This weekend brought a bit of clarity to our understanding of AJ Preller’s offseason thinking. According to a report from Kevin Acee, the Padres are still in the hunt for starting pitching—just don’t expect Chris Paddack, Mackenzie Gore, or (probably) Luis Patiño to be a part of any trade package for such pitching.
That ‘probably’ is worth exploration.
The report specifically said that Patiño is “just slightly more available than” Paddack and Gore. How we read into that description is crucial.
As far as I understand it, there is no real category called “slightly untouchable”.