Padres Bolster Rotation by Signing Pivetta and Hart, but Rumors Won’t Cease

After four season’s worth of high-profile trades, extensions, and free agent signings, the Padres have had a very quiet winter save for the headlines that their ownership battle has generated. On Wednesday, the day that their pitchers and catchers reported to their spring training facility in Peoria, Arizona, the Padres made by far their biggest move of the offseason, signing free agent Nick Pivetta to a four-year, $55 million deal. They followed that up on Thursday by inking lefty Kyle Hart to a one-year deal with an option.

Taken together, the additions appear to set up a trade of Dylan Cease, the top starter on last year’s 93-win Wild Card team and a pending free agent this winter. However, general manager A.J. Preller indicated that’s not the plan right now, telling reporters on Thursday, “He’s a very big part of our club. The additions the last couple days supplement what’s a really good rotation. That’s our focus here going forward — having that strong rotation.”

Of course, any decision to keep Cease could be revisited if the Padres receive an offer they can’t refuse, or if they fall out of contention this summer. It should also be pointed out that Michael King, the team’s second-best starter in 2024, is a trade candidate as well; he can also become a free agent after this season if he declines his end of a mutual option for 2026.

Pivetta, who turns 32 on Friday, has spent the past four seasons and change with the Red Sox, who acquired him from the Phillies on August 21, 2020. Last year, he posted a 4.14 ERA and 4.07 FIP with a 28.9% strikeout rate in 145 2/3 innings for the Red Sox; he made 26 starts and one relief appearance, missing a month early in the season due to a flexor strain. Hart, who turned 32 in November, was drafted by the Red Sox in the 19th round in 2016 and made four major league appearances for the team in 2020. (He was rocked for a 15.55 ERA in 11 innings.) He pitched six years in the organization before opting for free agency, split 2023 between the Phillies and Mariners’ organizations, and then spent last year with the KBO’s NC Dinos. He was outstanding with the Dinos, posting a 2.69 ERA (55 ERA-), 3.28 FIP, and 28.8% strikeout rate in 157 innings. For his efforts, he won the league’s Choi Dong-won Award, the KBO’s equivalent to the Cy Young.

I’ll get back to the two pitchers’ performances in a bit, but first some context is in order. Pivetta and Hart are just the fourth and fifth free agents the Padres have signed to major league deals this winter — all within the past three weeks — with Pivetta the only one to receive a multi-year guarantee. The Padres re-signed catcher Elias Díaz to a $3.5 million contract on January 28, and added outfielder Jason Heyward and outfielder/first baseman Connor Joe to $1 million deals, plus incentives, on February 7. They also signed outfielder/first baseman Gavin Sheets and catcher Martín Maldonado to minor league deals within the past month. None of the new players beside Pivetta produced more than Heyward’s 0.8 WAR last year or project to produce more than 0.5 WAR in 2025. That’s not a lot to write home about. The ownership dispute, which has pitted Peter Seidler’s widow, Sheel Seidler, against his brothers Matthew and Robert Seidler, was cited by Jurickson Profar as a reason he did not return following a stellar season, and has been blamed for costing the team its chance to sign Roki Sasaki, who instead chose the Dodgers.

Pivetta’s contract and 2.0 WAR ZiPS projection outdo all of the aforementioned one-year guys put together. His deal, which is pending a physical, is heavily backloaded, with a pair of opt-outs built in, a structure that probably owes something to the comparatively late timing. He and Alex Bregman — who agreed to a three-year, $120 million contract with the Red Sox on Wednesday night — are the last two players in the upper half of our Top 50 Free Agents list to sign. After making $7.5 million while pitching for the Red Sox last year, Pivetta declined a $21.05 million qualifying offer. Instead he’ll receive a $3 million signing bonus and just a $1 million salary for 2025, then jump to $19 million for ’26. He can opt out after that season, or after 2027, when he’ll make $14 million; he’ll receive $19 million in ’28 if the deal is still in effect.

That’s a $13.75 million average annual value for the four-year deal, placing Pivetta just a bit below both the $14 million projected by Ben Clemens and the $15 million by our crowdsource for our Top 50 exercise — that in a winter when most of the signed free agents have beaten both flavors of our projections. Still, the aforementioned projections were for three years, so Pivetta’s total guarantee is $10 million to $13 million higher. The creatively structured deal helps give the Padres some flexibility when it comes to cash flow. After paring back payroll in the wake of the November 2023 death of Seidler as well as the collapse of their television contract with Diamond Sports, they slipped below the first Competitive Balance Tax threshold last year, breaking a two-year streak of paying. They’re back up above the first threshold ($241 million) now, and only about $1.7 million short of the second threshold ($261 million), though their actual payroll is around $52 million below that:

As for Hart, who placed 48th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, he’ll receive $1 million for 2025, with a $5 million club option for ’26 and escalators that can take that to $7.5 million based upon games started. He’s also got a $500,000 buyout if the option is declined, and a $250,000 assignment bonus if he’s traded.

With Joe Musgrove out for the season due to Tommy John surgery, Pivetta projects to be the Padres’ fourth starter behind Cease, King, and Yu Darvish, with Hart, Randy Vásquez, and Matt Waldron the top candidates for the fifth spot, and relievers Jhony Brito and Stephen Kolek getting stretched out this spring as well. That would be a solid rotation, with a Depth Charts projection of 12.6 WAR that ranks 13th, but it may well be better than that. Driven by Cease (4.8 WAR) and King (4.0 WAR) — who respectively finished fourth and seventh in the NL Cy Young voting — last year’s group ranked fifth in the majors with 13.8 WAR despite receiving just 16 starts from Darvish and 19 from Musgrove; a fuller season from the former and a healthy replacement for the latter (as Pivetta appears to be) could improve upon the combined 2.5 WAR those two provided.

The bang-bang additions of Pivetta and Hart do seem to portend a trade of Cease, a pending free agent who reportedly drew interest from the Orioles, Twins, Mets, Cubs, and Red Sox this winter. He’s making $13.75 million, so a trade wouldn’t be enough to drop the Padres below the first tax threshold by itself, but it would bring this year’s actual payroll below $200 million. King is making $7.75 million with a $15 million mutual option, and while there’s also been plenty of interest in him this past winter, the Padres are believed to be less inclined to trade him.

As for the pitchers in question, let’s dispense with Hart first. His 182 strikeouts and 22.8% strikeout-walk differential both led the KBO, while his 2.68 ERA, 3.28 FIP, and 28.8% strikeout rate all placed second. Here’s part of what Eric Longenhagen had to say about him for our Top 50 Free Agents list:

The low-slot lefty made some changes to how he deploys his arsenal compared to when he was last in affiliated ball. Hart was taking a slider-first approach while he was with Seattle but pitched more off his 90-mph fastball in Korea. It allowed his well-commanded slider, his best offering, to be used more often as a chase pitch. Hart’s changeup generated plus chase and miss rates in 2024, but that pitch lives off his command of it rather than the pitch’s movement. Hart can vary the speed and shape of his breaking stuff by working in a cutter and a rarely thrown slow curveball. Hart looks like a fifth or sixth starter type, though there’s a risk his fastball-oriented approach won’t be viable against big league hitters due to his lack of velocity.

Hart appeared to be a candidate to follow in the footsteps of Erick Fedde, who after winning the 2023 Choi Dong-won Award inked a two-year, $15 million deal with the White Sox, then was traded to the Cardinals ahead of last year’s trade deadline. For our Top 50 list, Ben projected a three-year, $24 million deal and our crowdsource expected a two-year, $14.5 one. Hart, who does not have the draft pedigree or major league experience of Fedde, instead came in an order of magnitude below that.

As for Pivetta, 2024 was a Very Nick Pivetta Season. In eight years in the majors (including just a five-game 2020 season), he’s never posted an ERA below 4.04 or a FIP below 3.96; he set both of those career lows in 2023 while making 16 starts and 22 relief appearances for Boston. The 6-foot-5, 215-pound righty is known for having better stuff than has been reflected in his performances, though with the recent overhaul of the Stuff+ model, his grades there are down from the stratosphere:

We have a more complete explainer about Stuff+ changes in the pipeline, but as Eno Sarris noted in the linked thread above, the scale has changed so that 10 points in either direction of the 100 average represents one standard deviation (as is the case for pitchingBot), meaning that Pivetta’s slider still grades about two standard deviations better than the norm. The model’s addition of arm angle, the decoupling of fastball movement from its consideration of secondary pitches, and the addition of a contact model also have an impact. As Eno explained to me, Pivetta’s arm angle (56 degrees according to Statcast) raises the expectation for his fastball rise; where he was getting about four inches more than the league average based on his release point, he’s now getting about two inches more than average based on more specific data about his arm slot. With that fastball movement no longer included when considering his secondary pitches — the model now only considers fastball velocity relevant to a pitcher’s secondaries — his grades have taken a hit. Notably, his curveball is now considered two standard deviations below average instead of above average.

Despite all of that, what does stand out, particularly via the new Stuff+ model, is Pivetta’s improved command/location grades relative to 2023. He trimmed his walk rate from 8.5% in 2023 (right around his career level) to a career-low 6.1% in 2024. While his strikeout rate fell from 31.2% to 28.9% (still fourth in the AL among pitchers with at least 140 IP), his strikeout-walk differential rose 0.2 points, to 22.9% (third among the same group). His big issue — and one that the new Stuff+ model picks up on — is how homer-prone he is. He served up 1.73 gophers per nine in 2024, the highest of any pitcher in either league at that 140-inning cutoff, and up from 1.45 in ’23. Moving from Fenway Park to Petco Park could help a bit in that regard.

Here’s a look at the ZiPS projection Dan Szymborski supplied:

The ZiPS contract suggestion for that projection is just $30 million, but that’s because the system is bearish about his innings. Raising Pivetta’s 2025 projection to match our Depth Charts forecast for 154 innings (which increases his total for subsequent seasons as well) boosts the suggested contract to $40 million. Pivetta seems to have done well for himself even before considering the added value of the opt-outs.

Meanwhile, because he received a qualifying offer, the Padres will forfeit their second-round pick (no. 64 overall) in the upcoming amateur draft as well as $500,000 from their 2026 international bonus pool. The Red Sox will receive a compensation pick in the 2025 draft, no. 77 overall.

The Padres have been one of the majors’ most compelling teams in recent years thanks to ownership’s support of Preller’s aggressive acquisitions. That’s made this winter’s inactivity so conspicuous and disappointing, but if the Padres do keep the current band together in the wake of these moves, they at least look prepared to compete for a playoff spot.

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