Padres show that you don’t need homegrown talent to compete

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What the San Diego Padres are trying to do was front and center during this year’s MLB Trade Deadline. They had one of the top farm systems in all the baseball, but their front office is clearly worried about what they can do in the next few seasons. In terms of being worried, that means that they want to go out and win a World Series. They love having some of their young stars, but they realize if they want to win with Fernando Tatis and some of their other guys, they need to make a few moves now and that’s exactly what they did.

They made some great moves at this year’s MLB Trade Deadline while going out and acquiring Juan Soto was certainly the biggest one. On top of that, there was a recent tweet that showed what the Padres are doing is unlike anything else in baseball right now.

Almost Every Padres Starter Was Acquired Via Trade

According to Spotrac on Twitter:

“The #Padres have a type…

C Nola – Trade

1B Bell – Trade

2B Cronenworth – Trade

SS Tatis Jr. – Trade

3B Machado – Free Agency

LF Profar – Trade

CF Grisham – Trade

RF Soto – Trade

DH Voit – Trade

CL Hader – Trade

SP Darvish, Snell, Musgrove, Manaea, Clevinger – Trade”

This is pretty insane when you look at it like this. Although trades are a big part of any sport, having almost every single player being acquired via trade is certainly something. The only guy that was notable on this list that wasn’t acquired via trade was a free agent in Manny Machado.

The Padres still have some work to do, despite all of the moves they made, but their biggest thing is going to be getting healthy. If they can find a way to get Fernando Tatis Jr. back sometime in the near future, the Padres have to feel confident about what they’re going to be able to do come playoff time.

They likely aren’t going to win the division considering that the Los Angeles Dodgers are 11.5 games ahead of them, but the Wild Card is looking good.

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