Preller monitors market with talent in hand

SAN DIEGO -- The Winter Meetings came and went with nary an in-person meeting. Still, the Major League Baseball offseason has shifted to its business phase, and the Padres have plenty to get done.

Here are four Padres takeaways from Winter Meetings week:

No Lynn, no problem?
The most noteworthy move this week was the White Sox acquiring right-hander Lance Lynn in a trade with the Rangers. The Padres had been linked with Lynn since last offseason, and Mike Clevinger's injury created a hole in their rotation.

Lynn wasn't the guy to fill it. The Padres were wary of investing too much prospect capital in a one-year rotation stopgap. Adrian Morejon seems like a reasonable comparison for Chicago’s payment of Dane Dunning (though younger with a bit more upside). The Padres would greatly prefer five seasons of Morejon to one season of Lynn.

So where does that leave the Padres in their pitching search? Well, they'd prefer a pitcher under contractual control for multiple seasons. Sonny Gray and Blake Snell both fit the bill, but they won't come cheaply.

• MLB Hot Stove Tracker

In the meantime, here's what Padres general manager A.J. Preller had to say about his pitching search earlier this week:

"You can never have enough starting pitching," Preller said. "Really, a big part of the focus has been internally on the guys that we have in our organization that we think a lot of. ... It's the time of year -- trades, free agency, Hot Stove -- where you consider all possibilities. But a big part of our focus is on the guys we have in our organization."

Translation: The Padres really like their young pitching. But Preller’s still making calls.

Restocking the outfield
The Padres entered 2020 with an overabundance of outfielders -- lefty-hitting outfielders, in particular. Then, in the span of a month and a half, they traded Franchy Cordero to Kansas City, Taylor Trammell to Seattle and Josh Naylor to Cleveland.

They didn't need reinforcements at the time. The season was short, and Jurickson Profar manned left field while Tommy Pham recovered from injury.

But the Padres sorely needed to replenish that outfield depth this winter. The prospect of 162 games without cover for Pham, Wil Myers and Trent Grisham was unacceptable. So the Padres signed Brian O'Grady to a Major League deal on Tuesday.

O'Grady is an interesting fit. He's unlikely to start regularly, given the current in-house options. But he's going to play.

O'Grady -- a lefty hitter who fares well against both lefties and righties -- can play all three outfield spots. Team officials are intrigued by his quality at-bats, plus an uptick in power in 2019.

If Pham, Myers or Grisham needs a spell, O'Grady can step in. The Padres' 2020 bench isn't a finished product. It might still behoove the club to add a Profar type who can move between outfield and the middle infield. But O'Grady definitely fills a void.

Time for a bullpen boost?
The Padres finished the 2020 season with one of the sport's best bullpens -- plus optimism surrounding Austin Adams and José Castillo, both of whom recovered from major injuries.

What does that 2020 success tell us about ‘21? Not much, Preller says.

"We like the guys we have; we feel like we have depth and we have quality," Preller said. "But we've talked about it: 'Pens, year to year, they can be really effective one year, not so much the next. You're constantly looking to add 'pen options."

Among the available options are right-handers Trevor Rosenthal and Kirby Yates, who both became free agents. But even without a closer, the Padres don't seem hell-bent on adding a Rosenthal or a Liam Hendriks type.

Right now, the relief market is pricier than the Padres would like, according to sources. They'll almost certainly add a reliever or two this winter, and it could still be a back-end weapon. It could also be a middle-innings arm, pushing Drew Pomeranz and Emilio Pagán to the back. The Padres will check all the price tags, then decide.

"The market moves at its own pace," Preller said. "All we're focused on is the players we feel like line up at the value we feel like makes sense."

Rule 5 exhales
Outfielder Tirso Ornelas seemed an unlikely candidate to be taken in the Rule 5 Draft. He struggled at Class A Advanced Lake Elsinore last season and hasn't developed into the patient power hitter the Padres were hoping for.

But the Rule 5 Draft can be fickle. With 26-man rosters, it's easier than ever to stash prospects. And Ornelas is just 20 years old and reportedly was showing signs of a breakthrough in the Mexican Pacific League before he went down with a fracture in his left forearm.

The Padres exhaled when Ornelas, ranked by MLB Pipeline as their No. 17 prospect, went unselected on Thursday morning. They let out a similar exhale with 25-year-old right-hander Lake Bachar, whose ceiling isn't as high but was perhaps likelier to be selected. Bachar is viewed as rotation depth.

Bachar, the organization’s No. 23 prospect, isn't much of a threat to challenge for a rotation spot. But if baseball returns to its traditional 162-game grind in 2021, an arm like Bachar's is useful to have at Triple-A in the event the Padres need a spot start.