Familiarity not an issue this week in Cleveland
in ’19 and ’20.
(Arias, the Guardians’ thirdranked prospect who has started two games for them, fractured his hand Sunday in a game at Triple-A. Pitcher Joey Cantillo, who was the Padres’ seventh-ranked prospect at the time of the Clevinger trade, is in Double-A.)
MacKenzie Gore, drafted third overall by the Padres in 2017, will start Wednesday against Quantrill, drafted eighth overall by the Padres in 2016.
That is after Clevinger makes his season debut today facing off against his friend, Zach Plesac.
“It’s going to be so great,” said Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla, who spent 21 years coaching in the Guardians organization.
Clevinger has hardly been able to contain his excitement. He was traded to the Guardians (then the Indians) by the Angels as a minor leaguer in 2014 and made his bigleague debut in 2016. He figured he would spend his career in Cleveland, where he went 42-22 with a 3.30 ERA in 101 games.
“I’ve had (this series) marked on my calendar since before the season, since the schedule dropped,” he said last week.
Clevinger is at the heart of all this Padres-Guardians crossover.
After the signings of Eric Hosmer and Manny Machado and the fortuitous trade in 2016 for Fernando Tatis Jr., the Clevinger trade stands out for its part in shaping the existing makeup of the Padres. Arguably, it could be considered the defining move. More than any of the other ones in which Preller cashed in his prospect chips, this trade set up the Padres to be what they are now — a $209 million veteran-stocked roster urgently chasing a championship.
In that deal, Preller spent astonishing player capital on a proven starting pitcher. He sent a halfdozen players, including five who were 25 or younger and possessed of tremendous upside, to the Guardians for a pitcher the Padres will have, by the end of 2022. paid a little more than $12 million for what they can hope is about a season’s worth of work.
Multiple Padres executives have acknowledged recently that many of the team’s big moves that followed were set up by the investment
Preller made at the trade deadline in 2020.
That Clevinger’s and Dinelson Lamet’s elbow issues would play a large part in derailing the Padres in the 2020 postseason and that Clevinger required a second Tommy John surgery that November could not be known at the time.
“We looked at Clevinger as a guy we’re getting for three pennant races,” Preller said. “And I think that enabled us to be open to the fact that we’re putting the number of guys that we did into that deal. And I think also, (a big) factor is the talent that we we’ve built up in the organization at the big-league level and the minor league level. I don’t want to be flippant about it, but the opportunity of certain guys to play was going to be limited.”
Miller plays first and second base. Arias is a middle infielder who can also play third.
Hedges was not ever seen by the Padres’ decision-makers as a longterm fit. Giving up Naylor and Quantrill was considered the price of doing business.
“We made a deal that ultimately was about getting somebody who could pitch in the front of a rotation,” Preller said. “… We’re not looking to move those guys, but, you know, having a team we thought could win a World Series in ’20 and ’21, having Clevenger at the front of the rotation, that was the motivation behind the deal.”