Spring training is in full swing, and while there’s still a trickle of higher-profile free agents such as Cody Bellinger and Tim Anderson finding homes — not to mention a handful of unsigned ones, from NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell and postseason stud Jordan Montgomery on down — most teams are taking shape, albeit with plenty to sort out while in camp. Still, all but the powerhouses have some lineup holes remaining, and while they may not be likely to open their checkbooks to land the likes of Matt Chapman, it’s worth keeping their vulnerabilities in mind.

To that end, I wanted to revisit an exercise I performed last year, one that bears more than a passing resemblance to the annual Replacement Level Killers series I roll out prior to the trade deadline. This one is a little different, as it comes prior to the season and relies entirely on our projections, which combine ZiPS and Steamer as well as playing time estimates from RosterResource. Those projections also drive our Playoff Odds.

There are a couple of wrinkles to note here. Where last year and for the in-season series I have generally used a 10% chance of reaching the playoffs as a cutoff for what we might loosely define as a contender, this year’s odds are distributed such that only four teams (the A’s, Nationals, Rockies, and White Sox) fall below that threshold. Thus I’ve raised the cutoff to 25%, leaving the Angels, Pirates, and Royals below the bar but including the Red Sox (25.6% at this writing) and Reds (25.7%), both of which forecast for 80 wins. Gotta love this expanded playoff system, right? Ugh. Read the rest of this entry »

Eleven years ago, Jurickson Profar was the consensus pick as the game’s top prospect. Now he’s just days away from his 31st birthday and looking to rebound from the worst performance of his career. According to multiple reports, he’ll be returning to the Padres, a team whose roster is more than a little light on outfielders.

Profar spent the 2020–22 seasons with San Diego, turning in solid campaigns in the two bookends of that run. He posted a 113 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and a 111 wRC+ and a career-high 2.5 WAR in ’22; in the middle season, however, he sank to an 87 wRC+ and -0.6 WAR. After his comparatively strong 2022 showing, he opted out of a $7.5 million guarantee for ’23, instead taking a $1 million buyout. The move pretty much backfired, as he went unsigned last winter before finally inking a one-year, $7.75 million deal with the Rockies in mid-March after playing for Team Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic.

Whether it was the late signing date, the difficulty of adjusting to Colorado, or the eventual realization of just what he was in for with a team that lost 94 games in 2022 and had little expectation of improving in ’23, Profar struggled mightily. At the plate he hit just .236/.316/.364 with eight homers in 472 plate appearances for the Rockies, yielding just a 76 wRC+. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was absolutely brutal as a full-time left fielder according to the metrics, with -11 DRS and -12 OAA.

On Aug. 27, the Rockies released him, and four days later, he rejoined the Padres, who sent him to El Paso for a quick tuneup and then added him to the roster on Sept. 9. He collected three hits apiece in his first two games back, including a homer off the Astros’ Cristian Javier, and hit a reassuring .295/.367/.409 (120 wRC+) in 49 PA with San Diego. Still, he finished the year with -2.0 WAR, the lowest mark of any position player in the majors. So while he did land a major league contract, he ended up taking quite a pay cut. He’s guaranteed a base salary of $1 million, with incentives that can add another $1.5 million according to FanSided’s Robert Murray.

Profar was more effective against lefties (.275/.347/.427, 97 wRC+ in 147 PA) than righties (.229/.311/.345, 68 WRC+ in 374 PA) last year, but in the aggregate, he had been pretty platoon neutral prior to last season, with a 104 wRC+ against lefties and 100 against righties from 2018–22. While he showed disciplined when it came to chasing pitches out of the strike zone (just 24.5% in 2023, a point below his career norm) and swung at more pitches than ever inside the zone (68.5%), he just didn’t make much good contact. His 86.5 mph average exit velocity, 4% barrel rate, and 31.7% hard-hit rate respectively ranked in the ninth, 10th, and 12th percentiles, and it’s not as though he legged out extra hits with 13th-percentile speed. He outdid his .344 xSLG by a whole 24 points; otherwise his actual and expected numbers were just a few points apart.

All of which is to say that this isn’t a case of looking at a mediocre performance and seeing obvious signs of potential positive regression. This is one where a rebound is likely to be driven by soft factors. Connected to general manager A.J. Preller from their days with the Rangers, Profar is back in an environment where he has performed well, and one where he’s considered a popular, positive presence. From The Athletic’s Dennis Lin:

A popular teammate, Profar has long been close with such players as [Fernando Tatis Jr.] and infielders Ha-Seong Kim and Manny Machado.

“It’s hard to quantify; otherwise, we would have this thing figured out in our game,” [manager Mike] Shildt said. “But having the experience and knowing how important clubhouses are, how important it is to have positive guys that also can share truths with everybody around them, hold guys accountable in a good way — Jurickson brings that.”

If you’re wondering about how often players who plummet as far below replacement level as Profar did turn things around the next season, the answer is not often. Going back to 2001, I found 28 other player-seasons with at least 200 PA and -2.0 WAR. Twelve of those were by catchers, many whose values were retroactively downgraded by negative framing run estimates; I wasn’t really interested in their fates (sorry, guys). Of the 16 other players, one never played in the majors again, while the rest averaged 376 PA and 0.6 WAR in their follow-up seasons, with Aubrey Huff (5.7 WAR in 2010), Adam Dunn (2.1 WAR in 2012) and Jermaine Dye (1.8 WAR in 2004) the big success stories; each went on to extend his career by at least a couple more years. On the other hand, seven of the 15 were below replacement level the next year as well, and many of them didn’t play much longer. Profar’s own Depth Charts projection looks a lot like that group’s average: .238/.325/.369 (93 wRC+) with 0.2 WAR in 364 PA.

It’s difficult to envision Profar getting a ton of playing time with that kind of performance, but right now, the Padres’ outfield picture is a nearly blank canvas. Prior to his signing, the team had just two outfielders on its 40-man roster, namely Fernando Tatis Jr. and José Azocar, both right-handed hitters. The 25-year-old Tatis played in a career-high 141 games last year after returning from his 80-game suspension for violating the game’s performance-enhancing drug policy, and while he hit just .257/.322/.449 for a career-low 113 wRC+, stellar defense (10 OAA and 29 DRS in right field, 8 OAA and 27 DRS including his 30 innings in center) boosted his overall production to 4.4 WAR. Azocar, who turns 28 on May 11, hit for a 78 wRC+ in 102 PA last year and owns a career .249/.292/.341 (81 wRC+) line in 318 PA over two seasons. The small-sample metrics suggest he’s an above-average center fielder, but he doesn’t project to do much as a hitter.

As for the space that’s been vacated, with the death of chairman Peter Seidler and a mandate to trim last year’s payroll ($280.3 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes), Juan Soto and Trent Grisham were traded to the Yankees in early December in exchange for a five-player package headlined by Michael King. Soto made 154 starts in left field for the Padres last year, Grisham 142 starts in center; along with Tatis, they accounted for 90.5% of the team’s plate appearances as outfielders. Other than Azocar, who started 14 times in center, nine in right and once in left and took 95 PA as an outfielder, they had seven players who combined for just 100 PA in that capacity, with Profar (24) the leader. The six others are gone from the organization, with David Dahl, the team’s Opening Day right fielder last year, and Adam Engel, who briefly played center, released in the first half of last season. Rougned Odor is now a Yomiuri Giant, while Ben Gamel and Taylor Kohlwey both signed minor league deals with the Mets, and Brandon Dixon has yet to resurface with another organization.

Obviously, that leaves a lot of playing time to give at two of the three outfield spots. Beyond Profar, the team has half a dozen non-roster invitees in camp. Three have major league experience, namely 29-year-old righty-swinging Óscar Mercado, 28-year-old switch-hitter Bryce Johnson, and 24-year-old lefty Cal Mitchell. Mercado is the most experienced, a former Guardians prospect who made 32 PA for the Cardinals — who originally drafted him in the second round in 2013 — last year. He owns a career .237/.289/.388 (82 wRC+) line in 973 PA but has at least shown he can play center field. Last year, he hit .299/.367/.523 (114 wRC+) with 14 homers in 347 PA spread out between Triple-A stops in Memphis, El Paso, and Oklahoma City. Mainly a center fielder, Johnson, a 2017 sixth-round pick by the Giants, hit .163/.229/.256 (35 wRC+) in his 48 PA with San Francisco last year, but he did bat a healthier .280/.373/.455 (103 wRC+) with eight homers and 18 steals in 298 PA at Triple-A Sacramento. Mitchell, a 2017 second-round pick by the Pirates, made just five plate appearances for Pittsburgh last year after hitting .226/.286/.349 (78 wRC+) in 232 PA as a right fielder in 2022. He hit a thin .261/.333/.414 (87 wRC+) at Triple-A Indianapolis in 2023, after a much better showing at that level, .339/.391/.547 (146 wRC+) the year before.

Of more interest among the NRIs are prospects Jakob Marsee, Tirso Ornelas, and Robert Perez Jr. Eric Longenhagen covered the first two in more detail last month in the Padres’ Imminent Big Leaguers roundup. The 22-year-old Marsee, a lefty, is a 40+ FV center field prospect who hit .273/.413/.425 (142 wRC+) with 13 homers and 41 steals in 400 PA at High-A Fort Wayne, then .286/.412/.446 (134 wRC+) with three homers and five steals in 69 PA at Double-A San Antonio, and capped it with an MVP-winning performance in the Arizona Fall League. As you might ascertain from the stolen base totals, his 60-grade speed is his best tool, and his contact and chase-rate data is very promising. Longenhagen described him as a fourth outfielder type whose statistical case is stronger than his visual one: “Marsee is barrel chested and stocky, a bit stiff, and I think he has some plate coverage issues (big velo up/away) that have yet to be exposed by (mostly) A-ball pitching. Marsee is a short-levered pull hitter capable of doing damage versus pitches on the very inner edge of the plate, and I think pitchers can neutralize his power by staying away from him.”

Ornelas is a Tijuana-born 23-year-old lefty swinger who hit .285/.371/.452 (111 wRC+) with 15 homers and eight steals split between San Antonio (126 wRC+) and El Paso (92 wRC+). Longehagen, who has compared him to Billy McKinney, wrote that Ornelas has undergone multiple swing changes with limited success in tapping into his plus raw power, but he does hit the ball hard (42% hard-hit rate, 114 mph max exit velo). A 23-year-old righty hitter from Venezuela, Perez hit .242/.321/.416 (93 wRC+) with 17 homers for the Mariners’ Double-A Arkansas affiliate last season. His 7.5% walk rate and 30.5% strikeout rate were downright cringeworthy, which explains what Longenhagen wrote when he placed him among the Mariners’ other prospects of note last summer. “[Perez] has plus power, but his combo of whiffs and poor plate discipline has kept him in this section of the list for a while.”

According to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Padres plan to experiment with 20-year-old shortstop Jackson Merrill, the team’s 2021 first-round pick, in the outfield as well. Merrill, currently the team’s number two prospect (55 FV), hit a combined .277/.326/.444 (108 wRC+) with 15 homers and 15 steals split between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio. Blocked by Xander Bogaerts and Ha-Seong Kim in the middle infield, he’s already traveling down the defensive spectrum because of his below-average hands; at San Antonio he played five games in left field, two at second base, and one at first. For Longenhagen, playing Merrill at third base (in place of Machado as he recovers from elbow surgery) or left field during the spring represents “the best chance for the Padres to catch a special sort of lightning in a bottle.”

Added Shildt, “We do want to kind of read the tea leaves and get him in the outfield and let him see what that looks like.” While the manager cited Profar’s versatility, his 31 innings at first base and one at second after rejoining the Padres last September were his first non-outfield innings since 2021.

The Padres intend to add another outfielder and a starting pitcher, according to Acee, and still have about $20 million to spend to keep themselves under the first CBT threshold of $237 million. Among the free agent outfielders still on the market are Adam Duvall and Michael A. Taylor, both of whom are capable center fielders, as well as Tommy Pham, Whit Merrifield, Eddie Rosario, Randal Grichuk, and Robbie Grossman. All of which is to say that the ink’s hardly dry on this picture, and despite Profar’s signing, he’ll have to work to keep from getting erased from it.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the cities of the Padres’ High-A and Double-A affiliates. This has been corrected.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about former Mets GM Billy Eppler’s suspension for fabricating injuries, then Stat Blast (15:25) about players who amassed the most WAR for their secondary, tertiary, quaternary (etc.) teams, Hall of Famers who played with their hometown teams, and uniform numbers assigned to different players with the same surname on the same team. Then they preview the 2024 Boston Red Sox (33:13) with The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier and the 2024 San Diego Padres (1:16:44) with MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell.

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It is not easy to skip a whole year of something and come back with the same level of performance or skill. Baseball is no different, even for the best of ballplayers. Fernando Tatis Jr. missed the entire 2022 season because of wrist injuries and a suspension for using performance enhancing drugs. While he was serving his suspension, he underwent labrum surgery to repair a recurring issue that hampered his ability to consistently stay on the field. He was fully healthy upon his return in 2023, and he remained that way for the entire season.

Yet, despite avoiding injury for the first full season of his career, in 2023 Tatis had his least productive year at the plate. His 113 wRC+ was 41 points below the mark he had recorded over his first three big league seasons. He also set career lows in average (.257), on-base percentage (.322), slugging (.449), ISO (.191) and wOBA (.332). From a data perspective, his quality of contact took a significant hit, though that isn’t all that surprising. Even after athletes return to the field, it takes time for them to regain their explosiveness following serious injuries and surgeries. Ronald Acuña Jr. is a perfect example of that. He tore his ACL in July 2021, underwent season-ending surgery, and missed Atlanta’s first 19 games of 2022. Like Tatis last year, Acuña was mostly healthy for the rest of the season but did not perform up to his standards. Then, of course, last year he won the NL MVP and became the first player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 70 bases in a season.

Tatis will look to take a similar path, but in order to do so, he’ll have to figure out and address the root causes (mechanics, swing decisions, etc.) of this big drop off. Back in September, Ben Clemens investigated how spray angle on fly balls impacts some of the hardest hitters in the game, Tatis being one of them. One of the key conclusions of Ben’s research is that hitters who pull their fly balls at an extreme rate, such as Isaac Paredes, don’t do more with those batted balls; they just hit them much more frequently, which allows them to outproduce others on fly balls, despite not having the eye-popping power that we’d assume would be the main causal variable.

This is notable for Tatis because, over his first three seasons, he hit the ball with enough power to do damage on fly balls no matter the spray angle. That was not the case last year.

From 2019 through 2021, Tatis’ wOBA on fly balls slightly outpaced his xwOBA, while last year, he greatly underperformed his expected numbers. Much of that can be explained by his pull rate dropping from 30.5% over his first three seasons to 21.8% in 2023. However, that’s not the only variable at play here, because even when he hit straightaway fly balls in those first three years, he had a .764 wOBA. That’s well below his .894 xwOBA, but it was still the third-highest mark among all batters from 2019–21 (min. 150 fly balls). Last season, though, Tatis finished with a .291 wOBA on straightaway fly balls, significantly lower than his .653 xwOBA. Crushing balls to the deepest parts of the park was once a Tatis superpower; in 2023, it was his kryptonite.

To better understand how this happened, let’s look at how Tatis fared in different areas of the strike zone. By breaking down his performance in different zones, we’ll get a better idea of any holes that may have developed in his swing. For all his woes last year, Tatis continued to rake against left-handed pitching (152 wRC+), so I’m going to focus on his splits vs. righties, against whom he had a career low 101 wRC+. The table below shows how Tatis performed against pitches from righties in each third of the zone, first in 2021 and then in 2023.

There are drops across the board here, but my goodness, what the heck happened on the outer third? In 2021, Tatis ranked second in right-on-right wOBA on outer third pitches. This year, if you were a righty who could locate on the outer third, Tatis would do the work for you.

What’s the deal? Making contact wasn’t the problem, because he actually whiffed less often against the outer third last year than he did in 2021. The real issue was his quality of contact. On his 67 batted balls against pitches from righties on the outer third in 2021, his xwOBACON was .634. In 2023, it was .305. Ooof.

A change in swing path is typically to blame when a player goes from destroying the outer third to hardly covering it at all. Let’s look at the video to figure out what mechanical flaws altered his swing path. Here are some swings from 2021 against outer third pitches from righties.

Here is a standard heater away with a pretty neutral body angle (sorry Keegan Thompson):

This one is a low and away breaking ball with a pretty aggressive body adjustment to get the barrel under the ball:

And lastly, here is a high heater that needed an upright body adjustment:

Each of these three swings shows how Tatis adjusted his body in different ways to get to his barrel to outer third pitches. The swings are reciprocal, athletic, and vicious. His stability with the ground is consistent no matter the posture of his upper body. Now let’s look at three swings on similar pitches from 2023, starting with another standard middle-away heater:

Here is a swing on a low breaking ball with a body adjustment where Tatis couldn’t quite create the same angle as he did in 2021:

Then here is a can of corn fly ball to center on an up and away heater where Tatis caught it off the end of the barrel:

OK, now for some comparison. Off the rip, it’s clear that Tatis’ stride is working in a different direction. It’s more neutral now than it used to be. Instead of working from a neutral stance into a closed stride, he’s working from an open stance into a neutral stride. The starkest comparison is looking at how he handled Thompson’s heater in 2021 versus the 2023 one we saw from Cristian Javier. Against Javier, it was the exact kind of pitch you’d expect Tatis to drill into the opposite field gap, but his legs didn’t create enough space for him to get his barrel moving in the optimal direction. Instead of a laser opposite field homer, it was a measly liner to left for an easy out.

In 2021, Tatis had a more stable base, which allowed him to create a more drastic angle with his upper body against the low breaking ball. That made the difference between his line drive in the gap from 2021 and last year’s line drive to the shortstop. On both of the high pitches, he had the tall posture he needed to get on plane, but in 2023, he couldn’t get his bat on the proper horizontal angle to make flush contact, causing him to hit the ball off the end of the bat instead of the barrel.

As I always say, we’re looking for reciprocal movements. If he’s still kicking back aggressively but doesn’t have the movement beforehand to make the kick back smooth, then he’s creating asymmetrical movements. The closed stride and smooth kick back was his recipe for success in 2021. The logic here is that when he strides closed, he has a more stable connection to the ground, leading to better positions to get his barrel on plane.

He did not do that last year, and as a result, he created less space for his upper body to cover the outer third effectively, which sapped his production on fly balls. Because he was coming back from surgery, it’s possible that he wasn’t comfortable making the same movements he had in the past, though it’s hard to believe that would be the only reason for losing his mechanics. After all, his surgery was on his shoulder, and this is a lower body problem. That said, even if he knew what was wrong, his shoulder could have limited the amount of extra swings he could take to fix it during the season.

Now that he is healthy, he should be able to do the drills and cage work necessary to correct his mechanics and return to his previous rotational patterns.

The San Diego Padres are falling apart a little, having divested themselves this winter of Juan Soto, Trent Grisham, Josh Hader, and (most likely) Blake Snell. But reinforcements are on the way, in the shape of Wandy Peralta, who on Wednesday agreed to a four-year, $16.5 million contract. Peralta might be the second-best active pitcher named Peralta, and the second-best left-handed pitcher in baseball history named Wandy, but he’s still a good reliever.

Peralta made 165 appearances over two and a half seasons with the Yankees, with a cumulative ERA of 2.82 despite pedestrian strikeout numbers. But in the age of heavy metal fastballs and sliders, Peralta is a little more refined and subtle. His most common pitch is a changeup, which is useful against lefties as well as righties, and it’s hard to square up. Read the rest of this entry »

Graham Pauley emerged as one of the most promising hitting prospects in the San Diego Padres system this past season. Selected in the 13th round of the 2022 draft out of Duke University, the 23-year-old left-handed-hitting third baseman slashed .308/.393/.539 with 23 home runs and an organization-best 152 wRC+ across Low-A Lake Elsinore, High-A Fort Wayne, and Double-A San Antonio.

Count Eric Longenhagen among those bullish on his potential with the bat. Earlier this month, our lead prospect analyst wrote that Pauley’s swing “is gorgeous — it often looks like a mini version of Corey Seager‘s cut, completely connected from the ground up.” He assigned Pauley a 45 FV, along with a 45/50 hit tool grade and a 50/55 game power grade.

Pauley talked hitting late in the Arizona Fall League season.

———

David Laurila: You put up some pretty impressive numbers this year. What do you attribute that to?

Graham Pauley: “I credit it to the Padres, but also to myself for putting in the work, day in and day out. Being a 13th rounder, you also don’t have a ton of expectations, so you can kind of go into it with a free spirit. Over the course of my time here — ever since being drafted, including throughout this year — I feel that I’ve gotten better. Minor swing changes, getting stronger, being more agile. That’s all helped and gotten me to where I am today.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the San Diego Padres farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. I tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium defensive positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Padres farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a full Padres prospect list that includes Robby Snelling and Braden Nett and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Joe Mauer isn’t the only number one pick on this year’s ballot. In 2000, one year before the Twins took Mauer with the first pick, the Marlins used the top pick to select Adrián González out of Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, California. He would turn out to be one of the more successful number one picks, making five All-Star teams, winning four Gold Gloves, and receiving MVP votes in eight different seasons in his 15-year major league career spent with the Rangers, Padres, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Mets. He never played a major league game for the Marlins, however, and was traded five times, including twice at the center of his era’s biggest blockbusters. Along with his two older brothers, he also continued the legacy of his father, David González Sr., by representing Mexico in international competition.

Adrián Sabin González was born on May 8, 1982 in San Diego, California, the youngest of three sons of David and Alba González. His father had been a star first baseman in his own right for the Mexican National Team, and when the family lived in San Diego, he commuted daily across the border to Tijuana, Mexico, where he owned a successful air conditioning business. All three of the couple’s sons were born in the United States and all three would play baseball. The oldest, David Jr., was a shortstop who made it as far as college baseball but injured his arm and never played professionally. The middle son, Edgar (b. 1978), had a 15-year professional career himself (2000-15), including two seasons as Adrián’s teammate in San Diego. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Ben Clemens broke down the trade that sent Tyler Glasnow to the Dodgers, as well as the extension that Glasnow signed soon afterward. In this article, our focus is the conditional option at the very end of the contract. Before the 2028 season, the Dodgers have a $30 million team option. If they decline to exercise it, Glasnow has his own $21.5 million player option. When I read about the structure of the options, my first thought was to wonder why this doesn’t happen all the time. Here’s how Ben interpreted the situation:

“It seems likely to me that one of those two will be exercised; in my mind, it’s a five-year, $135 million deal with a $10 million kicker if he’s pitching well in year four. The circumstances where neither side exercises their option just feel much less likely than one side or the other being an obvious yes.”

I was inclined to agree. It is sort of like a performance bonus: Pitch well and we’ll bring you back for $30 million, but if you don’t, then you’ll be back for $21.5 million. The $8.5 million difference is a lot of money, but it’s also small enough that, depending on the market and their own particular health and performance, a player might not be certain that they’d make it up in free agency. It might just be easier and safer to stick around. The more I thought about it, though, the more wrinkles I saw. Read the rest of this entry »

Shouldered with the needle-threading task of simultaneously cutting payroll and rebuilding a pitching staff thinned out by the departure of several key free agents, the Padres traded superstar Juan Soto and Gold Glove-caliber center fielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees on Wednesday in exchange for three big league arms — righties Michael King, Randy Vásquez, and Jhony Brito — as well as a fourth who is nearly ready for primetime in prospect Drew Thorpe and backup catcher Kyle Higashioka. Ben Clemens did a full analysis on the impact that the 25-year-old Soto, one of baseball’s best hitters, will have on the Yankees. I’m going to dive deeper into the arms headed to the Gaslamp District and talk about how the Padres might go about finishing their offseason to-do list.

Most readers are probably aware that a mandate to shed payroll was a driving factor for this trade from San Diego’s perspective. The club’s sudden shift in financial direction occurred in the wake of the death of owner Peter Seidler. The trade also addresses a large portion of the Padres on-field baseball needs, though it also creates massive new holes in their lineup and defensive alignment where Soto and Grisham used to be. The Friars will need to fill or upgrade at least two or three spots of their currently-projected lineup if they want to compete with the defending NL champion Diamondbacks and reigning division-winning Dodgers in 2024, and they probably also need another starting pitcher or two to round out their rotation. Shedding Soto’s salary likely created some space to do so, but given the Padres’ financial constraints, perhaps not enough to solve all of these problems via free agency. There may be internal candidates, especially on the position player side, who can contribute at the league minimum salary in 2024; I’ll get to those prospects later.

Let’s start with who came back to San Diego and how they fit into an overhauled pitching staff. Prior to the trade, our Padres rotation projection looked rough. Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish were fortified by 27-year-old knuckleballer Matt Waldron, and walk-prone MLB virgin Jay Groome. The free-agent departures of Nick Martinez, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, and reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell, who pitched a combined 570 innings in 2023, left the Padres in dire need of impact and depth to have a functional and competitive pitching staff in 2024. Even if one believes (as I do) that prospect Jairo Iriarte is talented enough to make a meaningful near-term impact, the Padres still badly needed to add several pitchers to their big league staff. This trade gets them most of the way there, as all four of the pitchers acquired for Soto could reasonably be expected to pitch in the big leagues next season. Read the rest of this entry »