For a San Diego Padres front office trying to stretch every dollar without punting on contention, this is exactly the kind of rumor that should perk up ears in San Diego. While the free-agent market for first basemen and middle-of-the-order bats dries up quickly after the headliners, the Padres are already looking somewhere else entirely: across the Pacific.
When scouts from a half-dozen big-league clubs filed in to watch Japan vs. Korea in a recent exhibition, the presence of Padres evaluators in that crowd wasn’t a coincidence. It was a signal that A.J. Preller and company are at least willing to plant a flag on one of the more intriguing overseas bats available this winter.