The Padres Need a First Base Upgrade

In 2020, the San Diego Padres finally had their breakout season, going 37-23 in the pandemic-shortened sprint, good enough for the third-best record in baseball. A lot of players were responsible for getting them to where they ended up, but one of the best bits of news for the team was that Eric Hosmer was one of them. After signing a long-term contract prior to the 2018 season, Hosmer hit .259/.316/.412 in his first two seasons with the Friars, for a wRC+ of 93 and -0.5 combined WAR that placed him near the bottom of the ranks of baseball’s first baseman. But in 2020, with the highest average launch angle and lowest grounder percentage of his career, he hit .287/.333/.517, giving some hope that would turn things around.

If the first three months of 2021 are any indication, those hopes have mostly evaporated, ninth inning, game-tying home runs aside. Hosmer’s still hitting the ball very hard, but he’s largely back to his old, pre-2020 habits, hitting an inordinate number of pitches straight into the dirt, knocking out more ants than opposing pitchers. Since 2015, Statcast has kept track of what they call the “Sweet Spot” or pitches hit with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees. Only twice has Hosmer been over 30%: in 2020 and his equally excellent 2017 season. For 2021, that mark has dropped to his lowest number yet, 22.3%. As a result, even with a better average exit velocity than last year, he’s missing 150 points of slugging percentage:

When the Padres weren’t competing, any real damage done to the team by Hosmer’s lack of punch was a financial question rather than one that had a significant impact on the team’s baseball fate. In 2021, with the Padres contending, that’s a different story. The Giants have crashed the predicted Dodgers-Padres NL West race, turning a duel into a mêlée, and San Diego first base is one of the weakest positions among any of the three rosters:

In other words, starting Hosmer nearly cancels out the positive effect of being able to start Manny Machado every night. Wil Myers is a problem as well, but first base is currently the team’s biggest issue and one that is projected to persist for the rest of the year.

ZiPS was never optimistic about Hosmer, but at the start of his San Diego tenure, it projected him to be a two-win player for the first half of the deal. Instead, thanks to Hosmer’s 2021, he’s once again back down to replacement level. With the chances that 2020 reflected a meaningful comeback fading, so too have his projections for the rest of the contract:

If the projections hold true, Hosmer would be smart to not exercise his opt-out clause after the 2022 season, leaving a final eight-year total of -0.1 WAR for $144 million. I actually had to tell ZiPS to assume that Hosmer wouldn’t be benched; the model for predicting playing time in a player’s final years was determined to stop playing him after 2022.

Ignoring the long-term first base problems, simply getting an extra win would be a real boost in a tight pennant race. Coincidentally, that’s about what adding Trey Mancini from the Orioles would give to the Padres, bringing a bit of real-world applicability to a theoretical solution. Let’s re-roll the divisional races both with the current rosters and with the Padres adding an extra win.

ZiPS isn’t completely sold on the Giants, though it’s gotten to the point where it sees them as a roughly .500 team (a .508 team, to be exact), a significant step up from its preseason prognostications. But even if they’re a .508 team, they’re a .508 team with a six-game advantage over the Padres as we approach the halfway mark. A .500 team in their position will likely remain relevant come August and September.

It’s not a massive change, but by this estimate, one additional win is the difference between the Padres spending October playing baseball and playing golf about 8% of the time — that can’t be pooh-poohed easily. Eight percentage points would be a larger improvement than 29 of the 30 teams were projected to make last year as a result of trade deadline moves.

For the San Diego Padres, first base is a short-, medium-, and long-term problem, and problems that go unaddressed have a bad way of coming back to bite at the wrong time. The Padres need to deal with their weakness at first as effectively as they’ve added starting pitching talent over the last year. Moving on from Hosmer isn’t easy, but crushing the dreams of your division rivals ought to be a good motivation.