Congratulations on your brand-new time machine! Don’t press any buttons just yet. There’s a reason you’ve been given this time machine.

See, A.J. Preller’s done some things, and they’ve been fascinating. Fascinating because, since he took over as general manager of the San Diego Padres nearly two years ago to the day, he’s been like the Two-Face of GMs, just the handsome and less-deformed and evil version. OK, maybe it wasn’t a great analogy.

But there have seemingly been two Prellers! And they’ve each been fascinating in their own right. Preller 1.0 wanted to put a stamp on his new club, wanted to contend right away, and made a flurry of trades in an attempt to do so that now seems ill-advised. Plenty of young, intriguing, cheap talent went out, and plenty of once-enticing-but-not-so-much-anymore, ill-fitting, expensive veteran talent came in. Things didn’t go well, the Padres were bad, and Preller soon reversed course. That first season looked like a disaster, and if the egg wasn’t already directly on Preller’s face, it was at least cooking in the pan.

Since then, Preller’s done a 180. Plenty of that older talent that meant nothing to the Padres’ future has gone back out, and plenty of new, again-intriguing young faces have been brought in. Just as the majority of Preller’s first-wave moves were seen at the time as questionable, the majority of his recent moves have been regarded well. The Craig Kimbrel return was seen as a positive for San Diego. Folks were surprised at what Preller received for Fernando Rodney. Anderson Espinoza is now a Padre. Which brings us to the present. The Padres farm system is starting to look real interesting again. However far back Preller set the Padres with the first year’s moves, he’s been doing his damnedest to make it up.

And so here’s what’s got me interested: you’ve got a time machine, and your goal is long-term success with the Padres. You can erase all of Preller’s moves, pretend he was never even hired, and start over again with the 2014-15 future core players and build from there. Or, alternatively, you can take the ones they’ve got now.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres continue to capitalize on the short-term success of their big leaguers by parlaying what might just be small-sample mirages into good prospects. For those of you missed my report on RHP Chris Paddack, who San Diego got from Miami in exchange for Fernando Rodney, that write up is here. The Padres arm du jour is Anderson Espinoza, one of baseball most electric young arms and, in my opinion, a great return for the likes of Drew Pomeranz. Read the rest of this entry »

The All-Star break is often just that — a much-needed break, for players and executives alike. You might’ve heard this before, but the regular season is something of a grind. Yet the break also comes just in advance of the trade deadline, so one can never get too comfortable. And as trades go, today there’s been a big one: Drew Pomeranz is going from the Padres to the Red Sox, and Anderson Espinoza is reportedly going from the Red Sox to the Padres.

Let’s get this out of the way now: The A’s look really silly. They looked silly even before this — Pomeranz was an All-Star! — but Espinoza is a major return, and quite preferable to Yonder Alonso and Marc Rzepczynski. This is a move I’m sure Oakland regrets. There’s another move I’m sure they regret more.

The Oakland part of this is funny. But the Boston and San Diego parts are also interesting, and obviously more relevant. For the Padres, this moves the rebuild forward, getting another boost from the Red Sox farm system. Perhaps the team learned a lesson from last summer’s inactivity. And for the Red Sox, they’ve now picked up one of the only quality starters known to be out there. Pomeranz’s sudden breakout appears to be legitimate. In question is how much he has left in the tank.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think we all love the idea of a hitter being taught by Barry Bonds, or a pitcher being taught by Pedro Martinez. It’s because we can’t help but imagine those icons might in some way be able to convey their baseballing essence. In reality, it doesn’t work like that. Pedro wasn’t Pedro because of some career lesson; he was Pedro because he simply threw his pitches better than anyone else, and the things that allowed him to do that are particular to him. You can’t teach your own personality, you can’t teach your own feel, and you can’t teach your own instincts. You can teach mechanics. It doesn’t require a star to teach mechanics.

Have you ever heard of Travis Higgs? No offense to Travis Higgs, but, no, probably not. Higgs has never made it to the major leagues. He was never a hot-shot prospect. He hasn’t been involved in any kind of high-profile scandal that I know about. To my own brain, Travis Higgs might as well be someone named, I don’t know, Reginald Beanbottom. Higgs has never meant anything to me. But he’s meant an awful lot to Drew Pomeranz. In a way, Higgs is partially responsible for turning Pomeranz into a complete starting pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Miami Marlins have traded white-hot RHP Chris Paddack to San Diego in exchange for Fernando Rodney. Paddack was an eighth-round draftee in 2015 and was signed for a $400,000 bonus. He dominated prep competition at Cedar Park High School in Texas, striking out 134 hitters in 75 innings during his senior year. He fell to the eighth round, in part, because he was 19-and-a-half on draft day. He was also a fastball/changeup guy without great breaking-ball feel. Arms like that tend to slot after fastball/breaking-ball pitchers because orgs think it’s easier to develop a changeup over time than it is to learn how to break off a curveball.

Paddack was solid during Gulf Coast League play after he signed last summer but looked so good this spring that Miami let him bypass the New York-Penn League and sent him straight to Low-A. He had made some physical strides, strengthening his lower half and repeating a delivery that was often inconsistent and stiff in high school. The results this season have been staggering: 48 strikeouts and just 2 walks — plus only nine hits allowed — in 28.1 innings over six starts. Paddack hasn’t allowed a hit in his last three starts and two of those came in consecutive appearances against a Rome lineup that failed to make adjustments to his stuff or sequencing.

A broad-shouldered 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, Paddack has a well-paced, easy delivery. He commands a low-90s fastball – with terrific plane and run, which help the pitch play as plus – to both sides of the plate and has been up to 95. The meal-ticket secondary pitch here is the changeup. It’s already plus and Paddack will use it against both lefties and righties. It’s difficult to identify out of his hand, dies as it reaches the plate.

Perhaps one of the key components of Paddack’s step forward this season has been the development of a curveball. Paddack struggled to find consistency with any sort of breaking ball in high school and public-sector reports on what he was throwing were all over the place. Dan Farnsworth’s offseason Marlins prospect list had Paddack presciently ranked as the #2 player in the system but listed the breaking ball as a slider. The curveball Paddack throws is of the 12-6 variety and rests in the 73-77 mph range. It’s a fringe-average offering right now but is flashing average and should mature there, though Paddack’s expedient breaking-ball improvement might be a sign that the pitch has more development in the tank than is typical.

When pitches get away from Paddack they do so up in the zone, and while pitch movement has been his saving grace in those situations — and while he’s still been able to miss bats — it may become more of an issue at the upper levels. He’ll also have to improve upon sequencing and pitch usage, but Paddack is just a year removed from high school and it isn’t reasonable to expect much more than he’s shown to this point.

There are also those who think sudden upticks in velocity like the one Paddack has experienced over the last several months are harbingers of ulnar-collateral doom but there’s nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to support that and Paddack’s build and delivery don’t sound any alarms.

I think, given Paddack’s relatively short track record of success and the fact that he’s just a year removed from high school, there’s still a good bit of risk associated with his prospectdom, but he has mid-rotation stuff right now and that changeup might just continue to improve.

Grades
Fastball: 60/60
Changeup: 60/65
Curveball: 45/50
Control/Command: 45/50+
FV: 50

There’s a bizarre trend in baseball this season that I’ve spent much of the year ignoring because it’s uncomfortable to believe. As unpredictable as baseball can be at a granular level, it’s equivalently reliable in a macro sense. There’s a game virtually every night; nine defensive players are on the field at any given time; base-runners run counterclockwise; and first basemen mash. This is the baseball I know. This is the sport I’ve been watching for decades. And, yet, as Aaron Gleeman discussed at Baseball Prospectus recently, offensive production from first basemen this season has been little more than mediocre.

When Gleeman wrote his piece last week, first basemen had compiled a .761 OPS as a unit this season. They’ve since raised that to a robust .769 OPS — or, roughly the same mark as third basemen (.772 OPS) and second basemen (.761 OPS). Take a moment to truly absorb that… Second basemen have produced an OPS a mere eight points lower than first basemen. As a result, I’ve found myself searching for answers at first base that I can hope will restore balance to baseball. There aren’t many to be found — Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Belt, and Eric Hosmer are a few of the only 20-somethings providing hope at the position — but there is one notable former top prospect who is currently growing into a role as a productive first baseman after having been written off by some as a bust. I’m referring, of course, to the twice-traded San Diego Padre, Wil Myers.

Now, Wil Myers may not be a masher in the first-base tradition of guys like Frank Thomas, Mark McGwire, and Albert Pujols, but he currently ranks fourth among MLB first basemen in total offensive production. Not only that, Myers is the youngest qualified first baseman in the league this year. Of course, that’s a bit of a back-handed compliment because first base is often the landing spot for older players who can no longer hack it at a position which requires more range. The good news for Myers, though, is that a history of arm problems sent him to first base, not a lack of speed. Still, it’s very much worth noting that, although it feels as though Myers has been around for ages, he’s still just 25 years old — more than a year younger that George Springer!

Read the rest of this entry »

Two offseasons ago, James Shields was seeking a five-year deal worth $125 million. He went unsigned until February, and ended up settling for a four-year deal worth $75 million in San Diego. One year and four months later, the Padres are paying more than half of Shields’ remaining salary for him to play on another team.

The deal goes like this:

So the full deal — James Shields and cash for Erik Johnson and Fernando Tatis Jr. — is what @barstoolWSD originally reported. Nice work.

— Dennis Lin (@sdutdennislin) June 4, 2016

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday afternoon, the Mariners clobbered the Padres, and this happened:

The Bethancourt in question is Christian Bethancourt, the only major-league Bethancourt, and as you can see, he finished the game hitless. Bethancourt, though, has finished a lot of games hitless. He’d never finished a game at second base, and he’d definitely never finished a game at second base after having caught, pitched, and played left field. Sometimes the whole structure of baseball collapses when a blowout gets blowout-y enough, and on Tuesday, Bethancourt became the fifth player we know of in big-league history to play all those positions in a game. He’d still be the fifth ever even if you took away the pitching appearance. The four previous times this happened, the player played literally every position, the manager clearly just having fun. Bethancourt stumbled upon a brand new box-score line. Baseball still has its firsts.

The question of the day, which means nothing: all right, so, Bethancourt appeared at four different positions. How comfortable was he at each? Time to analyze some body language. Sure, bodies can lie, but they don’t know how to speak in cliches.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few years back, I wrote a four–part series about the worst final seasons for good players. It was inspired by Willie Mays, who very prominently had a bad final season, but was far from the worst season. Now, David Ortiz has inspired the flip side of the coin – the best final season. The Large Father is off to quite a hot start, and so some people have asked, how good does he have to be to produce the best final season of all-time? As you’ll see, the answer is he’ll have to do quite a lot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a little stroll through the big-league leaders in strikeout rate. Jose Fernandez. All right. Clayton Kershaw! Of course. Drew Pomeranz. Naturally. Danny Salazar. Predictable. Max Scherzer. Duh. Stephe-wait, rewind. Well I’ll be damned, there he is. Pomeranz, indeed.

Most recently, Pomeranz went into Chicago and struck out 10 Cubs, and eight of them weren’t even John Lackey. And if you think this might just be a case of strikeout fetishizing, Pomeranz owns a 1.80 ERA, and he’s given up just two unearned runs. The peripherals are good, even if the walks are a little bit up. Seven starts in, and Pomeranz looks fantastic. Not bad for a guy who came to camp as a probable reliever. While relatively little has gone right for the Padres, Pomeranz looks like he could be gathering and assembling all of his pieces. It’s either taken a while, or it’s taken no time at all. That’s up to your own perspective.

Read the rest of this entry »