By The Athletic MLB Staff
Jul 30, 2024
By Dennis Lin, Zack Meisel and Melissa Lockard
With their starting rotation thin and prices sky-high, the Padres have decided to pay a different kind of hefty cost. San Diego doubled down on an already-formidable collection of relievers, reaching an agreement Tuesday to acquire prized lefty Tanner Scott and right-hander Bryan Hoeing from the Miami Marlins.
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To land the duo, the Padres will surrender four of the better prospects in what already was a thin farm system: left-hander Robby Snelling, righty Adam Mazur and infielders Graham Pauley and Jay Beshears.
The 29-year-old reliever Scott ranked as the No. 20 overall trade candidate and the No. 2 best relief pitcher on The Athletic’s Top 50 Trade Deadline Big Board.
Scott is owed the remainder of his $5.7 million salary, and will be a free agent after this season. This will be Scott’s third team overall, having previously pitched for the Orioles before being dealt in 2022.
With Miami, Scott steadily improved year-over-year, leading to his first All-Star nod in 2024. At the start of play Monday, he had a 1.18 ERA over 44 games and 45 2/3 innings. He had limited opponents to a .128/.259/.184 slash line, with left-handed batters in particular being just 3-for-38 against him.
On the Padres, Scott immediately slots in as a high-leverage reliever, capable of pitching the late innings alongside incumbent closer Robert Suarez, the newly acquired Jason Adam and setup men Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon. Indeed, Scott has 18 saves this season, with an additional 11 games of experience in the eighth inning. The bullpen infusion comes as the Padres have caught fire — though it came at a premium in a market that has made relievers costly. Top prospects in the San Diego organization should never get too comfortable, as once again A.J. Preller has traded several of his highest profile prospects in a deal to nab one of the top players available in the trade market.
Earlier this week, it was Dylan Lesko, Homer Bush, Jr. and J.D. Gonzalez. Now it’s Snelling, Mazur, Pauley and Beshears.
Snelling, who was neck-and-neck with Lesko as the organization’s top pitching prospect, is a 20-year-old left-hander who was the No. 39 pick in the 2022 draft out of a Reno-area high school. He has already reached Double A and though his ERA is an inflated 6.01 this season, he is still highly regarded. Snelling ranked No. 4 in Keith Law’s preseason Padres’ Top 20 list, behind Ethan Salas, leading NL Rookie of the Year candidate Jackson Merrill and Lesko.
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Mazur, No. 8 on the preseason list, is another starting pitching prospect who has been moved aggressively. The 23-year-old right-hander was a second-round pick in 2022 out of Iowa and has already reached the big leagues. He has a 7.49 ERA in eight major-league starts and a 4.39 ERA in 55 1/3 innings with Triple-A El Paso this season.
Pauley, No. 11 on the preseason list, also made his major-league debut this season. The Duke alum hit .125 in 32 MLB at-bats and is batting only .228/.242/.390 for El Paso this season, but he had a .931 OPS, 22 homers and 23 steals last season in 127 games between three different levels. He can play all over the field.
Beshears wasn’t on the preseason list, but the fellow Duke alum is having a solid first full professional season. In 85 games between Low A and High A, he has a .261/.373/.377 line with 51 walks. The infielder was a sixth-round pick last season.
This should come as no surprise, but Preller’s interest in Scott predated this season. By adding the Marlins closer and Adam from Tampa Bay, the Padres have assembled a veritable super-bullpen that should consistently shorten games and fuel a potential run in October. Hoeing, meanwhile, is a controllable reliever with upside, even further boosting the bullpen.
And, by trading four of his better remaining prospects, Preller has essentially strip-mined his farm system to acquire a rental. That reality showed up before the deadline, when the Padres didn’t have much left to deploy in pursuit of the few impact starters available. San Diego settled for addressing its need for rotation innings by swinging a minor deal with the Pirates for Martin Pérez, a veteran former All-Star who may no longer have much left. Pérez, who posted a 5.20 ERA in 16 starts for Pittsburgh, can at least provide back-end depth for a rotation that may or may not have Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish at its disposal down the stretch. And it only cost a low-level pitching prospect in lefty Ronaldys Jimenez.
The Padres likely would have considered trading top prospects Ethan Salas or Leodalis De Vries only in a deal involving Tarik Skubal or Garrett Crochet. Of course, neither of the latter two starters was dealt by their respective teams. Salas and De Vries remain with San Diego, but they are teenagers with years of development ahead of them. The aggressive addition of Scott is as win-now a trade as there is for a general manager facing questions about his job security.
(Top photo of Tanner Scott: Denis Poroy / USA Today)
