Why disappointing Padres doubled down at MLB trade deadline - ESPN

Nearly 2,800 miles separate Petco Park from Citi Field, but it often felt as if the San Diego Padres and theNew York Mets were adjoined, connected — spiritually — through their expensive rosters and their disappointing outcomes, perceived cautionary tales by their sport's frugal owners.

This weekend, they seem very different.

While the Mets are playing out the string with a stripped-down roster in Baltimore, the Padres are hosting their bitter rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in front of sold-out crowds in San Diego, holding on to faint hopes of catching them in the division. The Padres and Mets each began this season with top-three payrolls and had posted identical 49-53 records as the MLB trade deadline approached. On the morning of July 28, four days before the deadline, the Padres were 6½ games out of the final playoff spot in the National League and the Mets were a half-game behind them. And yet while the Mets proceeded to trade Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander and a handful of others in an effort to reset for as late as 2026, the Padres doubled down.

Blake Snell and Josh Hader, pending free agents who would have been highly coveted within a market devoid of pitching, stayed. Rich Hill, Ji-Man Choi, Garrett Cooper and Scott Barlow, depth pieces that cost more prospects from a farm system that has been depleted in recent years, arrived.

The Padres, who also briefly checked in on Verlander, approached this deadline with the same aggression that drove them in the summers of 2020, 2021 and 2022, their place in the standings be damned. They were underwhelmed by the offers for Snell and Hader, invigorated by a timely sweep of the first-place Texas Rangers and motivated by an essential truth:

They're actually not the