Adrian Morejon has made his preference plain: he wants to stay in San Diego.
After the Padres were eliminated by the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday, the left-hander didn’t sound like a player ready to shop himself around. Morejon, now a pending free agent, said that “everybody knows that” he wants to return to the Padres.
“I feel sad because I don’t want to say goodbye,” Morejon said. “But it’s business, and let’s see what happens during the offseason.”
That offseason could get expensive in a hurry. Dennis Lin of The Athletic wrote that Morejon "could attract nine-figure offers from other clubs." That’s a striking possibility for a pitcher who has spent the last three seasons in a middle-relief role.
Morejon signed with San Diego as an amateur free agent in July 2016 and has been in the organization ever since. Since his 2019 debut, he has appeared in 273 major league games, which is more than all but four pitchers for a single team over that span: the Houston Astros’ Bryan Abreu, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Kevin Ginkel, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Giovanny Gallegos and the Atlanta Braves’ Dylan Lee.
The numbers from 2025 and 2026 help explain why his market could stretch beyond what the Padres might expect. Morejon was an All-Star for the first time in 2025, when he went 13-6 with a 2.08 ERA in 75 games out of the bullpen. He didn’t repeat as an All-Star this year, but he still posted career highs in games (76), innings (86.0) and strikeouts (107).
That kind of workload from a reliever doesn’t come around often, especially when the pitcher can point to more than one possible role. Morejon began in the minors as a starter and picked up a handful of starts early in his Padres career. His four-pitch mix is not so thin that a club couldn’t look at him as a starter again, and that possibility alone could help drive his price upward.
There’s also the closer angle. Morejon actually produced better results in save situations in 2026, holding opponents to a .507 OPS with a 2.13 ERA across 42.1 innings. In non-save situations, he allowed a .587 opponents’ OPS and posted a 3.50 ERA in 43.2 innings.
The Padres already have Mason Miller locked in as closer, and he’s one of the best in the game. Rotation depth, though, is a different story. Moving Morejon into the rotation may be San Diego’s best chance to keep him, but if another team sees him as a starter or a closer, it could be willing to pay far more than the Padres are likely to offer.
If that happens, Morejon could end up as the highest-paid non-closing reliever in MLB by a wide margin. For now, though, he’s left the door open for one outcome above all the others: coming back to San Diego.
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