The San Diego Padres beat the Oakland Athletics 7-3 on Friday to open a three-game series, and Mason Miller was on the mound against the club that traded him at last season’s deadline.
It was a quiet moment for Miller — his first time facing the Athletics since the deal — but not a small one. Miller has thrown 22.2 innings this year, posted a 0.79 ERA, converted 15 out of 15 save opportunities and entered Cy Young conversations in the National League. He has thrown more fastballs at 102 mph or harder since the start of the 2023 season than any other pitcher and is one of five pitchers to top 104 mph in that span. The Padres have him under team control through 2029.
Before Friday’s game Miller spoke about the club he left, praising how far some of his former teammates have come. “Just coming up with a lot of those guys and kind of seeing, seeing it through to the team that they are now, too,” he said. “Yes, definitely not the team that I debuted with, either.” “So, you know, it’s cool and rewarding to see guys that I spent a lot of time with having the success that they are,” he added. The Athletics are currently fighting for first place in the American League West, giving the matchup a little extra bite.
The trade that sent Miller to San Diego was costly for the Padres on paper: they gave up their top prospect, shortstop Leo De Vries, who had to headline the return. De Vries signed for $4.2 million in the 2024 international amateur period, hit 11 home runs as a 17-year-old at low Single-A Lake Elsinore, hit 15 homers last year and has five home runs and a.788 OPS to start this season as the youngest player in the Double-A Texas League. Both Baseball America and MLB.com rank De Vries No. 2 in their top-100 prospect lists.
San Diego also got left-hander JP Sears in the swap; Sears is now struggling to a 6.20 ERA at Triple-A El Paso. The Athletics received right-handers Braden Nett, Henry Baez and Eduarniel Nuñez in the deal, but Nett and Baez have been limited by injuries to a combined three starts in the minors this season and Nuñez was sold to the Orioles last week for cash. That mix — an elite, MLB-ready arm for a pile of high-upside but volatile pieces — is where the debate over the trade lives.
Craig Stammen, reflecting the Padres’ view, defended the move. “My reaction has always been when we trade prospects away for established major league players, that it’s a good thing for us,” he said. “You can’t predict a prospect, no matter how good or how highly rated they are, because we’ve seen it go the other way. But you have a better idea of predicting guys that have had success in the major leagues, and especially Mason, our scouts probably rated him as the No. 1 closer in all baseball, and so to make a strength that we already have even greater was probably the reason for doing it.”
The history behind Miller’s rise is short and sharp. He was developed as a starter before health concerns intervened: shoulder trouble in 2023 limited him to six starts in his first full year of pro ball, and he made one start for Double-A Midland and one for Triple-A Las Vegas before the Athletics called him up. Four starts after his big-league debut his elbow was hurting and the organization began thinking about his long-term future; the 2023 season ended with him in the bullpen. “I think the decision behind it was sound for health reasons,” Miller has said, and he admitted the transition was a hurdle: “…. But I always looked at myself as a starter to that point, so that was probably the biggest hurdle.”
The immediate evidence favors San Diego: Miller’s electric velocity and near-perfect saves record have tightened the Padres’ late innings. The most consequential unanswered question now is whether Leo De Vries becomes the kind of star the Athletics need to justify trading away a power arm who, for the moment, looks like the best closer in baseball.
