Tommy Pham and Jake Cronenworth acquired for Hunter Renfroe and Xavier Edwards
Click on that hyperlink and you'll see Blake Snell, the best pitcher on the Tampa Bay Rays, as he bellows this now-immortal phrase upon finding out- in real time, while playing Call of Duty on a live Twitch stream being watched by thousands- that his team traded clubhouse favorite Tommy Pham to the Padres.
This is probably the first time since the rise of livestreaming technology that we’ve seen a star player both (1) learn about an unpopular trade by his team as it happened, and (2) give us his candid, unfiltered reaction to it. Truly incredible stuff, huh?
Fun and games (no pun intended) aside, the reason why Blake Snell will now occupy a permanent spot on top 10 “Most Embarrassing Social Media Errors in Sports” lists for years to come is because Tommy Pham is a very, very good player.
Over the last three seasons, two of which saw him join the 20-20 club, Pham was worth an average of 4.5 fWAR per year. This is what we’d expect out of an All-Star caliber player, and in 2016, he was worth 6.2 WAR- which translates to MVP-level production. If Pham played for the Yankees or the Dodgers, he might be a superstar.
During this time frame, Pham ranked among the top 20 players in the game in on-base percentage, and as the graph below demonstrates, he represents a significant offensive upgrade over not just the man he replaces, Hunter Renfroe, but also the average MLB player:
Sure, Pham is getting older and isn't a great fielder. But I dare you to bet against him after watching this video:
Anyways, we’re also getting Jake Cronenworth. He’s not a top prospect, so you probably haven’t heard of Jake Cronenworth.
The cool thing about Jake Cronenworth, though, isn’t just that he crushed the baseball in Triple-A last year and can play capable defense at shortstop. It’s that he can do both of those things, AND pitch.
At the University of Michigan, Cronenworth was a two-way player, serving both as the team’s starting shortstop and closer. Drafted by the Rays in 2015, Cronenworth was primarily a shortstop until last season, when the team decided to return him to the mound. In a small sample size, Cronenworth’s results were promising: he consistently hit 95 MPH with his fastball, struck out over a batter an inning, and did not allow any runs. He did struggle with command, but that’s not unexpected given his four-year break from pitching. Cronenworth is already on the Padres 40-man roster, and there’s a strong case to be made that he’ll make the team on Opening Day as a legit two-way player. If he does, there’s an even stronger case to be made that he’ll be the most unique figure San Diego sports have seen in quite a while.
As a fan, I’ll miss Hunter Renfroe- he seemed like a pretty cool guy. His walk-off grand slam against the Dodgers was not just my favorite moment of the season, but it also produced what is, of a decidedly not-awesome decade of Padres baseball, perhaps the most awesome Padres-related picture of the 2010s:
Just epic. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
As a guy who also wants his team to win as many games as possible, however, I won’t really miss Hunter Renfroe all that much. He was maddeningly inconsistent throughout his Padres tenure- take his 2019 season, for example: while it was clearly the best of Renfroe’s career, it was also perfectly emblematic of his characteristic inconsistency: in the first half of the season he had a wRC+ of 132 (i.e., he was about 30% better than your average hitter) and hit 27 home runs, while in his yikes-inducing second half he had a wRC+ of 51 (i.e., he was about 50% worse than your average hitter) and hit only 6 home runs. The end result was a career-best 1.9 fWAR- indicating that his best season ever as a big leaguer was merely an average one when you compare him to his peers.
“Slapdick Prospect” is actually a pretty apt description of Xavier Edwards’s player profile- he epitomizes the “slap” hitter. Mark Smith of Fangraphs described this type of hitter as those who are:
“smaller (in height) and/or slighter (in build) players who prefer to use their speed to get on base. What this usually means is sacrificing power by using less torque and a line-drive swing to put the ball on the ground and spray line drives. The hope is that the player posts a higher BA and OBP while making an impact on the bases by stealing and taking the extra base to offset the presumed lack of power.”
True to form, the 5’10, 175-pound Edwards is a speedy contact hitter with nonexistent power. His best-case scenario is Gen-Z Dee Gordon: he’ll steal a lot of bases and hit at the top of a lineup, and maybe make an All-Star team or two.
Indeed, Edwards would probably be a useful asset for the Padres in a few years, but the team is officially in win-now mode, so these are simply the kind of trades that contending teams need to make to actually win, now.
And there’s good reason to believe that getting a guy like Tommy Pham will indeed help the Padres do just that.
Grade: A-
Part 3 coming soon....
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