The Padres Have a First Base Problem

Two years ago, the rebuilding San Diego Padres made a big free agent splash, signing first baseman Eric Hosmer, late of the Kansas City Royals, to a five-year, $105 million contract. If Hosmer decided not to exercise his opt-out clause after the fifth year, the contract would become an eight-year, $144 million pact, then the largest deal signed in the history of the San Diego Padres.

The argument against the Hosmer signing was pretty simple: Eric Hosmer wasn’t very good. Among first basemen from 2011-2017, the years since Hosmer’s rookie season, he ranked just 17th in WAR. When a rate stat like wRC+ is used, Hosmer drops to 26th among first basemen with 1000 plate appearances:

The opt-out only complicated matters, resulting in a contract projected to span eight years in most of the scenarios when the Padres would hope it would last five, and the reverse when the Padres felt the opposite. At the time of the signing, ZiPS evaluated San Diego’s deal as being worth $53 million more than the system would offer Hosmer over eight years. Using a model for the likelihood of a player opting out (an educated guess, as there are relatively few contracts like Hosmer’s) that ranged from 20% to 80% probability, ZiPS priced the consequences of the clause at $22 million. In other words, due to what amounts to three player options, ZiPS evaluated the contract as having the same result, in financial terms, as an eight-year, $166 million contract.

The best possible case for the signing was the one made by FanGraphs alum Mike Petriello. As the argument went, Padres first basemen were largely terrible and Hosmer was a significant upgrade, and even after the signing, the team’s payroll was still very low.

At least two years into the deal, it’s not looking good from the team’s standpoint. Hosmer broke his “good year, replacement level year” pattern in the worst possible way, putting up two sub-replacement seasons in San Diego. The leagues’ home run rate exploded, and Hosmer got left behind. Among the 114 hitters with 1000 plate appearances in 2018-2019, none hit grounders at the 58.2% rate that Hosmer did. Hitting grounders isn’t the end of the world, but successful players of this type typically compensate with other strengths, such as good plate discipline and a high BABIP resulting from those grounders. Christian Yelich is the best example of this; he’s a ground ball-heavy hitter, but one with a heavy walk rate and a career .358 BABIP. And even Yelich’s grounder percentage has declined almost every single year of his career.

Hosmer’s .315 BABIP pales in comparison and he’s never had a 10% walk rate season. His plate discipline went the wrong way in 2019 and he set a career-high in swing percentage (50%) while simultaneously establishing a new personal low in contact rate (73%).

Now, with the Padres approaching contention, the presence of Hosmer has real consequences. In our depth charts, Padres first basemen (mostly Hosmer) are projected to rank 24th in the majors at the position. The only place on the team that registers as a larger problem by this methodology is right field:

The situation in right may be worse, but there’s little reason to think the Padres would be resistant to an upgrade if the position resembled the internet’s favorite failure-icon, the flaming dumpster. Teams don’t tend to accept sunk costs easily and the fact that Hosmer is likely owed $104 million is almost certainly a factor in the team’s plans, leaving them to throw good money (playing time) after bad (the contract).

Players who qualifying for the batting title putting up consecutive sub-replacement seasons is a less frequent occurrence than you may think. Prior to Hosmer, only 63 players in history have managed the feat a total of 75 times. Nobody’s done it since 2014 (Billy Butler and Ryan Howard) and the last player to manage it and still get enough playing time the following year to qualify was Roger Cedeno in 2003. The third time was the charm and Cedeno finally lost his job.

The Padres appear determined to play Hosmer as much as possible in 2020. A platoon would obviously be the first way to reduce his playing time given his career line of .251/.298/.364 against lefties. Hosmer is far from unique in being a lefty hitter with large platoon splits, but the larger issue is that his career .291/.354/.466 line against right-handed pitchers isn’t terribly impressive itself for a northpaw-masher. Looking at the list of first basemen with 1000 plate appearances between 2011 and 2019, Hosmer’s wRC+ against righties ranks 22nd, behind such illustrious superstars as Lucas Duda, Adam Lind, Ike Davis, and Justin Bour.

ZiPS is not optimistic about Hosmer’s next six years:

So where does that leave the Padres? Even assuming a willingness to move on, there aren’t many in-house options that are obvious improvements in 2020. Ty France and Josh Naylor project by both ZiPS and Steamer as equivalent to Hosmer offensively, and short of signing Yasiel Puig and teaching him to play first adequately very quickly, there’s not much available in free agency. Wil Myers is also likely not a preferable option.

Next year’s best first base free agent is likely to be Anthony Rizzo. The Padres should be very interested. The opportunity may even come quicker, with Theo Epstein hinting that the Cubs could become sellers if the team struggled in 2020, though it will likely take more than Andrew Cashner to acquire Rizzo this time around:

Good organizations address their biggest weaknesses, while bad ones pretend that they do not exist. How the Padres deal with their uncomfortable first base situation over the next year will tell us a lot about which category they fall into.