The San Diego Padres spent last winter locking Michael King into a three-year, $75 million contract that was supposed to give the rotation a measure of certainty. The deal included opt-outs after 2026 and 2027, a structure that looked like a reasonable hedge at the time.
Now, with free agency approaching and a thin starting pitching market taking shape, that hedge is pointing the other way. King is expected to walk, and the Padres are being forecast as the team that loses him.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the 31-year-old right-hander is one of the few pitchers who could line up immediately behind Tarik Skubal in this winter’s class. Passan wrote that it makes sense for King to forgo the final two years and $58 million remaining on the contract, especially with a $5 million buyout attached to the decision, and he listed the early lean as a yes on the opt-out.
That assessment puts San Diego in a familiar bind: a front-office that has repeatedly tried to stabilize its rotation may instead watch one of its most reliable starters test a market that suddenly looks friendlier to him than it does to most of his peers.
King’s value is not built on being the flashiest arm in the sport. It is built on durability relative to the rest of this class, a sinker-changeup mix that still generates weak contact when he is right, and the simple fact that so few other starters in free agency can be trusted for a full season of innings.
After a 2024 campaign that produced a 2.95 ERA over 173 2/3 innings and a seventh-place finish in National League Cy Young voting, he was limited in 2025 by a knee injury and a nerve issue in his shoulder.
The Padres still brought him back on the $75 million pact rather than let him leave after he declined a qualifying offer. The bet was that a healthier 2026 would restore the version of King they had seen in his first year in San Diego. Considering King owns a 3.00 ERA over 29 starts, it seems like the bet worked,
For the Padres, the timing is awkward. The club has already spent the year stitching together a rotation that at points leaned on bullpen games and midseason additions.
Losing King would reopen a hole they thought they had closed, and it would do so in a winter when the best available starters are either elite and prohibitively expensive or older and more uncertain. A lockout looms after the market opens, which could freeze spending and make it even harder to replace a pitcher who already knows Petco Park and the organization’s pitching infrastructure.
San Diego could still try to keep him with an extension that raises the guarantee and shortens the risk. Nothing in Passan’s early read suggests that is the likely path.
King’s decision window opens within five days of the World Series. If he opts out, he becomes one of the few starting pitchers in the class who can credibly sell both stuff and recent track record.
That is why the prediction is not simply that he will test free agency. It is that the Padres are the team most likely to watch him leave. The contract they signed was designed to give both sides options. This winter, the option that matters is his.
