SI:AM | The Padres’ Very Weird Trade

Plus, the best NFL free agents still available.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I really wonder what Villanova barely escaping with a one-point win over three-win DePaul in the Big East tournament last night will do to the Wildcats’ bubble chances.

In today’s SI:AM:

💥 Blockbuster baseball trade

🐺 The underdog Timberwolves

🤔 Who should Louisville hire?

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What’s their plan?

One of the biggest unresolved questions waiting to be answered before Opening Day was where Chicago White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease would be pitching. Chicago, having lost 101 games last season and fully stuck in rebuilding mode, was widely known to be shopping Cease on the trade market. Numerous contenders were rumored to be interested in the always dependable Cease, including the New York Yankees and defending champion Texas Rangers.

Cease was finally traded last night, and to a surprising team: the San Diego Padres. The White Sox will reportedly receive three top prospects in return (Drew Thorpe, Samuel Zavala and Jairo Iriarte), along with 29-year-old reliever Steven Wilson. Thorpe is ranked as the No. 85 best prospect in all of baseball by MLB.com, while Zavala and Iriarte were both among the Padres’ top 10 prospects.

It’s a hefty price to pay, but Cease is capable of being one of the best pitchers in the game. He finished second in Cy Young voting in 2022 after posting a 2.20 ERA. In ’21, he led the AL with 12.3 strikeouts per nine innings. He took a step backwards last season, finishing with a 4.58 ERA, but he’s still only 28, so there’s no reason to think he’s starting to decline. Plus, Cease has been as durable as any pitcher in the major leagues during his five-year career. The only time he’s been on the injured list was due to COVID-19 symptoms.

Still, it’s a really strange trade for the Padres to make right now. When they dealt Juan Soto to the Yankees earlier this offseason, it signaled that they weren’t going all-in on this season. And then they turn around three months later and trade three of their top prospects away? That shows a complete lack of a cohesive team-building strategy. Thorpe was perhaps the centerpiece of the return the Padres got from the Yankees in the Soto deal. The four other players San Diego got had already reached the majors and all were at least 25 years old (catcher Kyle Higashioka turns 34 next month). Thorpe was supposed to be the sort of player the Padres could count on to be part of a winning team in a few years. Instead, they traded him in a win-now move designed to bolster a roster depleted by the future-oriented trade that landed him in San Diego in the first place. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Other pitchers in the news

The Cease trade wasn’t the only major news yesterday concerning top pitchers. The Yankees have already been dealt a serious blow to their rotation, with ace Gerrit Cole reportedly set to miss an extended period of time. Cole went to Los Angeles yesterday to see renowned surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache for additional testing on what the Yankees are calling a sore elbow. The team isn’t saying much about Cole’s status, but the New York Post reported that he’ll be shut down for at least one to two months and isn’t likely to make his season debut until May or early June. An initial test did not show a tear in Cole’s ulnar collateral ligament, The Athletic reported, but Cole isn’t in the clear yet. For however long last year’s AL Cy Young winner is out, the pressure will fall on Carlos Rodón and Marcus Stroman to step up.

The Milwaukee Brewers will also be without one of their top arms. Closer Devin Williams, one of the most dominant relievers in the sport, will be out for about three months with two stress fractures in his back, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Williams has been an All-Star in each of the past two seasons and even got two MVP votes last season after posting a paltry 1.53 ERA. In a race as close as the NL Central is expected to be, Williams’s injury is a major blow to the Brewers’ chances to repeat as division champs.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports

• The Timberwolves were dealt a serious blow last week when Karl-Anthony Towns injured his knee. But the star’s absence has only led Minnesota to embrace its underdog status even more, Chris Mannix writes.
• Kevin Sweeney has a list of potential candidates to fill the newly vacated Louisville men’s basketball job.
• Jaguars receiver Calvin Ridley is staying in the division and signing with the Titans.
• Ridley was the top player remaining on Matt Verderame’s list of the 10 best free agents still available, but the other nine are still out there.
• After his Cinderella season with the Browns, Joe Flacco is reportedly signing with the Colts.
• The Eagles have proposed a new rule that would do away with the onside kick.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. Kansas guard Elmarko Jackson’s big two-handed dunk.

4. Chris Paul giving the ref a tech after he was called for one.

3. The bizarre first-half buzzer beater in the TCU-Oklahoma game.

2. Luka Dončić’s assist through the legs of Klay Thompson.

1. Stuart Skinner’s diving save to rob Alex Ovechkin.

SIQ

The UMBC Retrievers are famous for being the first No. 16 seed to win a men’s NCAA tournament game, but the feat was accomplished 20 years earlier by a women’s team. Which No. 16 seed knocked off the No. 1 Stanford Cardinal on this day in 1998?

• Harvard
• Cal State Fullerton
• Montana State
• Furman

Yesterday’s SIQ: On March 13, 1915, at the urging of his players, Brooklyn Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson attempted to catch a baseball thrown from a passing airplane. But the ball was replaced at the last minute but what other object?

• Football
• Golf ball
• Grapefruit
• Sandwich

Answer: Grapefruit. The players came up with the idea while at spring training in Daytona Beach, Fla., where a stunt pilot named Ruth Law was promoting a local golf course by dropping golf balls from her plane. Catching baseballs dropped from great heights was quite the fad in the early part of the 20th century, but Law didn’t drop a baseball from the plane. Instead, she dropped a grapefruit.

The fruit hit Robinson and exploded on impact. Covered in juice and pulp, the 52-year-old manager believed he was bleeding profusely and moments from death.

“Help! I’m dying! I’m bleeding to death!” Robinson is said to have screamed, according to a 2020 MLB.com article.

There are several explanations for why Law dropped the citrus fruit instead of the horsehide. One version is that Casey Stengel suggested the swap as a way to prank Robinson. Another says that it was a member of Law’s ground crew who made the switch. Law herself said decades later that she didn’t realize until she was in the air that there was no baseball on board and instead had to drop part of her lunch.