It always felt like the San Diego Padres were running two timelines in parallel: the present built around a veteran ninth-inning stopper and the near future shaped around the most electric right arm they could acquire.
Robert Suárez’s decision to opt out of the final two years and $16 million of his deal, as first reported by the New York Post’s Jon Heyman, collapses those timelines into one. The clarity is striking. San Diego no longer has to thread the needle between deference to an established closer and development of a successor. The successor is here, and his name is Mason Miller.