesterday and gave the lefty a vote of confidence in a relief role.
“Adrián has found a really nice niche in the bullpen,” Shildt said, as relayed by Sanders. “It’s a spot that we think he’s not only going to do as well as he did last year, but take the next step and he’s excited about remaining in the bullpen and just being a dominant guy in that spot.”
That’s a bit of a reversal from earlier this winter, when Morejon was among a handful of relievers identified by president of baseball operations A.J. Preller as potential rotation converts. Moving players from the bullpen to the rotation has become quite popular around the game in recent years, and Preller’s decision to sign Seth Lugo as part of the club’s rotation mix and Lugo’s subsequent transformation into a bona fide top-of-the-rotation arm was a catalyst for that growing popularity.
Morejon was as sensible a candidate for such a conversion as any given his history as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, though given that 2024 was Morejon’s first healthy season as a big leaguer it’s understandable that the club has decided to keep him in the bullpen rather than risk more injuries by stretching him out. Stephen Kolek and Bryan Hoeing have also been discussed as potential converts to the rotation, but it remains unclear whether that’s still on the table for them entering camp or if, like Morejon, the Padres plan to keep them in relief roles for 2025. It’s even possible those decisions have not yet been made given the uncertainty surrounding the club’s rotation amid rumors of the club trading Cease or King.
Turning to the positional side of things, veteran third baseman Manny Machado spoke to reporters (including MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell) yesterday about the progress his elbow has made since undergoing offseason surgery last winter. That surgery cost him the final days of the 2023 season and kept him from returning to his typical post as the Padres’ regular third baseman until May, and continued to mix in occasional DH days throughout the first half. Machado noted that he dealt with the “lingering effects” of his surgery throughout the 2024 campaign, but made clear that “everything” has been different for him this offseason as he’s now “back to normal” for the first time post-surgery.
Whether that will be enough to help catapult the 32-year-old back into the .280/.352/.504 (130 wRC+) form he showed during his first four seasons in a Padres uniform remains to be seen, but it’s surely an encouraging sign for Padres fans that Machado is feeling healthier than he was last season, when he posted a 122 wRC+ with 3.6 fWAR. The veteran slugger has nine years left on the 11-year, $350MM deal he signed prior to the 2023 season, so Machado’s ability to maintain star-caliber production into his mid-to-late 30’s will be key to the Padres’ success over the coming decade.
While the Padres have been preparing for the coming season on the field and in the front office, a squabble between ownership stakeholders has been going on in the background. While the Padres announced back in December that Peter Seidler’s brother John Seidler was poised to take over as the franchise control person, that was seemingly put on hold when Peter’s widow, Sheel Seidler, filed a lawsuit against Peter’s other two brothers (and trustees of The Peter Seidler Trust) Matt and Bob Seidler. Matt Seidler subsequently filed a response to that lawsuit last week, and as the legal battle surrounding the role of Padres control person continues plenty of speculation has gone on among fans and media members about the future of the franchise.
As noted in a column by Matt Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times yesterday, however, one thing the Seidler brothers are resolute on is their commitment to owning the Padres. Shaikin notes that the brothers have “no plans to sell the Padres to anyone.” That apparently includes Sheel Seidler, whose legal counsel Dane Butswinkas, Shaikin reports, refused to answer whether or not she is attempting to buy her former brothers-in-law out of the franchise.
“Ideally, we would like to resolve this with the brothers,” Butswinksas said, as relayed by Shaikin. “However, for that to occur, it would take some level of cooperation from them. So far, we have seen no signs of that happening. The current path towards resolution, unfortunately, is through litigation, which we know can drag on for years and would be in no one’s interest.”
The possibility of a sale comes up in Shaikin’s piece, which MLBTR readers are encouraged to read in full, as part of a larger discussion about recent legal disputes between stakeholders within ownership groups in instances of divorce, illness, or death affecting a club’s primary owner. Those disputes, as Shaikin notes, have a history of being resolved through the sale of the team. Former Padres owner John Moores and, more recently, the Angelos family that formerly owned the Orioles are among previous owners who have sold their teams amid legal battles within the team’s ownership structure.
