Man, it’s been a while since I’ve written about the Pads on here, huh? A lot of stuff happened since then.
I completely whiffed on who the Padres might hire to manage the team. Luis Urias, Hunter Renfroe and Eric Lauer are gone. Brown is back, and so is Drew Pomernanz. And the greatest will-they-or-won’t-they Padres story of the last three years finally came to fruition: we finally traded for Jurickson Profar.
The Padres have been so active this offseason, so I’ll be splitting my thoughts about everything they’ve done so far into 2 parts. Part one of my semi-organized musings is below:
Jayce Tingler Hired as manager
The Padres hired Rangers coach Jayce Tingler, who has an extensive history of working with AJ Preller. I’ll be honest, I had no idea who Jayce Tingler was before he emerged as the front runner for the team’s managerial opening- but his background is very impressive. While he’s never managed a team before, Tingler worked for the Rangers in multiple capacities, including front office, traditional on-field coaching, and player development roles.
Many critics of the Tingler hiring have been quick to point out that he doesn’t fit the traditional “grizzed-ex-player-who-commands-respect-and-manages-on-gut-instict-alone” archetype like the guy he beat out for the job, Ron Washington, which is... ummmmm, exactly the point of hiring Tingler in the first place?
Over the last few years, the Padres have been astoundingly successful at one of the most important facets of player development: transforming young adults entering their first year of minor league baseball into top prospects. On the other hand, the Padres have also been astoundingly bad at an even more essential player development task: turning these top prospects into quality Major Leaguer players.
Look at Luis Urias! I’ll get to him more in the next section of this article, but man, his time in the majors was absolutely BRUTAL to watch. My friend and I had a bet about if he would hit over or under .200- I took the over, and I just barely won after Urias finally squeaked above the .200 mark in the penultimate week of the regular season. This man was not going to be the second baseman of the future, and it would not surprise me if his struggles over the last two years were related to the well-documented attempts of the coaching staff to make ill-advised adjustments to his swing. The failed Urias experiment is living proof that the Padres are long overdue to try out a new approach to player development- so props to the decision makers in the front office for hiring a manager in Tingler that actually specializes in player development (shocking!!!).
Nowhere is this change of direction more evident than the fact that the team has displaced long-time PC Darren Balsley, who had been on the team’s coaching staff since 2003. For context, 2003 was the first season that I began watching Padres baseball regularly- I was 8 years old. The Padres were still playing in Qualcomm Stadium then. Balsley- who has long-acknowledged his old-school approach to coaching- has been replaced by erstwhile Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild.
I gotta be honest, I have no idea if Jayce Tingler will be any good as the Padres manager. But the Padres needed to try something different, and Jayce Tingler seems to be as different from his managerial peers as they come.
Grade: B
Luis Urias and Eric Lauer traded to the Brewers for Trent Grisham and Zach Davies
Remember when Luis Urias was either supposed to be (A) the guy who would play second base for the Padres for the next 15 years, or (B) the guy who we’d trade for Noah Syndegaard, Jacob DeGrom, or both??? Yeah, me neither. Throughout his two years in the MLB, the performance just wasn’t there for Urias. Per Fangraphs, in 2019 Urias was nearly 20% worse than an average Major League hitter and he struck out at the highest rate of his professional career. In retrospect, the team’s ambivalence about calling Urias up even while he was dominating minor league pitching midseason was a clear sign that the front office had soured on him as a Major Leaguer- so while this specific trade was surprising, the team moving on from Urias wasn’t exactly unexpected.
The primary player that we’re getting in return is Trent Grisham, who is unfortunately remembered for his fielding error in the NL Wild Card game that ultimately cost the Brewers their season. Like Urias, Grisham is a former top prospect who was crushing the baseball in Triple A before getting called up. Unlike Urias though, he was actually pretty good in the 60-or-so games he played in for the Brewers this year. Expect to see Grisham in the outfield on Opening Day.
Davies for Lauer is more or less a wash- they’re both low 90s pitchers who are perfectly fine inning eaters. While Lauer has the best pickoff move in the league and is probably the only guy on the team with a proven track record of beating the Dodgers, he is generally viewed as a below average pitcher who outperformed his expectations this year- and it doesn’t help his case that he’s literally incapable of pitching in Coors Field. Davies, on the other hand, has a multi-year track record of at least average production- so he’s probably an improvement if the team wants to put itself in the best position possible to be competitive in 2020. Probably.
Overall, this trade is kinda alright? I don’t know what to say really. It’s hard to see the team move on from a guy that we all unanimously thought was talented enough to become the next Jose Altuve. At the same time though, we were all probably more hooked on the idea of what Luis Urias could be, as opposed to what he was. And as an actual Major Leaguer, he was somewhat rapidly trending downwards- so Preller deserves credit for swapping him out for a stock-up guy Grisham, who is backing up his top prospect status by, ya know, actually playing good baseball at the highest level when he got to the Brewers. In fact, prior to acquiring Tommy Pham (more on that later), Grisham was projected to be the best outfielder on the Padres next year.
I’m happy to have Grisham, but at the same time it’s disheartening to see Urias- a guy who we all thought was more or less a sure thing- become the highest profile prospect failure of the AJ Preller era.
Grade: C
Jurickson Profar acquired from the A’s for Austin Allen
Much has been made of AJ Preller finally convincing his old employer, the Texas Rangers, to let him hire his buddy Jayce Tingler, after multiple years of unsuccessfully trying to do so. Funnily enough, Preller also finally picked up another Rangers expat that he has long been connected to: second baseman Jurickson Profar.
As the Rangers assistant GM in 2009, Preller helped sign the then-16-year-old Profar out of Curaçao. Profar eventually became one of the top prospects in the sport- in 2012, MLB.com listed Profar as the #8 prospect in the game, sharing the top 10 with Manny Machado, Mike Trout, and Bryce Harper. By 2013, the same site listed him as the #1 prospect in baseball- and some pundits even called Profar a better prospect than Machado (yikes).
Unfortunately, the injury bug bit Profar pretty badly- a shoulder injury in 2014 kept him on the disabled list for two entire seasons, and by the time he resurfaced in 2016, his elite prospect shine had long since faded. For the next two years with the Rangers, Profar was essentially a utility man that bounced back and forth between the Majors and AAA, and the “bust” label was firmly affixed to his head.
Nevertheless, AJ Preller remained a believer in Profar’s potential, and before actually acquiring him this winter, the Padres been linked to Profar for years. Preller allegedly requested Profar in exchange for Drew Pomeranz in 2016- only for the Rangers to say no. He was, however, apparently unwilling to part with Luis Perdomo (?!?) in a deal for Profar in 2017.
Before AJ could strike a deal with his old team for Profar, the latter finally caught a break in 2018. For the first time, Profar was consistently healthy AND consistently starting at second for the Rangers- he swatted 20 home runs and posted on-base and slugging percentages that were both career highs. While he wasn’t a superstar, Profar was finally the pretty good player we thought he might become.
How’d the Rangers reward him for that, might you ask? Well, by promptly trading him to the Athletics that offseason, of course! Profar wasn’t horrible for the A’s in 2019, but he did suffer a pretty significant case of mean-reversion-disorder last year: his slugging and on-base percentages both corrected back to their mediocre pre-breakout levels, and advanced fielding statistics indicated that his defense was significantly worse than an average second baseman.
With Profar’s stock sufficiently beaten down once again and the A’s seeking to shed the 5 million dollars they’d have to pay him, Preller was finally able to acquire Profar for catcher Austin Allen.
Going into next year, Profar will be the unquestioned starter at second base. The Padres are banking on the Jurickson Profar of 2018 showing up to San Diego in 2020 instead of the 2019 version- and I think it’s a gamble worth taking. Profar obviously is still talented, and he’ll be reunited with people from the Rangers in Preller and Jayce Tingler who know his skillset as well as anybody. As such, the Padres are prepared to play to Profar’s strengths accordingly. It also doesn’t hurt they gave up nothing more than a spare part in the form of Austin Allen to get him either. Profar has only one year left on his contract before becoming a free agent, but I have a feeling that AJ will move to lock him up on a team friendly extension if the early returns are good- and if things don't work out, they can cut him loose without having lost a whole lot.
Grade: B+
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