At least that’s the case if Jed Hoyer is to believed. The Padres’ first-year GM and former Red Sox assistant GM told The Boston Globe that despite the fact that Adrian Gonzalez‘s name has been tossed around the trade rumor mill, the Padres are looking to hang on to their first baseman.
“He’s certainly not a player we’re looking to move,” Hoyer told the Globe, thereby sucking some of the hope out of New England.
“There’s certainly been a lot of interest,” Hoyer said. “A number of teams have inquired about him. I think we’re obviously willing to listen on anything, but he’s a great player, he fits our team, he fits our payroll structure very well.”
Hoyer’s not lying. Gonzalez is set to make $4.75 million in 2010, and the team has an option to bring him back in 2011 for just $5.5 million. FanGraphs says Gonzalez has been worth $44.2 million over the past two seasons, a period in which he was paid just $4 million.
“Teams have inquired,” he told the Globe, “but we’ve certainly said the same thing over and over: He’s not a player we’re looking to move.”
Still, that’s not entirely a reason for Red Sox fans to abandon hope. Hoyer also discussed some of the challenges of building a roster for a team with a much smaller payroll than that of the Red Sox.
“There’s certainly a segment of the player universe that you really don’t think about very much,” Hoyer said when comparing the two teams’ salary structure. “That segment of player becomes a free agent or gets his service time, we’re not going to be able to fit that into our payroll.”
In that sense, the Padres know they can’t keep Gonzalez when he eventually hits free agency, and if San Diego is hanging out in the basement of the NL West come mid-July, a trade is certainly possible. Still, holding your breath would be generally inadvisable.
