These Padres, after all, are in a much better spot — eight games over .500 — than the team was in 2023 (three games under) when Preller decided to keep Blake Snell and Josh Hader and hope that the most expensive team in franchise history had something left in the tank.

If you’re trying to predict which team ends up trading the most big-league players away, the Orioles are as good a guess as any. Gregory Soto could soon be followed by Ryan O’Hearn, Cedric Mullins, Zach Eflin, Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano and/or Seranthony Dominguez, all of whom are rentals.