The Padres’ offseason is already circling around one big question: how much is Adrian Morejon worth, and can San Diego make the math work?
At 27, the left-hander is headed into a pivotal stretch after turning in a strong season out of the bullpen. Morejon posted a 2.83 ERA over a career-high 86 innings, struck out 107 batters - third among relievers - and walked 28. That kind of production, paired with his age, has pushed him into a different market than the typical middle reliever or setup arm.
Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter projected Morejon to land a five-year, $90 million contract, calling him a pitcher who “fits prominently into the conversation of the most dominant left-handed relievers in baseball”.
That projection comes with a clear comparison point. Reuter pointed to the deal the Los Angeles Dodgers gave Tanner Scott before the 2025 season.
Scott was two years older than Morejon when he signed, and he was coming off a 1.75 ERA season, with the latter half of that year spent with the Padres. He also carried elite swing-and-miss and chase numbers, then landed a four-year, $72 million contract from Los Angeles.
Even after Scott followed that with a 4.74 ERA the next season, the $18 million average annual value remained the benchmark Reuter used for Morejon.
The numbers behind Morejon’s case are loud. He owns a whiff rate in the 97th percentile across MLB, and hitters are chasing his pitches outside the strike zone 38.6% of the time, which sits in the 99th percentile.
He’s doing it with a four-pitch mix, leaning heavily on his sinker, which he throws almost half the time, and a changeup that has held hitters to a .156 average. That changeup alone has produced 56% of his whiffs.
San Diego’s willingness to pay up is the other piece of this. The club has money committed through the 2031 season and has built a recent reputation for trying to keep a balanced budget.
But the new ownership duo has also made its stance on winning unmistakable. In an email to Padres season ticket members earlier this month, Kwanza Jones and Jose E.
Feliciano wrote, "We said we were ALL IN. We meant it then.
We mean it now. All in our people.
All in on winning. All in on San Diego, Baja and beyond," and added, "We want to bring a World Series championship to this community and build an organization that makes you proud for years to come, both on and off the field."
There’s also a hint that Morejon would be open to staying if the Padres put the right offer on the table. After San Diego was knocked out of the National League Division Series, he was asked if he wanted to come back next season. His answer made the direction pretty clear: “everybody knows that” he wants that.
“I feel sad because I don’t want to say goodbye,” he added. “But it’s business, and let’s see what happens during the offseason.”
In Other News...
Padres May Face A Tough Trade-Off To Fix Their Rotation
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The catch is that every one of those options comes with a trade-off, and that is the part San Diego has to sort through carefully. Some proposals lean on higher-end prospects, others ask for more organizational depth, and all of them force a decision on how much future value the Padres are willing to move for a rotation fix. It is still all speculative, but it does underline the same reality for a team trying to stay competitive: the answer may be available, just not at a discount. [Read more 🡒]
Padres Could Have An Answer At Second Base If Yankees Move On
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If the Yankees do decide to move on, the Padres would be one of the teams to keep in mind. San Diego has been searching for more offense at second base, and a left-handed hitter with Chisholms profile would make sense on paper as the club tries to balance the lineup and add production at a spot that has not consistently delivered it. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Could Face A Steep Prospect Price For Bullpen Upgrade
The Yankees are already being linked to an aggressive offseason bullpen search, and San Diegos Mason Miller has quickly surfaced as one of the names hovering near the top of that conversation. With David Bednar potentially headed to free agency, New York is being framed as a club that could try to solve the ninth inning by trading for a proven arm, and Miller fits the profile of the kind of high-end reliever teams rarely make available.
For the Padres, the attention is a reminder of how valuable Miller has become and how expensive it would be for a rival to pry him loose. Reports have floated a package centered on Elmer Rodriguez, Carlos Lagrange and Dax Kilby, which tells you the level of prospect capital it might take just to start a serious discussion. Nothing is close to official, and the whole idea is still in the speculative stage, but it already reads like the sort of deal that would force both sides to weigh present-day bullpen certainty against long-term roster depth. [Read more 🡒]