MLB Insider: What I'm hearing about Michael King, Dylan Cease and the Padres

Will the San Diego Padres trade one of their starting pitchers? Or will they hold onto them heading into the 2025 season?

That’s been the question percolating in league circles all offseason, mainly regarding right-handers Dylan Cease and Michael King. Both players are entering the final seasons of their contracts and both make sense as trade candidates for different reasons. 

For Cease, he’s surely not going to do an extension before reaching free agency as his agent, Scott Boras, prefers to have his clients establish their values on the open market. For King, he’s a talented right-handed arm who the Padres have not extended. And after King did not reach a settlement to avoid arbitration, those trade rumors only grew.

But King and the Padres have reached agreement on a contract for the 2025 season, the team announced. The breakdown of the contract, according to sources, is King gets a $3 million signing bonus and a $1 million salary for 2025 that includes a $15 million mutual option for 2026 with a large buyout. He is guaranteed $7.75 million, including a $3.75 million buyout if the mutual option is not exercised, and the contract could reach $8 million with incentives.

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MLB insider: Will the Padres trade Dylan Cease or Michael King?

The structure of the contract would seem to suggest that the Padres are more likely to hold onto King rather than Cease.

A trade involving King, however, should not be entirely discounted. King, 29, is coming off a season in which he posted a 2.95 ERA in 31 games. He has a 3.20 ERA in six career seasons and after pitching a career-high 173.2 innings this past season, could draw widespread interest on the trade market.

But if the Padres were looking to move King, why would they structure the deal the way they did? It signals that the team is trying to find a way to fit his salary onto the payroll, which is dealing with many constraints this offseason. 

Trading Cease is the more realistic option, and even that is no guarantee. Like King, Cease is immensely talented and regarded as one of the best right-handed pitchers in baseball. But the Padres hold a very high asking price in trade talks for the star pitcher and that makes a trade unlikely at this point, despite rumored interest from the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets.

So let’s sit back and wait on any potential trade involving one of the Padres’ starting pitchers. Nothing is imminent – and much of it can be traced back to the lofty asking prices from San Diego executive A.J. Preller.