San Diego Padres Recount On $4.8 Million Reliever’s Future

The San Diego Padres had Jason Adam and let him go.

“I love looking back at the journey,” Adam said recently.

San Diego first signed the reliever as a free agent in 2017, but he never made it past Double-A. He was released on Aug. 14 and signed with the Kansas City Royals days later.

“He was an upside guy that we wanted in the organization that year,” president of baseball operations A.J. Preller recalled. “I remember asking a lot, ‘Where is he?’ ‘How’s he doing?’ ‘What’s he doing?’ We took a lot of interest. … He was one of those super interesting guys you could hit big on. And then more so, just the quality of the person. He’s somebody you always root for. If you can connect with somebody like that, you never count somebody like that out.”

Adam’s journey to get to this point has been adventurous. In an interview with Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Adam said he thought he was about 24 hours away from looking for a job in an independent league when the Royals called him the day before his apartment lease ran out in Peoria in 2017.

He made his big league debut with the Royals in 2018, was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in March of 2019, was non-tendered in December 2019, and signed with the Chicago Cubs before the 2020 season.

He later rejoined the Cubs on a minor-league deal and made three big-league appearances that September. It was in Tampa Bay where he signed in March 2022 that he developed into the pitcher the Padres originally let go — only to bring back later.

Adam thrived in San Diego last season after being acquired by the Padres at the trade deadline. In 27 games, he went 3-0 with 12 holds and a 1.01 ERA. He struck out 31 and allowed three earned runs on 14 hits across 26.2 innings.

Pitching for the Padres has been a full-circle moment for Adam, and there is no other place he’d rather be.

“No one could count on me for the first few years of my career, which is why it took me a while to accumulate some service time,” said Adam. “But that’s fine. Honestly, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. I love this team. I love playing in this city.”