This will have Major Implications for the Padres...

This has serious implications for the Padres this offseason. We've got to talk about the 40-man roster, the Rule 5 draft, and how A.J. Preller and Craig Stammen are going to choose to build out this roster, both for this year and for the future of the team. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pettis back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show that is dedicated to remaining positive and optimistic and saying that no matter who we choose to be on our 40-man roster, It's going to be the best one ever, as you can see in the graphics next to me. We've got to talk about Tucker Musgrove. Specifically, that's kind of the individual deep dive thesis, but in general, I had done a video earlier this week about how it's shaping up that the Padres have a fair amount of pitching prospects in the pipeline right now. But at the same time... There's the Rule 5 draft coming up, and the Rule 5 draft, for those of you that are maybe not uber-dude into all of the nitty-gritty rules, is that anybody who is not on Padres, or on any Major League Baseball team's 40-man roster, would nab from the other team. Teams are not required to take picks in the draft. Padres most notably grabbed Shane Victorino. Once upon a time, he obviously didn't stick around with the Padres forever and went on to greater success elsewhere, as is Padres tradition. But it's a useful tool for the Padres. The big key, though, is that if you grab somebody from the Rule 5 draft, you have to keep that person on your roster by the end of the next year. So you've got to commit to this guy. So that being said, I don't necessarily want the Padres to go out. Or that's not this video is to say, oh, we need to go out and do this. But I talked about how... We've got a lot of pitching in the minor leagues that is slated, according to the minor league websites, to make their MLB debuts this coming season. But at the same time, we don't have all of those guys on the 40-man roster currently. As of recording this right now, the Padres have 34 people on their 40-man roster. With some of that being that Ty France and Michael King and all of the other guys at the Major League level, basically, that declared for free agency make up those missing spots. So there's not hypothetically too many available slots could make the argument, yeah, that there are six slots. But I would assume that at least some of if, you know, we can fret about Michael King and have that discussion a million times over, but I would assume that at least some of those guys are not going. to bring Ty France back, and Ramon Laureano, and Luis Rengifo. The spots are going to fill up quickly, and you're going to want to combine that with assuming that there will be, you know, whether it's Tarek Skubal or not, I don't know, but there's going to be hopefully one or two other big, like, major league level names brought in. So then, the case for Tucker Musgrove. Big league relief stuff. He is deemed to be... According to some of the tweets that I was able to find, MLB closer level stuff, his numbers last year that we talked about a little bit, but like I said, going into more of an in-depth dive on, as I make a boo-boo there on the OBS board, he went 0-2 but with a 2.93 ERA in 15 relief outings at AA San Antonio. Antonio, it seems to me that as far as the project pipeline of... The prospect pipeline of guys coming up is that a fair amount of talent actually does the low A rookie ball type thing and then double A and then goes from double A into the majors and then back down into AAA. The AAA is kind of this weird holding pattern mishmash of guys that aren't quite MLB. prospecting levels anymore and they're into their twenties and thirties and career veterans and rehab assignments. And it's maybe not as clean and pure of like prospecting baseball. So Tucker Musgrove, I think having a good, uh, Outing or a good season at the minor league relief level is good. There's been some talk, though, about how the Padres need to fix the rotation. And so would you then, you know, if we only have one guy or two guys available, do you want to spend it on a reliever? Do you want to spend it on a reliever if we bring back Adrian Morejon? Do you want to have... They must pick which prospect can stick, according to our new graphics guys. And thank you, as always, to the new graphics guys who are making all these great stuff. And you can go check them out at DigestSports.com. The numbers for Musgrove, they're really good. And I think, to me, what is most important about between... All of the different guys that I brought up last week, and that's why I always say like and subscribe, go back to our other episode, versus just diving into keeping Tucker Musgrove, or making Tucker Musgrove a priority of the guys to protect on the relief side, is that if we are going to have Mason Miller long-term, we are going to probably then continue to have, by long-term, I mean Mason Miller for five plus years, six years. Like long, long-term. I want him to be a career Padre. If we're going to have that, then we're going to have situations where right now, like what we're having with Morejon, in a couple of years, what we're going to have with Yuki, maybe with Jason Adam, other guys who want to be closers, who feel like they have that elite stuff, but are stuck being the seventh or eighth inning guy. And... We're not always going to, maybe with Morejon, we're going to be able to bribe him into staying, pay him. But, you know, do you want to keep overpaying your setup guys and then have this anchor around your neck of like our 7, 8, 9 inning guys making $200, $300 million total? You're going to need to keep replacing them as much as we need immediate help right now with our rotation. Some of these quotes out there are like kind of misinterpreting the rotation situation, I think, and overreacting to... Well, technically, they haven't picked up Pavetta's option. Walker Buehler's a free... We found Walker Buehler in the dumpster. Randy Vasquez, take all the shots you want at him. He's a four or a five. We don't know what Joe Musgrove's decision is going to be. If he's in the... But one or the other, Musgrove's going to pitch. He's in the bullpen, adds an elite arm there. If he's in the starting rotation, eat crow, all you people that criticize the Padres. If Michael King walks, I would assume that that comes with, though, commensurate, big-level spending on guys. So I think that while the starting rotation Looks bad right now. My argument is that the Padres need to go get relief pitching, or they need to at least use the internal mechanisms they have to protect relief pitching. We're arguing one spot. I've obviously made, I think, the case for Tucker Musgrove. His stuff is 97. His ERA is sub-3. It'd be fun to have two Musgroves on the team at the same time, yada yada. I also think, though, that if we have two spots, three spots, let's protect all of the pitching. Be real with what we've got locked in on our hitting side and on our position playing side. And we can argue over the minutia of who's going to have the last spot or two, who's going to be the second or third catcher, but I don't think those come from internal prospect projects. I want the Padres to use all of our available 40-man roster spots to get relief and starting pitching. Just arms. Just lock down arms. And arms that are almost borderline MLB ready so that by the time the season rolls around, We can have a. You know, let's have a surplus of arms. At the very least, let's have an adequate amount of arms and then go from there. Because as we know, AJ Preller is always down to trade him. And if he doesn't trade him, they make it to the major leagues. You actually get to see Tucker Musgrove pitching in action for the Padres. So that's what I got for you today on the 40-man roster and some of those guys. Let me know what you think. Like, subscribe, comment, share, follow all those other YouTube buds. Until next time, talk to you guys soon.