As the San Diego Padres struggle through another season, with a 38-62 record, ownership is trying to decide whether or not to trade slugger Adrian Gonzalez and closer Heath Bell to contenders for the remainder of the 2009 season. The Padres are sitting 24.5 games behind the NL West leading Dodgers and 16.5 games behind the NL Wild Card leading Rockies. With the Padres 2009 season all but over, management has only a couple of days to move their top hitting and relief pitching players.
Gonzalez has been rumored to be headed to the Boston Red Sox over the past couple of days as GM Theo Epstein is looking for another bat to jump start a suddenly dormant offense. The Red Sox are 2.5 games behind the AL East leading Yankees, who are 10-1 since the All-Star break. Gonzalez would provide the Red Sox with a potent bat in the middle of the lineup. He is hitting a weak .249 but he has slugged 26 homeruns and driven in 56 runs in 2009.
Gonzalez has 123 career homeruns and 381 career RBIs, which Boston would love to have him add to those totals while playing at Fenway for the remainder of the season. In 2008, prior to the deadline, the Red Sox traded away slugger Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers in a three team trade for Jason Bay from the Pirates. Bay added a potent bat to the lineup for the Red Sox stretch run and has played an important role in the team’s offense in 2009. Bay has amassed 20 homeruns and 73 RBIs in 2009 for the Sox.
The other Padre possibly on the trading block is closer Heath Bell. There are plenty of teams out there that could always use another arm in the back end of the bullpen and Bell could provide that stable arm for teams in contention. Bell has 24 saves in 25 opportunities and has accumulated a 2.06 ERA. Bell has racked up 46 strikeouts in just over 39 innings pitched. With just one blown save in 2009, Bell could stabilize the back-end of a contender’s bullpen immediately for the stretch run.
