Mason Miller Debuts with San Diego Padres

Mason Miller made his debut with the San Diego Padres on Friday night, the day after being involved in arguably the biggest trade of the entire deadline. Miller isn't the closer for his new team, however, as was reported on Thursday. So on Friday, he came into the game in the top of the eighth with San Diego holding a 4-1 lead.

He allowed back-to-back singles to Masyn Winn and Nolan Gorman to begin the inning, placing runners at the corners, then he struck out Jordan Walker on three fastballs, hovering between 101.9 and 102.6 miles per hour. Then he got to face a familiar face.

Back in 2023, Miller made one dominant appearance in Triple-A before getting called up to Oakland for his MLB debut. He went five scoreless innings, didn't allow a hit and struck out 11 batters. He'd shown that he had nothing left to prove in the minors. On that roster in Las Vegas with him was catcher Yohel Pozo.

It was Pozo, now in the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals, that stepped into the batter's box with one away and runners at the corners on Friday night. Miller threw him a slider down and away, which Pozo rolled over, and Manny Machado started a 5-4-3 double play to get the Padres out of the inning.

While his debut was certainly a good watch for Padres fans, A's fans may be interested to hear a bit more of the timeline of how this trade came to be.

As Athletics on SI wrote on Wednesday, Miller said that he'd been told that he'd likely be staying put unless the front office was "wowed" by a proposal. That was around 3:30 p.m. A couple of hours later, Ken Rosenthal reported that the Padres were making a push for Miller and were willing to consider including the No. 3 overall prospect in MLB, Leo De Vries.

A's GM David Forst told the media after the deadline that once San Diego mentioned De Vries, things changed for them, given that he's a potential superstar in this league, and has even gotten some Francisco Lindor comps.

But Miller, who was preparing for a game on Wednesday night, was unaware of the status of any potential deal heading into the game. When he arrived in San Diego on Friday, reporters asked when he found out that a deal could happen.

"I found out in the eighth inning that I wasn't available to pitch. Had a meeting, said nothing was done yet, but the next morning got the call and found out I was coming down here."

That timeline is interesting, because the A's were leading 5-3 in the eighth, and he would need to get ready to pitch the top of the ninth around then. Instead, the A's kept Jack Perkins in the game to close out his third save of the season.

Following the game, A's manager Mark Kotsay started the postgame presser by saying that Miller was unavailable to pitch, it wasn't injury related, and that was all that he could say. With the rumors swirling around him, and the recent report of the Padres being a potential suitor, everyone seemed to put two-and-two together. The next morning, Miller was headed to San Diego.

While it has yet to be officially announced, it appears as though JP Sears, who was also traded from the A's in this deal, will be making his Padres debut on Monday against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was scheduled to pitch on Sunday before the trade, so he'd be roughly on schedule, and he would have been facing the D-Backs in that game, too.