This is Somehow Worse than it looks...

Somehow this is worse than it looks, despite having one of the best bullpens in baseball the last couple of years and having the best closer and the top this and big free agents, all those kinds of things. The Padres bullpen could be in danger of being a victim of this offseason. And I'm not here to spread doom and gloom, but I want to ask some serious questions. Just take a look at like what we've really got going on. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show that like I hear it. I'm not being a negative Nancy. I just want to talk about how the bullpen has been fantastic. But despite, I mean, you want to go back to like when we had a lot like, you know, Clay Meredith and Scott Linebrink and Akinori Otsuka and Heath Bell and Luke Gregerson and all these like Potters tended to have very elite bullpens. And yet that never really has been the solution. and so when we come to an off season where our bullpen is being talked about um with the context of what's Adrian Morejon gonna do he's gonna get 900 million thousand trillion billion dollars and what Jason Adams gonna be like we have all of this kind of craziness going on that i think we could very easily spend big keep our bullpen things go great just you know we like oh again the second base situation and our left fielder and this that and the other and or the padres bullpen falls apart and we spend big and on other locations and then it's like oh well we can't get a single out because we don't have good pitch you see it's kind of one of these like catch 22s of they're never a right way to fully put together a roster now last year's bullpen ended with this mason Miller Adrian Morejon Jason Adam Pragley Rodriguez Yuki Matsui David Morgan Joe Musgrove interesting scene Musgrove there i've already done the conversation this offseason about should we have Musgrove permanently there I'm down to have him be permanently there partially because I think we could use him more frequently partially because I think that he is um you know he's already on he's already on contract it's not new money being spent there I also think that Yu Darvish should be in the conversation for being in the bullpen but beyond that I gotta raise the question of Adrian Morejon it's going to be a somebody that is there's reports about him being a 95 million total contract Jason Adam is a free agent Bradley Yuki David Morgan all under contract going forward I love that I dig that I'm here for that they should be future parts of our bullpen past that though looking at some of the other options and opportunities about filling in some spots Jeremiah Estrada the last thing that he was listed as on the Padres website about it's unclear if his shoulder impingement could affect the 2027 season and now the bullpen there's almost two versions of a bullpen there's who you go with in the postseason to really lock things down and then there's just like you need dudes to be up there and be available because it's 154 or 162 and it's a long season and you're gonna arms Jeremiah Estrada you're not gonna be one of those arms next season Brian Hoeing also uh somebody who it will be interesting to watch his recovery of can he be back in time and so then kind of looking a step or two beyond those guys it caught me thinking like who else do we really have to step up and fill in the void and Wandy Peralta was somebody that I know a fair amount of you were like I'm glad that he got left off of the playoff roster that cat was no bueno Wandy has a four and a half million dollar player option next season he'll be 35 he'll be I think serviceable another one where it's like okay so if we you know if say we say we Morihon wants too much money he goes somewhere to be a closer and all that and then we wind up with spending big on Michael King and spending big on Ty France and there's some sort of salary cap and then they go out and get two or three other starting pitchers and we wind up then with needing to embrace the fact that uh you know we got Yuki Matsui on contract for a couple years well he'll grow into something and then we got Brad Glay and then we got a bullpen that ends up I think looking incredibly different than all of this now I have advocated for let's go young let's dip into the minor leagues there is really only a couple of guys in the minors that even come close to be in the conversation Tucker Musgrove is leading that charge of like guys that throw really hard and could be good fifth sixth inning guys um but yeah so the bullpen is in this kind of weird position of does Johnny Brito wind up he's another one that's on contract for a couple more years and does he wind up in a position to he really didn't make his major lead comeback this year. He didn't look very good when they did call him up and he bounced up and down a little bit and ultimately stayed down mostly after coming back from injury for the AAA. Does Kyle Hart get optioned back and sit in the front end of that bullpen as an innings eater along with Jeremiah Estrada and those kinds of guys? Do we keep Griffin Canning around to be a starter but then have to go back to him in the bullpen again i would assume randy vasquez does not go to the bullpen again and becomes one of our starters again unless we end up just flush with starters because we signed scooball and we signed sandy alcantara and we go we get walker bueller back and king and pavetta and musk like sure there's a situation where that exists but i'm assuming randy spends most of next year as a starting pitcher so the i could call up the list if you google it of who are available free agent signings um are free agents to sign in this off season for relief pitchers but the list is like 150 guys so i can trust that um we can get five or six dudes in the door but it's just it leaves me with an interesting an interesting thought process and experiment going on right now of with the guys that we do have on contract plus the needs that we have in terms of spending plus just this impending sort of unknown of i feel like as much as we can say right now oh there's no salary cap let's not talk about like that's an elephant in the room that we've got to address the fact that there most likely will be some degree of at least a soft cap before going into a luxury tax or in worst case scenario a hard cap and in on in doing all of that sort of hypothetical future math the padres i think can't just go nuts with spending on the seventh eighth and ninth inning guys when there's such late issues of needing to get to the seventh eighth and ninth inning with the starters and having a bunch of guys that can only go three to five innings and guys that need openers and if you know if pitching chaos is the philosophy that Craig Stammen wants to go with and Tastico build around that and sign me a bunch of five million dollar guys and let's have this bullpen let's have Randy Vasquez, Yu Darvish, Kyle Hart, JP Sears, Joe Musgrove, Adrian Morel like have all of those guys in the bullpen just to be like we're going to you know play Mad Libs every game and get a random assortment of people out there but if we're not going to do that and we're going to go with some sort of a traditional structure of trying to build up a starting rotation and spend commensurately you know the 15 to 20 million dollar range on guys who can go six plus innings like we're gonna do the more traditional concept of that that has me a little bit worried that a bullpen that has been absolutely lights out the last couple of years is going to end up being the last place that our owners are going to end up spending money and therefore put us in a position that we go into next season kind of almost flipped from where we've been the last couple years with just like hey we got decent starting pitching we got a little bit of an offense but like getting from the end of the starting pitching to Mason Miller is now an adventure that's just what i got for you today let me know what you think on the bullpen like subscribe comment share follow all those other youtube buttons until next time we'll talk to you guys