Why Has No One Signed Jurickson Profar Yet?
Let’s talk about free agent outfielders. Nearly every team could use one, either to serve in a starting role or to provide an upgrade over the players who are currently fourth or fifth on the depth chart. Unsurprisingly, reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge took home the largest contract of any outfielder this winter, but 11 inked average annual values of at least $10 million. Along with a variety of part-time and platoon players signed for smaller sums, nearly every big league-caliber outfielder has found a home for the season. Most of the remaining free agents, like Alex Dickerson and Jackie Bradley Jr., project to be around replacement level for 2023. But there’s an outlier, someone who just posted a career-best 2.5 WAR and was projected by our readers for a three-year, $30 million contract – Jurickson Profar. No other unsigned player is projected to earn even a third of that, but as teams start to finalize their rosters during spring training, Profar still doesn’t know what uniform he’ll be playing in come Opening Day.
Entering the offseason, we had Profar pegged as the 36th-best free agent in the class after his $10 million mutual option with the Padres was declined. Neighboring hitters on that list include Michael Brantley, Brandon Drury, and Josh Bell; all three have signed and will earn a combined $37 million in 2023. So what makes teams hesitant to add Profar to their roster?
Let’s compare him to the aforementioned trio of Brantley, Drury, and Bell. In fact, Profar is quite comparable to Brantley and Bell, who both play a position down the defensive spectrum. Both are also considerably better hitters than Profar. Brantley’s wRC+ hasn’t sat below 120 in five years, while Bell’s mark sits at 121 since the beginning of 2021. On the other hand, Profar’s 110 wRC+ last year was his highest in a full season, and his career mark of 94 is substantially worse than that of Brantley or Bell. Other outfielders like J.D. Martinez and Michael Conforto also signed in that price range. In other words, if a team was looking for an everyday left fielder who wouldn’t break the bank, Profar probably wouldn’t have been their first call.
If teams weren’t interested in Profar in an everyday role, then what about bringing him on as a part-time player? While Profar was exclusively a left fielder last year, he has significant experience at all four infield positions. Surely a league-average bat you can plug and play at five different positions would be useful to a contending team. Last season’s Phillies nearly won the World Series despite letting Didi Gregorius (58 wRC+) and Johan Camargo (74 wRC+) combine for almost 400 plate appearances, and nearly every other team has deficiencies at least somewhere on the field. Drury’s two-year, $17 million contract with the Angels shows the value teams place in a multi-positional skill set. Despite entering 2022 with just 0.6 career WAR, Drury experienced a power breakout, clubbing 28 homers and accruing 3 WAR despite not having a dedicated starting position. Instead, he took over wherever he was needed, appearing at five different positions as the Reds and Padres did everything they could to maximize his presence in the batting order.
So why did the Angels choose Drury over Profar? Projection systems view them similarly (both have a 104 Steamer wRC+), and while Los Angeles may have simply had a preference for a power hitter, Drury’s skill on the infield definitely outpaces Profar’s. Despite needing to carry around a suitcase of different gloves, Drury measured in with a +1 RAA around the diamond. Profar’s last extended stretch of play on the infield came in 2019, when he was Oakland’s everyday second baseman. That didn’t go so well, as he finished with a -5 RAA (and an astounding -20 DRS). The previous season, he split time between third base and shortstop with even worse results. While Profar has considerable experience at multiple positions, that hasn’t translated to success anytime recently. And since his move to the outfield, he’s slowed down a step both in the field and on the basepaths. Since the beginning of 2021, Profar’s speed has gone from slightly above average to a bit below, with his speed down the line worsening by a full grade:
| Season | Home to 1st | Sprint Speed | Sprint Speed Percentile | BaseRuns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 4.32 | 27.6 | 63 | 4 |
| 2019 | 4.4 | 26.7 | 46 | 1.8 |
| 2020 | 4.36 | 27 | 55 | 2.7 |
| 2021 | 4.51 | 26.3 | 34 | -1.9 |
| 2022 | 4.48 | 26.6 | 32 | -1.4 |
So Profar might not be the guy you want filling in all over the field when higher quality defensive options exist, but the bat is still legit, right? Not as good as full-time starters like Bell and Brantley, but you can certainly carve out a role for Profar where he generates well above-average production. But maybe not. When the free agent market started to thin out, Michael Baumann wrote about the remaining crop of outfielders, headlined by Profar and longtime Diamondback David Peralta. Peralta’s 104 wRC+ and 1.7 WAR last season were a bit worse than Profar’s, but that didn’t stop the Dodgers from signing him to a one-year deal. Why? Peralta has a clear offensive use case against right-handed pitching: he had a 116 wRC+ against right-handers last season and has a 121 career mark. A team with the right supplementary pieces can do more with 400 plate appearances of Peralta than 600 plate appearances of Profar, who has no significant platoon split. It’s also important to compare Profar not just to hitters as a whole, but to other left fielders. While his 2022 statline would be quite impressive for an up-the-middle defender, corner bats are expected to shoulder more of the offensive load and generally hit better than the shortstops or center fielders:
| Split | Profar | League Average | LF Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| vs. LHP | 0.328 | 0.313 | 0.319 |
| vs. RHP | 0.317 | 0.309 | 0.318 |
While Profar’s overall offensive numbers were quite solid, they look a bit less impressive when compared to others at a bat-first position, especially given that he doesn’t specialize against either handedness of pitcher. In fact, his ZiPS and Steamer projected wRC+ would be below league average for left fielders. Combined with his -4 RAA at the position, it isn’t hard to see why a contending team wouldn’t want to give 150 starts to someone who isn’t a plus contributor on either offense or defense. Recently, I’ve written about players like Austin Slater and Dylan Moore, whose combination of excellent short-side platoon hitting, solid baserunning, and stellar multi-positional defense makes them incredibly useful in a wide variety of situations. Due to their versatile usage, they combined for 4.2 WAR last season in fewer plate appearances than Profar alone. Indeed, Profar profiles as almost a direct opposite to Slater and Moore. While he doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses in his game, his potential team also doesn’t have a way to deploy him exclusively in favorable situations.
Of course, none of this is to say that Profar is a bad player. Above-average hitters with his level of plate discipline don’t grow on trees, but the fact that he was a tier below many other starting outfielders and doesn’t have the specific skill set needed to be an effective role player likely dropped him on team’s priority lists this offseason. Still, he’ll almost certainly be tendered a major league contract before Opening Day rolls around – of all the remaining free agents, his projected 1 WAR ranks second to José Iglesias, while his 2022 WAR total absolutely laps the competition. As players thought to be roster locks get injured or perform poorly during spring training, teams could give Profar a call. While he may not have been their first option, he’s far from their worst.
Kyle is a FanGraphs contributor who likes to write about unique players who aren't superstars. He likes multipositional catchers, dislikes fastballs, and wants to see the return of the 100-inning reliever. He's currently a college student studying math education, and wants to apply that experience to his writing by making sabermetrics more accessible to learn about. Previously, he's written for PitcherList using pitch data to bring analytical insight to pitcher GIFs and on his personal blog about the Angels.
In these types of situations, I always wonder whether the player’s expectations play a role — e.g. (and purely hypothetically), Profar not being willing to take a 1 year contract, or not being willing to take less than (say) $10M/year. In other words, we don’t know what offers he turned down that were then filled by alternatives.
Exactly. I think you hit a point where the player, if they have a particular contract in mind, is incentivized to see who gets hurt in spring training because they may not be getting it otherwise
Bradley signed a minor-league deal with the Royals yesterday.
Can’t think of a more perfect Royals- type player
I can’t think of a player on the Royals that is much like Profar.
You just have to believe he’s just too high on himself. He’s not a bad player by any means, but he’s not really a good player either. There’s nothing to really set him apart and being a LF only really really limits him. If teams were confident he could competently play the IF that would change everything. He last played 1st and 2nd in 2021 and his track record at 2nd is not good. He hasn’t played 3rd and SS since 2018 and those seem to be definitely out of the question. So a LF that can’t play defense, is not a plus on the bases, and not an impact bat just isn’t going to get lots of interest.
This. Profar is only a starter if you’re a team with absolutely no other options in left. And it’s tough to carry him on the bench due to the defense and lack of true offensive impact. The deal he opted out of was a reasonable estimate of what teams would pay for a guy like that, so it does seem like he’s billing himself too high
And also he occupies that 1-2 WAR space where it’s really easy for teams to say “we can maybe get that out of any of these 4 internal options.” It’s a hard place to get paid. The advantage of Profar is that you don’t have to spend half the season sorting through a bunch of internal options to find the guy that will actually give you that same production, but it’s hard to blame a team for not valuing it at $10m or whatever his ask is.
He’s only worth 1-2 war with a lot of assumptions. He’s been worth 6 career war 2.5 of which came last year and last year was clearly an outlier. If you throw last year out and base his production on his previous production and assume no team is going to want to give him more than 400 plate appearances he’s a 0.57 war player which is basically replacement level and a hindrance to checking out your minor leaguers. Even with last year and 650 plate appearances he’s worth maybe 1.25 war which ignores the fact that he outperformed his xwoba for the first time since 2018.
Right, it’s easy to take the downside view. If you have to ask “is he better than Robbie Grossman” (and clearly the Rangers don’t think so, even though they’ve been tossing a lot of money around) that’s a problem.
This is a little overstated IMO. When you base his production on his previous production, you’re averaging in what he did when he was rushed to the majors at age 20 and when he was coming off almost two full years lost to injury. His production since age 25 seems more predictive of what he is now, and last year wasn’t even as good as 2020–it’s not his fault he only got 200 PA that year. (Though I could also see arguing that 2020 isn’t that predictive.)
But that still only gets him up to average bat with questionable defense, and even at 1 WAR he’s not worth that much. McCutchen without the nostalgia value.
He is a good example of WAR being a bad metric. He checks some arbitrary boxes and doesn’t really offer anything that a team actually needs.
Jack of some trades, master of none, right?
I was really surprised he opted out. Maybe he could have gotten another year, but he’s one of those guys who is not quite good enough to be a surefire MLB starter and not versatile enough to sit on the bench. The sort of deal those guys get in free agency tends to look at lot like the player option he declined.
Not only am I surprised that he opted out, I’m surprised anyone thought he’d get 3 years and $36 million. ZiPS and Steamer project him as around a 1.5 WAR. That sounds like how he’s generally viewed unlike those with an inflated reputation like Jorge Soler or Avisail Garcia or Nicholas Castellanos. He seems similar to David Peralta, both in numbers and reputation
The reason people thought that is because guys getting paid “more than they should” is generally the norm. If you stayed with that theory this year, you’d have been wrong about Profar, presumably, but you’d have been right much more frequently.
Profar is 5.5 years younger than Peralta, and if he were the same age I’d also have guessed Peralta would have gotten a decent multi year deal. Maybe I’d be wrong again, but “picking high” made me right more often than wrong this year.
Guys getting paid more than they should generally only applies to the upper half of the free agent class. If it applied to everyone, that “more than they should” comparison wouldn’t exist in the first place. As Syndrome said, “When everyone is special, no one is special.”
He could be a team’s primary DH, but teams genarally want more offense than he provides out of their DH spot, or some teams prefer to go without a primary DH and split the role among several players.
One thing that really stands out to me is that his positive defensive value last year came from a shockingly good ARM rating. He’s never shown anything like that before, so I’m skeptical he’s going to do it again. OAA thought he was below average out there, and between that and the positional adjustment he is a clear negative defensively.
I think if he somehow maintains that sudden arm strength, and gets enough lift in his swing, he might benefit from playing in a bandbox with less ground to cover on defense in a corner. White Sox, Yankees, Reds hypothetically could be fits if one really wanted to sign him.
Morel likely is bad metrics.
In general I feel a player’s WAR stat (regardless of which site you use fwar, bwar, vorp, etc.) that’s tied to some high defensive value can be very misleading in terms of how they’re valued by actual teams.
It seems fairly certain that public hitting stats tend to coincide pretty well with teams internal metrics on hitters. But defense is where things don’t often line up. So Brantley or Josh Bell, both of which derive their value from hitting, got signed and fairly reasonable contracts while Profar still left hanging is reasonable. Especially if Profar felt he deserved Josh Bell money.
Internal defensive metrics typically rely on the same data steam as OAA or a similar type of data stream, if I’m not mistaken. But the analysis of that data obviously varies from team to team.
Also arm strength notably isn’t part of OAA for outfielders. So it’s the thing a team is least likely to agree with. And it’s probably the most volatile part of the profile.
If you think Profar has an average arm defensively then he’s an average hitter but bad defensively at a position lower on the defensive spectrum. That’s the kind of guy bad teams sign to be slightly less embarrassing.
The problem is most of the bad teams are the A’s, Pirates, Reds, that just do not want to spend any $$..much less $6M-10M to go from 67-69 wins or whatever.
Detroit is bad, but, has a ton of internal OF options to sort thru. KC is similar. I could have seen the White Sox before they signed Benintendi. Maybe the Nationals or Orioles?
The fact Texas signed Grossman over him is telling.
To be slightly less embarrassing in the corner outfield/DH, the Pirates signed Andrew McCutchen, who has a similar or even better ZiPS projection than Profar, only cost 1/$5M, and is also a little more popular in Pittsburgh.
I really am curious about that one. My guess is either they think his bat is a bad fit for their new park or he was asking for more money than they were comfortable with.
The Tigers used to do these signings semi-regularly, and the A’s did sign Jace Peterson and Aledmys Diaz for some reason. A lot of these signings are kind of weird, anyway–I would much rather find out which guys in AAA are potential contributors if I had a definitely bad team.
They’re hoping to flip guys like Peterson, Diaz, etc., to a more competitive team midseason and add depth to their farm system.
But that’s not going to work. They’re not pitchers, or difference making hitters.
Tigers have a bunch of options in house. They have no incentive to sign Profar & block players.
They have Greene in CF, Austin Meadows in RF. For LF, they have:
Matt Vierling
Akil Baddoo
Eric Haase can play when he’s not catching
Kerry Carpenter
Justin Henry Malloy
Parker Meadows could possibly force the issue.
Just no reason to have Profar adding to that logjam & taking AB’s from guys that they need to evaluate
The A’s really liked Peterson’s 3B defense last year, and Diaz has good platoon splits.
That’s only if those AAA prospects are legitmately ready for a shot at the Majors. There’s a very real danger of ruining a prospect’s development if you promote him to the Big Club too soon.
That’s why even really bad teams will still sign at least a couple stopgap veterans, except maybe for the Rays who sometimes actually do have enough Major League ready prospects, and they A’s whenever they have a fire sale to cut costs as much as possiple, future development be d***ed.
That because WAR has always overvalued defense compared to its true relative value compared to offense. The weight given to Defensive WAR in general really needs to be adjusted.
The same is also true for WAR generating by baserunning compared to WAR generated by hitting.
However, you have your conclusion backwards, as Profar also derives his value from hitting. Since Profar is a poor fielder, he should have more value to teams’ internal metrics than he does to WAR, as he has more negative defense value (or loses more value) with WAR than he does with the internal metrics where defense doesn’t matter as much.
In 2022, he put out 22nd percentile AVG exit velocity, 19th percentile HardHit%, 14th percentile barrel%, 26th percentile xSLG, 32nd percentile sprint speed according to his Baseball Savant page. He simply doesn’t hit the ball hard enough, nor does he run fast enough to take advantage of his plate discipline and contact rate. The fact is his 2.5 WAR, 110 wRC+ season was an incredible stroke of luck, and the chances he repeats that are low.
Probably. But there are a few notes that make him seem more reasonable. First, his xwOBA actually isn’t that far off from his actual wOBA, because his xBA was actually better than his BA. Second, his offensive game is based on walking a fair amount and striking out less than that, and while that part of his game could collapse it’s also not exactly a fluke. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him run a league-average offensive line as a result, although that’s underwhelming in left field.
He generally significantly underperforms his xwoba which makes sense because he’s slow and doesn’t hurt the ball hard. Speed specifically hp-1b is the #1 predictor for outperforming xwoba. Chances are he reverts to under performing his xwoba by about 10 points rather than over performing by 5 life he did last year.
The plate discipline is doing nearly all of the heavy lifting. His throwing arm is decent too, but it’s not a cannon.
So he had a mutual option that was declined, was that declined by Profar, the Padres or both?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Padres declined the option on their end. They pivoted towards Bogaerts pretty quickly and plan on having Tatis playing somewhere in the outfield whenever he returns. There’s just not a lot of room on that team for a player like Profar, especially at $7-10 million AAV.
The reporting is that Profar opted out of $6.5m with the Padres. I’m not sure how to square that with the mutual option reported in this piece.
Edit: Profar opted out of $7.5m and received a $1m buyout. The Padres then declined their side of the $10m mutual option.
To me, it’s extremely hard to Monday morning quarterback this decision. Profar had to believe that a one year deal for “starting player money” was going to always be there for him, and coming off a 2.5 WAR season at age 29 (now 30), which was a career high, a big, life-changing contract was possible. Yes, he’s made enough ($26MM) to where him and his close family should be more than okay for the rest of their lives, but it was obviously a possibility that he could have more than doubled that with the stroke of a pen. It didn’t work out, and we’ll see what declining the option costs him, I’d assume not all that much still, but I can’t blame him for trying.
Yeah. Gallo got 1/11m coming off a worse season, although he’s had better seasons than Profar in the past. If there’s anything to criticize, it seems like he didn’t settle quickly enough and now all the chairs are gone.
Yeah, it’s possible that things moved quickly and maybe he got less than great advice. He won’t be the first or the last this happens to. Of course you never know if a team with money to spend may face injuries and he at least now has the benefit of being the only thing left that just costs money. That’s probably the thinnest of silver linings at this point.
Agree with this.
I find it extremely unlikely that there were zero teams willing to sign Profar for $6.5M at any point during the offseason.
Profar really is the poster boy for the difficulty of scouting prospects. He spent multiple years as the consensus #1 prospect in baseball, highlighted by having a very high floor and MVP ceiling. He never even reached the floor that scouts and analysts predicted.
Injuries often leave long term after effects.
His injuries also cost him development time so a performance level that was promising at a young age became acceptable a couple years later became marginal after that.
Given his history and age, teams have to weigh his past more heavily that his ’22 numbers. And that profiled more as a multiposition backup than a regular. Essentially the 25th guy on the roster.
He’s not alone in overvaluing his marketability this year. Andrus at least had his defensive value to serve as a floor, Profar has no single carrying skill.
I don’t disagree with you, but it’s also important to keep in mind that he missed two full seasons with a shoulder injury. That can really mess an otherwise promising guy up, especially in the early formative years of his big league career
But the Reds would rather have Stuart Fairchild and TJ Friedl. But you gotta play the 27-year olds.
The Reds ownership and FO suck, but if Profar is asking for starter money, I get why they (or other bottom feeders like the As and Pirates) wouldn’t bite. It theoretically makes sense to bring Profar in to hold as a trade chip, but he’s not gonna get you much back at any deadline – maybe a 40 FV guy? If he’s demanding over $10M per year, I can understand why teams wouldn’t think that’s worth it
As a Cards fan I recall a time when he was a top prospect in the Ranger
organization and rumblings were that he was going to be traded
straight up for St. Louis top prospect Oscar Taveras. A trade that definitely
would have been front page in the sport section of each cities local
newspapers. And unfortunately, a grim reminder of what eventually happened
to Oscar. He was one of my all time favorite prospects.
The Mariners were the obvious fit:
big uncertainty at RF, LF and DH, with prospects and no floor.legit contender, with a real chance that filling the holes could be the difference between getting into the playoffs, and not.Too cheap to sign a real solution, but theoretically willing to go 2 years at $20 million to fill a hole until Jerry’s next improbable trade or prospect comes throughFetish for former 1st round picks, and former top prospects.Big believer in position flexibility, even occasionally with players who can’t really play multiple positions very well.unfortunately for Profar, Jerry resisted this perfect storm, trading for Teoscar
Hernandez, signing Pollock and La Stella (!?) to create a vaguely plausible floor, at least if both bounce back, and hoping that 1 (2?) of Kelenic, Trammell, and Marlowe would emerge, despite strengthening arguments against all 3.
Profar may suck, but it’s all kinds of likely that the M’s regret not signing him by June.
There’s nothing in Tacoma or Arkansas (AA) except the carcass of Colin Moran and never-was Mike Ford to step in. Neither of whom can play the outfield.
What’s the strengthening argument against Marlowe exactly? His stock has only risen the last year.
Sorry. I was oversimplifying. Trammell and Kelenic’s stars have been dimming for the past few years. Marlowe is intriguing, but he struck out in 40% of his AB’s in a limited look at AAA last year, after K rates of about 30% in AA. He hasn’t exactly demanded a starting slot, quite yet.
I agree here – the Mariners were one of the few teams with a very deep hole at LF/DH that Profar would’ve improved, and even with all Profar’s warts I don’t think anyone should say they’d prefer AJ Pollock and Tommy LaStella to him. Even if you want to give Kelenic some more rope to hang himself with, there would still be plenty of ABs for Profar at DH.
Of course, this all implies that Profar would be willing to sign for 2/$20M, which it seems likely he was not given how his market has proceeded. It does take two to tango after all
Suggesting JD Martinez and Conforto, with their combined zero games of outfielding last year, are “everyday left field” options is… a bit of a stretch.
The Padres were not expecting to begin last year with Profar as their starting left fielder. He had played multiple infield/outfield positions in the past, and we all assumed Preller would find an upgrade for a starter. He never did.
So Profar started just about every game in left field, and I saw most of them. From just the eyeball test, he played a great left field. It was the first time in a while Profar could focus on just one position.
If he had accepted his option, most Padre fans would have been happy. He would have been pushed to the bench with Tatis now in the outfield, but he would have made for a great 4th outfielder. Now we have Engle, Dahl, Azocar, etc.
A guy who cannot play RF or CF is not a great 4th OF.
Yep. Even Padre fans who should know better talk about how Profar “can play all over the field.” No, he can’t. He can play LF, 1b, and can possibly still handle 2b for a short time with a strikeout LH pitcher on the mound.
That just means your 5th outfielder needs to be able to play both of those positions.
Although, I agree that a bat-first LF/DH-only 4th outfielder isn’t as valuable as he used to be without the need to pinch-hit or double-switch for the pitcher’s spot in the lineup in the NL, which happened at least once for each team during most games at NL ballparks.
I think we overrate the “jack of all trades, master of none” skillset. Seems like teams would much rather have a role player with one plus trait, than a guy like Profar that isn’t really good at anything despite not being terrible at anything either.
I agree in role players. Being a little worse than average at everything isn’t that useful unless you can play a bunch of positions.
I think being a little better than average at everything is still underrated in a starter.
“Being a little worse than average at everything isn’t that useful unless you can play a bunch of positions.”
Granted, “positional flexibility” is part of “everything”, so a player who can realistically play a bunch of positions is likely “above average” in that sense 🙂
Fair enough! And that guy is a sought after reserve.
I don’t think this line of reasoning makes sense for Profar. He is a terrible defender. If he was an average defensive corner outfielder with everything else held constant, then he’d basically be a diet version of Andrew Benintendi, who just got $75 million. That’s not to say he’d actually deserve that money, just that the situation isn’t what you describe. Profar really isn’t a jack-of-all trades, he’s a guy with some ok tools and some horrible ones.
Honestly at this point both Profar and Iglesias need to accept whatever contract they are offered. Minor League contract with an opt out. It’s much harder to secure a contract without at bats.
I’m a Red Sox fan and a number of the players with a minor league contracts are just not good and have never been good and will never be even average and that goes for most teams. I would vastly prefer Profar over someone like Goodrum. Who cares if Goodrum has options remaining at 31. He’s not good!
I guarantee you no one at the Red Sox front office thinks Niko Goodrum is good, or that he’s better than Profar. And there really isn’t a point to comparing them – Profar just opted out of $6.5M guaranteed, he’s not signing a minor league deal.
Every single team brings invites a million Quad-A players to spring training, it really isn’t something worth complaining about
I like Goodrum, in the same way that I liked Rob Refsnyder – he’s decent enough to be a tad better than most of the career AAAA fluff, and still has a real chance to pull off a Steve Pearce if he steps into an opening.
That said, part of what I like about Goodrum is the fact that he doesn’t come with a price tag that would force a salary-conscious front office to pinch pennies on other transactions. This is why Profar doesn’t work for the Red Sox, whether or not you believe they are a postseason contender for 2023.
Late to the party, but maybe Profar is betting on himself to have a great WBC for Team Netherlands? That ought to raise is value a bit, no?
lol, might be!
I would much rather have Brantley or Josh Bell as bats. The Drury comp makes sense – that was likely not a good signing. I wonder if Profar is asking for too much or has unreasonable demands. he sure would be a great utility for any team but he might not want that. He has had quite the privileged career to this point which probably leads to some unrealistic expectations.