MICHAEL KING

• Position(s): Right-handed pitcher
• Bats / Throws: Right / Right
• 2025 opening day age: 29
• Height / Weight: 6-foot-3 / 210 pounds
• How acquired: Via trade with the New York Yankees in December 2023
• Contract status: In his final year of arbitration eligibility, King filed with a proposed salary of $8.8 million; the team filed for $7.325 million. A hearing will be held in February.
• fWAR in 2024: 3.9 WAR
• Key 2024 stats: 13-9, 2.95 ERA, 201 strikeouts, 63 walks, 1.19 WHIP, .221 opponent average, 173⅔ innings (31 games, 30 starts)

 

STAT TO NOTE

• 85.7 — The average exit velocity in milers per hour off King in 2024, a career low and the sixth lowest among qualifying pitchers behind the Mets’ Huascar Brazoban (82.3 mph), former Padres reliever Tanner Scott (84.3 mph), the Giants’ Tyler Rogers (85.2 mph), Boston’s Lucas Sims (85.4 mph) and the Athletics’ Osvaldo Bido (82.3 mph). The highlight of King’s five-pitch mix in 2024 was his mid-80s changeup (.207 opponent average, 10-run value) and 93 mph sinker (.200 opponent average, 7-run value).

 

TRENDING

• Up — A 12th-round pick of the Marlins out of Boston College in 2016, King was traded the following year to New York for Garrett Cooper and Caleb Smith. He was strictly a starting pitcher at that point, but King broke into the majors with the Yankees as a reliever, appearing in one game in 2019 and making five of his nine appearances in 2020 (7.76 ERA) out of the bullpen. King started six of his 22 appearances in 2021 (3.55 ERA) and in 2023 moved to the rotation for his final eight starts of the season, posting a 1.88 ERA and striking out 48 batters against nine walks. The finish to the year appeared to point toward King assuming a prominent role in the Yankees’ rotation in 2024, but the Padres insisted on his inclusion in the Juan Soto trade alongside pitchers Jhony Brito and Randy Vásquez, pitching prospect Drew Thorpe and catcher Kyle Higashioka. The Padres had already had success in transitioning Seth Lugo from the bullpen to the rotation in 2023 and identified King as a pitcher who could follow the same road map. Similarly, King had not thrown more than the 104 innings he threw in 2023, but the Padres planned to monitor quite a bit more than pitches and innings as they attempted to take him wire to wire as a starting pitcher. No, they were looking at data points collected from his delivery at their new biomechanics lab at Point Loma Nazarene University and monitored throughout the year threw Hawk-Eye — release points, spin rates, spin efficiency and velocity, to name a few. It all checked out throughout the year, although the Padres thought it was a convenient silver lining that a comebacker off his left calf forced the team to rest King for nearly two weeks after the All-Star break. Of course, by then he’d more than found his rhythm in the rotation, lowering his ERA from 5.00 the first month of the season to 3.00 in five starts in May to 2.26 over his final 19 starts, a stretch that saw King allow just four home runs over 107⅔ innings after opening the season with 13 home runs in his first 66 innings. Six times he completed at least seven innings and 14 of his 30 starts were quality starts. That dependability made King the choice to start Game 1 of the NL Wild-Card Series against the Braves and he did not disappoint, striking out 12 without a walk while scattering five hits over seven shutout innings in the win. King won a second start in the postseason against the Dodgers, but he wasn’t nearly as effective in Game 3 of the NLDS, allowing five runs on five hits, including two homers, in five innings.

 

2025 OUTLOOK

• With his postseason workload pushing his innings total past 185, King enters the season as a full-fledged starting pitcher. In fact, that’s precisely the sticking point as he and the Padres prepare for next month’s arbitration hearing. He finished seventh in NL Cy Young voting and fourth in the NL in ERA and strikeouts per nine innings (10.42), but he’s spent most of his career to date as a reliever and that complicates the conversation as it relates to King’s pay in his final year of team control. The Padres have yet to go to arbitration under General Manager A.J. Preller, so it remains to be seen what impact that process will have on potentially locking up King before he hits free agency as potentially one of the better starting pitchers on the market next winter, especially if the encore looks anything like the first full year in a rotation.

 

Roster rankings

• 4. RHP Dylan Cease
• 5. OF Jackson Merrill
• 6. RHP Yu Darvish
• 7. INF Luis Arraez
• 8. INF Xander Bogaerts
• 9. RHP Robert Suarez
• 10. INF Jake Cronenworth
• 11. RHP Jason Adam
• 12. RHP Joe Musgrove
• 13. Adrián Morejón
• 14. RHP Jeremiah Estrada
• 15. RHP Matt Waldron
• 16. INF Eguy Rosario
• 17. RHP Randy Vásquez
• 18. RHP Bryan Hoeing
• 19. LHP Yuki Matsui
• 20. RHP Sean Reynolds
• 21. C Luis Campusano
• 22. RHP Jhony Brito
• 23. RHP Alek Jacob
• 24. OF Tirso Ornelas
• 25. RHP Ryan Bergert
• 26. RHP Henry Baez
• 27. LHP Omar Cruz
• 28. OF Brandon Lockridge
• 29. LHP Tom Cosgrove
• 30. RHP Stephen Kolek
• 31. RHP Juan Nuñez
• 32. RHP Ron Marinaccio
• 33. C Brett Sullivan
• 34. UT Tyler Wade
• 35. LHP Wandy Peralta