The Padres’ rotation picture is getting thin fast, and the organization may wind up leaning on its own depth more than it would like. If the club has to piece together a five-man staff, the list of possible free agents and trade targets already makes one thing obvious: there’s a real chance San Diego has to find answers internally.
That’s where four names have started to matter. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune pointed to Ian Koenig, JP Sears, Luis Gutierrez and Jhony Brito as possible solutions, each with a very different path to the majors.
Koenig might be the most intriguing of the group simply because of how far he has come. The 25-year-old right-hander was an undrafted free agent out of Cabrillo Junior College in 2022, then went unselected by all 29 teams in last year’s Rule 5 draft.
Still, he finished strong at Triple-A El Paso, going 3-0 with a 2.33 ERA in five starts. That kind of run should lock him into a 40-man roster spot this offseason, and in theory it gives him a real shot to climb quickly.
Sears brings the opposite kind of profile: he’s already been around. The 30-year-old, who turns 30 in February, has made 108 starts across the Padres, Athletics and New York Yankees over the past five seasons, posting a 34-45 record with a 4.54 ERA.
His 2026 season was rough by his standards, with just six major league starts - his fewest since his 2022 debut - and a 7.49 ERA in 23 games at Triple-A El Paso. Even so, the Padres may need to bank on a bounce-back year if he’s part of the 2027 mix.
Gutierrez is the youngest of the four and probably the hardest to project. The 23-year-old left-hander from Venezuela pitched at four minor-league levels in 2026, but injuries limited him to 13 starts.
He also logged only a small Triple-A sample, and the 7.71 ERA there didn’t improve on his 2025 mark of 5.40 in one start. Still, as MLB Pipeline’s No. 12 prospect in the organization, he’s going to get a long look eventually, even if 2027 comes a little early.
Brito is the outlier in a different way. The 28-year-old right-hander started 13 games for the Yankees in 2023, but with the Padres he has worked exclusively out of the bullpen in the majors. He missed all of 2025 while recovering from internal brace surgery and a flexor tendon repair, then returned in 2026 to throw nine innings over five outings while allowing three runs.
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The first half was uneven enough that Merrills overall numbers still settled closer to league average than star level, but the second half told a different story. He hit .304/.339/.569 after the break, added 16 homers and eight steals, and closed the year with 26 home runs and 27 stolen bases, a reminder that his breakout came less with a bang than with a steady climb the Padres could not ignore. [Read more 🡒]