Padres Sign Ryan Weiss

That positioned the Wright State product to make his big league debut. Weiss struggled in his first look against MLB hitters, pitching to a near-8.00 ERA across 26 innings. He struck out a league average 23% of opponents but walked more than 15% of batters faced. Houston demoted him to Triple-A in early May and dropped him from their 40-man roster a month later. He cleared waivers and spent the rest of the season in the minors.

Weiss worked in a swing role in the minors, starting 13 of 22 appearances. He pitched 76 1/3 innings of 5.42 ERA ball, posting a 20.7% strikeout rate while walking 11% of opponents. Weiss mixed five pitches, sitting around 95 mph with his four-seam fastball and at 93 mph with his sinker. He also threw a slider, changeup and very sporadically mixed in a curveball.

It’s a similar move to the Padres’ signings of Kyle Hart, Griffin Canning, Germán Márquez and Lucas Giolito in recent years. Weiss can work multiple innings and compete for a rotation spot in Spring Training. He’s better served as a long reliever who slots no higher than seventh or eighth on a rotation depth chart. There’ll be plenty of bigger moves, but they’ll leverage their roster flexibility to make an early depth pickup. Weiss reportedly had renewed KBO interest, so a big league deal might’ve been the only way to keep him in affiliated ball.

San Diego is involved at the top of the rotation market all the way up to Tarik Skubal. They’ll be linked to most or all of the second and third tier free agent starters as well. They need to overhaul essentially their entire rotation. Michael King opted out, while the team declined what amounted to a two-year, $32MM option on Nick Pivetta. They’ll keep in touch with both players, but deadline acquisitions Casey Mize and Robbie Ray are likely to sign elsewhere. Walker Buehler also hit the market after ranking second on the team behind King with 153 2/3 innings this year.

Randy Vásquez is San Diego’s only returning pitcher who started more than six games. It’s unclear what they can expect from Joe Musgrove or whether Yu Darvish will continue his MLB career. There’s a chance that not a single member of the team’s season-opening rotation is yet on the roster, even after the Weiss signing.

Jesse Rogers of ESPN first reported the agreement, club option, and KBO interest. Image courtesy of Troy Taormina, Imagn Images.