Padres decline club option on Michael Wacha

The Padres have declined their two-year, $32M club option on the services of right-hander Michael Wacha for the 2024 and 2025 campaigns, per Dennis Lin of The Athletic. 

Wacha will now have the opportunity to decide between exercising a $6.5M player option for the 2024 season or hitting the open market, with Lin noting that Wacha is expected to become a free agent.

Wacha first signed with the Padres this past offseason on a four-year, $26M guarantee, though it now appears likely that deal will wind up being for just one year and $7.5M. At the time, the 32-year-old righty was coming off his best season in several years after posting a 3.32 ERA and 4.14 FIP across 23 starts with the Red Sox in 2022. 

Though at the time it was easy to wonder if Wacha would regress back to the 4.62 ERA he had posted from 2016-21, he managed to build upon his 2022 with an even stronger 2023 season. In 24 starts (134 1/3 innings), Wacha posted a 3.22 ERA that was 27% better than league average by ERA+ with a 3.89 FIP and a 22.4% strikeout rate.

Given that improvement, it’s something of a surprise that the club would decline to retain Wacha on what would have effectively been a two-year, $32M pact, particularly with both Seth Lugo and Nick Martinez now slated to join Blake Snell in departing San Diego for the open market. 

Indeed, a poll of MLBTR readers revealed that nearly 44% of respondents expected the Padres to pick up Wacha’s options, a total that edges out the 39% of respondents who suggested that Wacha would return to the open market this offseason.

Of course, it’s necessary to consider the financial component of the move. After all, the Padres seem to be facing budgetary issues this offseason that could require them to pare payroll down to around $200M. 

The departures of Lugo and Martinez, along with the club’s decision to decline Wacha’s option, have cut the club’s payroll for 2024 to just over $197M, per RosterResource. Should Wacha decline his option as expected, that would drop the figure to just under $191M.

That could allow the club to avoid more drastic changes to cut payroll, such as a possible trade of star left fielder Juan Soto. Of course, a payroll of $200M would allow them just $9M of room in the budget to replace three of the club’s regular rotation members and their top depth option for the starting staff, to say nothing of the loss of closer Josh Hader or potential upgrades to the lineup. 

If the Padres hope to patch the holes in their pitching staff and fine-tune their position player group, it seems reasonable to expect additional moves to trim the club’s payroll.

As for Wacha, he appears poised to join a free agent market that’s particular deep in starting pitching options. 

While he won’t compete at the top of the market alongside the likes of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Snell and Aaron Nola, Wacha will add another interesting mid-rotation option to a group that already includes the likes of Lugo, James Paxton, Marcus Stroman, Lucas Giolito and Eduardo Rodriguez in the event that he decides to decline his player option and test the open market.