Padres Trade for Justin Upton, Try to Build "Heat-Style" Outfield of New Acquisitions

As the old saying goes, things happen in threes — I think. At least that’s the rationale that new San Diego Padres GM A.J. Preller is using this month after making his third deal to land an outfielder. This time he’s on the verge of acquiring Justin Upton from the Braves for a package of prospects. Upton joins Matt Kemp and Wil Myers in a crowded San Diego outfield which also includes Seth Smith, Will Venable and Cameron Maybin. So unless the Padres have secretly petitioned the National League to allow them to use a designated hitter or a slow-pitch softball style four-man outfield, somebody is going to get traded.

The brief upside here, as Buster Olney notes, is the Padres can have some sort of Miami Heat-style roll-out of their new outfielders. (Somebody text the San Diego Chicken’s booking agent, right? Probably make some calls to a local pyrotechnics company, too, while we’re at it, too.) And as our Jason Lisk notes in our internal conversations, San Diego best hopes its signings replicate the Heat rather than, say, the New York Knicks, with Matt Kemp’s hip playing the role of Amar’e’s knees. (and none of these players would come close to comparing to a LeBron acquisition).

The Padres in the last 24+ hours have also acquired Will Middlebrooks from the Red Sox and Derek Norris from the Athletics, which leads me to believe that Preller is actually former San Diego GM/Manager “Trader” Jack McKeon back from the future or a different reality or something to that effect.

Baseball-wise, Upton is a free agent after the season, so his walk-year was worth giving up Max Fried, Jace Peterson, Dustin Peterson and Mallex Smith. Fried is reportedly the best player in the package but recently underwent Tommy John surgery. Upton has hit at least 17 home runs in five straight seasons and boasts a life-time .830 OPS, so a one-year flier by San Diego isn’t the worst idea in the world by any means.

As co-worker Michael Shamburger, a Braves fan, bemoaned in a chat this morning: are the Braves the new Marlins? Upton is the second major trade of the offseason underseen by new president of baseball operations John Hart. Earlier, Jason Heyward was shipped to the Cardinals for a decent haul in return including Shelby Miller.

If you’re the Braves you look at the Nationals young roster and the improvements made by the Marlins or even the Mets and figure it makes sense to tear it down and start anew. That doesn’t exactly explain why the team decided to sign Nick Markakis, who’ll be joined by Evan Gattis and B.J. Upton in the outfield.

Anyways, it’s hard to disagree with the Shamburger opinion right now:

I've been a Braves fan since I can remember, but I think I want a trial separation. We'll talk about divorce after this season.
— Michael Shamburger (@mshamburger1) December 19, 2014

We don’t have a Padres fan on staff here at TBL, otherwise I’d include their tweets for balance. Sorry about that. By the time this post publishes San Diego will have made another trade anyways.