{"id":23858,"date":"2025-07-25T20:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23858\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T20:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:22:08","slug":"padres-getting-interest-in-stephen-kolek-ryan-bergert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23858\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres Getting Interest In Stephen Kolek, Ryan Bergert"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wouldn\u2019t be trade deadline season with Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller exploring a variety of creative deals. San Diego is reportedly open to offers on right-hander Dylan Cease<\/a> while simultaneously showing interest in other short-term veterans to backfill his spot in the rotation. They\u2019re also getting trade inquiries on young righties Stephen Kolek<\/a> and Ryan Bergert<\/a>, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a>. Pitching prospects Henry Baez<\/a> and Braden Nett<\/a> are also among the names on which other clubs have expressed interest.<\/p>\n

Kolek, 28, was a Rule 5 pick back in 2023 and stuck with the Friars in a bullpen role all last year. He\u2019s moved into the rotation this season and given San Diego 13 starts and 73 2\/3 innings of 4.28 ERA ball. Kolek doesn\u2019t miss many bats (17.3% strikeout rate, 7.7% swinging-strike rate) but has good command (7.4% walk rate) and keeps the ball on the ground (50.4%). He\u2019s given up plenty of hard contact, but his lack of fly-balls has helped to keep the home runs down.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the flashiest profile, but if another club buys into Kolek as a roughly league-average starter in his second pre-arbitration season \u2014 with four years of club control remaining after the current campaign \u2014 there\u2019s some value in that skill set. Controllable starting pitching is always in demand, and while he\u2019s not necessarily an electric young arm with big velocity and strikeout numbers, Kolek has more than held his own in 2025 and still has two minor league option years remaining after this season.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Bergert is younger and also in the first of three option years. He entered the season ranked among San Diego\u2019s top 15 prospects or so and has elevated his status with a nice showing in Triple-A El Paso and a promising start to his big league career.<\/p>\n

In 44 2\/3 Triple-A frames, Bergert carries a 4.03 ERA with a 22.6% strikeout rate, 9.2% walk rate and 45% grounder rate. The Padres gave him his big league debut in late April, and he\u2019s since appeared in a total of 10 games \u2014 six of them starts. Bergert has impressed with a 2.84 earned run average, 23.1% strikeout rate and 10.8% walk rate. He\u2019s primarily a fastball\/slider pitcher with a show-me changeup and sinker that he\u2019s used less than 8% of the time each.<\/p>\n

Trading either Bergert or Kolek could help the Padres reel in a veteran bat in left field or behind the plate \u2014 or it could simply bring back multiple prospects who could be redirected to those trade efforts. Bergert, who was optioned earlier this month, has spent enough time in the minors that he still has a full six years of club control beyond the current season. As with Kolek, he\u2019s not necessarily the potential high-end young starter teams covet, but he has the makings of a useful back-end starter who could in theory be plugged right into a new team\u2019s rotation.<\/p>\n

As for the 22-year-old Baez and 23-year-old Nett, they\u2019re both pitching in the Double-A rotation and posting strong numbers. Baez doesn\u2019t throw as hard or miss as many bats but has better command with higher ground-ball totals. He\u2019s already on the 40-man roster. Nett has more velocity and a strikeout rate that\u2019s a couple percentage points higher than his teammate but also a walk rate pushing 11%. He\u2019d be Rule 5-eligible this winter and seems likely to be selected to the 40-man before then. Either could be a plausible option for a big league club by next season, so it\u2019s hardly surprising to see teams poking around both pitchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wouldn\u2019t be trade deadline season with Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller exploring a variety of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[19456,49,48,16302,19457,462,19458,82,19459],"class_list":["post-23858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-braden-nett","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dylan-cease","tag-henry-baez","tag-mlb","tag-ryan-bergert","tag-sports","tag-stephen-kolek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}