There are times when a team’s need perfectly aligns with an available free agent, and it’s hard to ignore. For the San Diego Padres, they are going to be without Joe Musgrove in 2025 as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, and adding another rotation arm may have been wise even before he got hurt because of the eternal need for rotation depth.
One particularly flashy option, assuming the Padres and AJ Preller are able to spend, that has already been floated for this offseason is a reunion with Blake Snell. Snell would obviously be a great addition, but another top free agent arm that has been loosely connected with San Diego is Max Fried.
Fried got his start with the Padres before he was traded to the Braves in 2014 in the Juston Upton deal. Since debuting in 2017, Fried has established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball and is easily a top-five free agent in this class who also happens to be from southern California.
While the fit makes tons of sense, there is a real problem with the Padres targeting Fried once we make some assumptions on the state of San Diego’s payroll and future.
The Padres can’t let Max Fried’s surface-level greatness cloud their judgment
No one is arguing that Fried isn’t likely to be extremely good in the coming years. He is likely to be among the best left-handers in the game, no matter where he ends up.
The problem with Fried is that his health issues in recent years vs. what it is going to take to sign him doesn’t seem to line up. Fried has dealt with arm troubles in each of the last two seasons that have cost him playing time, and he already has one Tommy John surgery on his arm going back to his Padres prospect days. Given that anything less than a five-year deal for the soon-to-be 31-year-old is going to be a nonstarter, that is a lot of risk for any team to inherit.
Complicating matters is that the Padres have a number of high dollar, lengthy contracts currently on their books. With Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Yu Darvish, and Musgrove all making healthy nine-figure amounts in the coming years, it may just not make sense for the Padres to bring Fried back home to his roots and commit to the required length and value of a contract in free agency, especially with some healthy arbitration raises in 2025 coming up elsewhere on the roster.
In all honesty, most long-term deals will present very similar problems for the Padres this offseason. They have a lot of money tied up long-term, are going to be less aggressive than usual due to the changes at the ownership level, and may just prefer to trade for what they need instead of paying top dollar.
However, those issues are compounded by what are very real injury and age concerns with Fried, and San Diego needs to be very careful before aggressively pursuing a deal with him.
