The chief mouthpiece of the Padres, Corey Brock, has basically tipped off that the Padres will not be signing Yasmany Tomas. I base this on what Corey Brock has said about Tomas this offseason and on his accuracy predicting Padres offseason moves under Ron Fowler. Both these point to ‘no’.

Check out the evidence.

All of Corey Brock’s mentions of Tomas

Corey Brock has pretty much avoided talking about Yasmany Tomas in any way, shape, or form. While every Padres blog and rumor website is peddling new information daily, Corey Brock’s statements on Yasmany Tomas and the Padres come down to precisely three things:

September 23

On #PadresSH with Jesse Agler, Corey Brock states that the Padres are probably priced out of Yasmany Tomas. Fast forward to around 3:45.

September 28

Corey Brock tweets that the rumored price tag for Tomas is out of the Padres price range.

October 10

Talking about Preller’s alleged “payroll flexibility”, Corey wrote:

But as has been the case with other recent Cuban players signed on with big league clubs — and have fared well — Tomas will likely command a contract that could exceed $100 million over seven years or more. The largest contract the Padres have given a player in franchise history was the extension they gave Jake Peavy after he won the NL Cy Young Award in 2007 — a three-year, $52 million extension.

which is basically the most “no” response you’ll ever get out of the mouthpiece in writing.

That’s it

No really, that’s it. Despite overwhelming fan and media support for signing Tomas, the only three things that MLB.com’s reporter for the P…- hahahaha, sorry, couldn’t keep a straight face – mouthpiece of the Padres could say about the possibility of signing Tomas were “no”, “no”, and “read between the lines: no”.

Everything Brock said about Johnson and Benoit last offseason

Don’t think Brock would be saying anything about Tomas if the team was about to sign him? Probably a bad bet.

Last year the Padres made two free agent signings: Joaquin Benoit and Josh Johnson. Corey Brock explicitly told us about one before it happened and basically predicted the other one just before it occurred, too.

Corey Brock wrote a feature article about Joaquin Benoit being in play for the Padres last offseason and tweeted about Benoit prior to the Padres signing him.

Few people predicted the Josh Johnson signing, but Corey Brock tipped it off less than a week before he signed:

And then cryptically tweeted this just hours before he signed:

What does this all mean?

It means the Padres aren’t going to sign Yasmany Tomas. Preller may not know the financial limitations, he may just be driving up the price of Tomas on other teams, or maybe there’s some conspiracy (which is less likely). Regardless, that the mouthpiece of the Padres isn’t waxing poetic about Tomas and is instead consistently saying it isn’t going to happen should be evidence enough.

Most accurately, let’s just regurgitate what Corey Brock wrote at the beginning of last offseason:

They’ll just need to get creative to fill those needs, as the Padres likely won’t be an active participant in the high-risk, high-cost free-agent market.