Padres Daily: Stirring the trade pot; Kim’s imperative status; Manaea mans up; so much purple

Good morning,

It continues to seem like a virtual certainty the Padres will add at least one significant player by 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

“A little surprised it hasn’t happened already,” one National League executive said in a text yesterday evening.

The executive theorized the Padres are one of the logs damming the expected flood of trades that has yet to start flowing. They have prospects people want, and A.J. Preller is in on multiple players.

“Eleven or 12,” said one member of the Padres front office.

That did not mean the Padres will acquire that many players by tomorrow’s trade deadline, just that they are in some level of discussion on about that many potential deals.

Juan Soto? Willson Contreras? Ian Happ? Noah Syndergaard? David Robertson? Those are just some of the names to which the Padres have been tied.

And it is possible that teams looking to make a deal are in some sense having to wait for what the Padres are going to do. (Or put another way, whether the Padres are going to send a large haul of prospects to the Nationals for Soto.)

Fortunately for everyone involved, by the time this newsletter reaches in-boxes there will be just 33 hours remaining until the trade deadline.

In my game story (here) about the Padres’ 3-2 victory over the Twins yesterday, Like Voit acknowledges fans aren’t the only ones eager to know what is going to happen.

And Bryce Miller wrote a column (here) opining about how wild it is that we live in a world where the Padres are actively pursuing top players.

Awesome Kim

There has been a lot of talk about who will be added and who might be added to the Padres lineup.

But one player who is already there and was once seen as merely holding down the fort appears to have made himself an important mainstay no matter what happens.

Ha-Seong Kim, the fill-in for Fernando Tatis Jr. at shortstop most of the season and for Manny Machado at third base for 10 games last month, has become one of the Padres’ most indispensable players.

Kim has played defense at a high level since he arrived in the majors last season.

And now he’s a contributing member of the offense.

In a 24-game span since July 2, Kim leads the Padres in batting average (.324), on-base percentage (.382) and slugging percentage (.456).

He already has 55 more plate appearances than he had in his rookie season, and he is hitting much better overall.

(baseball-reference)

This might be the Kim the Padres though they were getting when they signed him out of Korea for $28 million over four years.

“The more you see him play,” manager Bob Melvin said, “the more you realize why the team went out and signed him to this type of contract.”

The question looms: Where does Kim fit?

While Tatis has practiced in the outfield and the Padres have said he might play there at times, the bulk of his work has been at shortstop as he prepares for what is expected to be a mid-August return. And Machado isn’t going anywhere. Second baseman Jake Cronenworth and first baseman Eric Hosmer are not expected to be traded.

So the answer to the above query is nowhere and everywhere. People need days off. And the Padres would love to get to a point where playing time is at a premium, available only to those playing best.

Kim will always get at least some time in the field. And the Padres will find a place for him in the lineup provided he continues to hit the way he has.

“He’s put himself in a position now he’s basically an everyday player,” Melvin said.

“Obviously, we need Tati to win the whole thing,” Kim said through interpreter Leo Bae. “So I want him back as soon as possible, and I want him to play with me every day.”

Escape artistry

What Sean Manaea did yesterday would have been impressive anyway. But his escape from trouble in the fifth inning was especially notable (and especially comforting to the Padres) in light of the fact Manaea has had a few games get away from him.

No other major league pitcher with as many quality starts as the Padres’ left-hander has more than one game in which he went fewer than five innings and allowed at least four earned runs. Manaea has four such games.

Because he navigated the fifth with minimal damage, yesterday became his 14th quality start, tied for seventh most in the National League.

Manaea had retired 11 straight batters before Luis Arraez led off the fifth inning with a home run that tied the game 1-1. Tim Beckham followed with a hard single, and Gilberto Celestino beat out a dribbler to the right side of the mound.

Manaea then made what could have been a costly mistake by fielding Caleb Hamilton’s sacrifice bunt and foregoing a throw to third base to force Beckham and instead throwing to first for the out.

On his first pitch to the next batter, Byron Buxton, Manaea appeared to get a crucial out when Hosmer caught a foul pop-up at the netting along the side wall. But the Twins challenged the call, and it was overturned.

The delay for the review was not all Manaea had to wait out. Melvin emerged from the dugout to get an explanation of what he thought was a clear out, was ejected and then took a few more seconds getting some words in with crew chief Jerry Layne.

So that left Buxton, who had homered each of the previous two days and is third in the American League with 26 home runs, at the plate with runners at second and third and one out.

“Did the opposite of what I did last game,” said Manaea, who in Detroit on Monday allowed nine runs (four earned) in 3 1/3 innings. “I just took a step out, reassessed the situation, took a deep breath and started to go to work.”

Five pitches later, he struck out Buxton with a 94 mph sinker.

After intentionally walking Carlos Correa, Manaea got Jorge Polanco on an inning-ending fielder’s choice grounder to Kim.

“That’s some of the best feelings that you could probably (have) in a game,” said Manaea, who also allowed a solo home run in the sixth inning, his final one of the day. “Get a bases-loaded situation … especially with the top of their lineup up there, it’s crazy. It was a cool one for sure.”

He’ll take it

Voit got a measure of payback. A small measure.

The man who has had an inordinate number of hard-hit balls become outs yesterday delivered the game-deciding RBI with a 66 mph single.

“I got rewarded,” Voit said with a smile. “I used to get frustrated when I hit the ball 60 mph. Now it’s a base hit and an RBI, so I’ll take it.”

Voit’s 427-foot double in Detroit last week is the furthest a ball has been hit in the majors this season and stayed in the park. Further, Voit is batting .559 on balls he has put in play at 100 mph or greater. That might seem like a high rate of success, but it is lowest on the team.

(Statcast; U-T research)

Yesterday’s single came on an 0-2 split-finger fastball on the inside edge that Voit fought off and sent the other way into right field against Twins reliever Emilio Pagàn.

“I knew he was going to throw me a splitter again,” said Voit, who saw splitters on all three pitches in that at-bat and seven splitters in a seven-pitch strikeout against Pagàn on Saturday. “I was trying to stay inside it. … I love having those big pressure-moment at-bats. Two strikes, usually a pitcher’s count. He made a good pitch. There was a big hole, I was just trying to push something out to right field.”

Lotsa purple

This is almost unbelievable. We’re all just going to have to take it one game at a time and try to get through it as best we can.

The Padres and Rockies begin a five-game, four-day series today.

The lockout wiped out the first week of the season. That meant six Padres games had to be rescheduled, including two against the Rockies. The first of those games was made up in a doubleheader last month. This is one of 17 series in MLB that will be at least five games this season.

This will be the 12th time the Padres have played a five-game series but the first since July 6-9, 1995, in Houston. The Padres also played a six-game series, from July 19-22, 1984, in Pittsburgh.

Oh, and the trade deadline will pass in about the sixth inning of the first game of tomorrow’s doubleheader.

At least it’s not at Coors Field.

Fast explanation on Manny

After going 0-for-4 yesterday, Machado is batting .204 since returning from his ankle injury on June 30. He has in that time seen his season batting average plummet from .328 to .293.

While he is still dealing with the effects of the injury, there is also a fairly simple explanation for his struggles at the plate.

The biggest culprit is that Machado is going through a period in which he is not squaring up fastballs.

He is missing on almost twice as many swings on fastballs since June 30 — 25.8 percent versus 13.5 percent. And after hitting .383 with a .525 slugging percentage on fastballs in the strike zone before his June 19 injury, he is batting .220 with a .341 slugging percentage on fastballs in the zone since his return.

Tidbits

Manny Machado smiles as he warms up before his major league debut on Aug. 9, 2012, for the Baltimore Orioles.

(Gail Burton / Associated Press)

Just great

I urge you to read this Twitter thread from Padres radio play-by-play man Jesse Agler. It is a fantastic story about the great Bill Russell, who passed away yesterday.

I’ll also take this opportunity to tell you that if you don’t listen to Agler and Tony Gwynn Jr. on the Padres’ radio broadcasts, you are missing something special. It is not preposterous to think Russell’s prediction will come true.

At least once almost every game, as I become busy writing while the game is going on, I tune in to listen to Jesse and Tony to help keep up with the action. I also hear them on my in-game trips to the restroom, which on the road is where I hear portions of visiting radio broadcasts as well. From that admittedly limited frame of reference, I can tell you unequivocally that Jesse and Tony comprise the best radio duo in the major leagues. Their energy, knowledge and love of the game are unmatched as far as I have heard.

And I’m almost 52 years old, so I visit the restroom a lot.

Correction

In yesterday’s newsletter, I mistakenly typed six years instead of five as the duration of Joe Musgrove’s contract. To be clear (as I reported the day before) it will be a five-year deal.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.