Say it ain’t so.
While the San Diego Padres’ run of success in 2024 helped to ease the pain considerably, last winter was a rather painful one for the fans. With the passing of beloved owner Peter Seidler, a new era of cost-consciousness was ushered in that resulted in trading away Juan Soto in addition to the free agent losses of Blake Snell, Josh Hader, and basically most of the starting rotation. For a Padres’ fanbase that had grown accustomed to going for it every year, it was quite jarring.
That isn’t what this offseason will look like. The Padres defied expectations, became one of the better teams in the league, and won a playoff series. There isn’t a dire need to cut payroll (even though things are still pretty tight) nor do the Padres have a slew of stars about to hit free agency.
However, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a lot of changes on the Padres’ roster next season. In fact, Padres beat writer Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union Tribune seems to think that the vast majority of the Padres’ free agents are unlikely to return next season.
The Padres could have another free agent exodus this offseason, but fans shouldn’t panic
In all fairness to Acee, he was looking at each free agent in isolation and explaining the problem with bringing back individual free agents. However, the longtime reporter also made a bulleted list of Ha-Seong Kim, Kyle Higashioka, Jurickson Profar, Donovan Solano, David Peralta, Martín Pérez, and Tanner Scott while either casting some doubt or flat out dismissing the idea of the Padres bringing them back next season.
It is highly likely that a lot of those players won’t return in 2025. Kim just hired Scott Boras as his agent and is coming off a shoulder injury. Scott has been great, but another team can (and should) offer him more money to be their closer heading into next season. However, thinking that all of those usual suspects could be gone in addition to key contributors like Profar and Higashioka is pretty wild.
Padres fans shouldn’t despair just yet. The idea of Profar leaving should be taken with a huge grain of salt until it actually happens, as the outfielder has been vocal about wanting to return. San Diego also has the prospect capital, depth, and resources to cover (at least partially) for the potential free agent losses. By and large, the Padres are still going to be returning the vast majority of the core that got them to the playoffs last year.
So will the Padres’ roster look significantly different in 2025? That’s quite likely, but it isn’t going to be the same sort of exodus fans saw last offseason.
