San Diego Padres in playoff hunt despite trading superstar Juan Soto: 'Vibes are high'

WASHINGTON – As a Rhode Island native, former Boston College star and career New York Yankee, Michael King faced an adjustment after the Yankees dealt him to the San Diego Padres in the Juan Soto blockbuster last December.

The year-round sunshine was a nice perk, as was a different cuisine and a cadre of veteran Padres from which he could learn. Yet he wasn’t fully prepared for the guy sitting in the general manager’s chair who orchestrated his trade from New York.

“Preller,” King says of A.J. Preller, now a decade into his tenure as chief Padres baseball officer, “is crazy. But I absolutely love him.”

It was Preller who orchestrated a seven-player trade in July 2022 that landed Soto from Washington. And Preller who dealt him away two years later, with a National League Championship Series run to show for two summers of Soto.

And it was Preller who in mid-March, just as the Padres got set for their season-opening trip to South Korea and King for his first outing as a full-time starter, who traded for Chicago White Sox ace Dylan Cease, showing that despite the trade of Soto, the November death of franchise scion Peter Seidler and the perception that the high times in San Diego were ending, they were still in it to win it.

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No, the Padres aren’t threatening the Dodgers for the NL West title, and their 2022 NLDS conquest of, as Seidler called them, the “dragon up the freeway” remains the high-water mark of Preller’s era. And the club’s future – as big spenders, perennial contenders – remains in some doubt.

Yet as next week’s trade deadline looms, the Padres are 54-50, tied for the third wild card spot and a half-game behind the No. 2 Mets. They have switched up from paying for power to trading for bat-missing.

And even if the days of awarding third baseman Manny Machado a $350 million extension, or infielder Xander Bogaerts a $280 million contract are over, the sellout crowds overflowing Petco Park and the aim to give them a winner are not.

“You know that at any given time,” Cease tells USA TODAY Sports, “something big could happen.”

Cease saw that from two perspectives: He was the prize of the offseason trade market, even if the Chicago White Sox did not deal him until the Padres’ spring training was nearly over, and his new teammates were practically on the flight for their two-game series in South Korea.

And he also felt the boost that comes with a major in-season add, in this case the May 4 trade with the Miami Marlins for two-time batting champ Luis Arraez.

If nothing else, the Padres are showing there’s no reason to cash it in when a dalliance with a generational player goes sour.

'The vibes are high here'

Make no mistake: Soto is a smash hit in New York. With 25 home runs, a 1.017 OPS, 71 RBI and a .431 OBP, he’s in the top five in the major leagues in almost every statistical category. And if teammate Aaron Judge is atop both the leaderboard and the proverbial marquee in the Bronx, Soto is crowding him.

His offseason free agency will be the story in baseball. And the Yankees, should they fail to win the World Series, will be that much more motivated to pay the moon for Soto, given the cost to acquire him.

For Soto, the Padres received King, top pitching prospect Drew Thorp, catcher Kyle Higashioka and pitchers Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito. It looked like something of a half-measure – deleting a 5.5-WAR player and getting back a pitcher who never quite leapt to full-time starter, a backup catcher and prospects.

Yet the Padres were just 82-80 a year ago with Soto; the 2022 playoff surge grew more distant with each desultory month that resulted in manager Bob Melvin departing to San Francisco.

Veteran Mike Shildt was hired to replace Melvin. And when Preller packaged Thorpe with prospects Jairo Iriarte, Samuel Zavala and reliever Steven Wilson to the White Sox for Cease, the 2024 vision crystallized.

“That was huge,” says Higashioka, who has contributed 12 home runs and an .807 OPS in backup duty. “Anytime management goes out and makes a move for a big-time superstar player like Dylan, it just reaffirms to us the commitment they have in winning.

“That always gives you a huge boost.”

Suddenly, the chess pieces started moving. Bereft of outfielders after the Soto trade, the Padres brought back 31-year-old Jurickson Profar in February and, just before the season started, moved top prospect Jackson Merrill to center field.

Both were All-Stars; Merrill had four hits and boosted his average to .284 in a 12-3 rout of the Nationals on Tuesday. The trade for Arraez gave San Diego a half-dozen elite bat handlers atop the lineup and the former Marlin has not disappointed: He has 88 hits in 65 games.

Then there is King.

'Realizing how beneficial this is'

A starter in the minors, he’d found a niche as a dominant multi-inning reliever in 2022, only to suffer an elbow fracture that July. He returned by April 2023 and, after the Yankees’ season devolved into a .500 affair, admittedly “was definitely begging to start last year. (Manager Aaron) Boone definitely caught my wrath a couple times but eventually gave in.”

Ultimately, he was Soto trade bait, and the Padres chose correctly.

King, 29, has made 20 starts and completed at least six innings in 10 of them, half of those seven-inning outings. In his last start, he took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the potent Cleveland Guardians, striking out six.

While the Padres will try to buy him extra days’ rest here and there since he’s already past his major league career high in innings, King says working with pitching coach Ruben Niebla and leaning on the wisdom of veterans Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish has been invaluable.

He ranks in the 97^th percentile in soft contact, relying almost equally on a four-seam fastball, sinker and changeup.

“I think it’s been awesome for my career,” says King. “Being able to bounce ideas off them, see how my body’s reacting, see what recovery methods they do, see how to flip a lineup a third or fourth time – just to get their opinions has been huge for me.

“I felt like originally, I didn’t want to get traded. And now, I’m realizing how beneficial this is for my career.”

Says Higashioka, King’s teammate since 2018: “That opportunity came back to him and this time, he really proved he could do it. That was great to see. I know what he’s capable of. And he’s showing it this year.”

Cease has certainly been as advertised, leading the majors with 159 strikeouts. Most notably, his strikeout-walk ratio is 4.30, by far the best of his career and a 59% improvement on last season.

He nearly won the AL Cy Young Award for a 81-81 White Sox team in 2022, suffered through a 101-loss season last year and, thanks to the trade, avoided their 27-76 disaster this year.

“From that sense, no matter what, it was going to be refreshing,” says Cease. “But it’s been a pleasant thing to be a part of. The vibes are high here and there’s expectations, and we’re playing pretty well, so it’s been a lot of fun.

“Anytime you’re forced to do new things, it’s going to ultimately end up making you grow.”

Windows shopping

Preller’s King, Cease and Arraez acquisitions make even more sense when you consider all four players had two seasons remaining before free agency, prying open a definitive window with that group. The club will be tied to Machado and Bogaerts into the next decade and must fortify around them.

Having lived it, King has found a method to Preller’s madness.

“He always talks about, when we trade for a Luis Arraez, you’re trading away potential future MVPs,” says King. “And I understand that risk. But you’re trading away potential future MVPs to a team you don’t know will be competing. And right now, we’re competing. We want to win this year.

“He’s very good at understanding, ‘I can figure it out later.’ And very good at figuring it out later to where, later on, when these guys have moved on to a new team, he can put together a team that can compete.”

The cost can be dear. All-Stars Max Fried, Trea Turner, Josh Naylor and future closers Emmanuel Clase and Andres Muñoz were all part of early Preller purges. But there’s also dozens of traded players forgotten to time or hardly remembered as guys, including the entire four-player package sent to Tampa Bay in December 2020 for Blake Snell, who won a Cy Young Award last season.

Preller really only has to wince this week, when CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore and James Wood all suited up as potent contributors in the opposing clubhouse, for the Nationals. That was the cost for acquiring Soto.

Yet there’s no trade that can’t be undone by one, two, five more. Heck, even Vasquez, a throw-in in the Soto deal, is now competently filling the No. 4 starter role with Musgrove on the injured list and Darvish the restricted list.

Come the July 30 deadline, the Padres will find out what gifts Preller may have for their stretch drive.

“There’s still a lot of talent on the team,” says Cease. “If you got rid of your top six guys, it’d be like, ‘OK, you’re rebuilding.’ But I think this organization has a desire to be very competitive - and they’ve shown that with their moves.”