The latest from around the NL West…
- The Rockies won’t be making a move for recently-designated Twins first baseman Byung Ho Park, MLB.com’s Thomas Harding tweets. Colorado made a big splash to sign Ian Desmond to fill its first base need and also recently signed Mark Reynolds to a minor league deal as further positional depth. Barring an injury or an outfielder trade (which would shift Desmond’s role), Park doesn’t seem like a fit for the Rockies.
- Chris Owings will likely see some time as a corner outfielder during Spring Training, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports. The Diamondbacks’ plan would be for Owings (a right-handed hitter) to spell the left-handed hitting David Peralta when a southpaw is on the mound, which would also free up shortstop for Nick Ahmed. Owings has already seen substantial time at short, second base and center field during his career, and D’Backs GM Mike Hazen believes Owings has the athleticism to fill the type of super-utility role that Brock Holt fills for the Red Sox.
- The Padres’ six-year, $83MM extension with Wil Myers has drawn “a lot of industry criticism,” ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reports (subscription required). Some evaluators felt San Diego overpaid for a player who has delivered only good-but-not great hitting numbers for a first baseman, plus Myers has had issues staying on the field; Myers played in just 147 games total in 2014-15 due to injury, though he did play in 157 games in 2016. Olney cites Myers’ good fielding and baserunning metrics as counterpoints to the critics, as well as the fact that the Padres may have felt the need to lock in a new franchise cornerstone as the club goes through a rebuilding process.
Myers good base running? Have you seen how many times he’s been caught in a run down or just plain screwed up running the bases ? He is so overrated it’s not funny! Padres should have dumped him and gotten a good , proven First baseman! One decent season isn’t a good reason for giving him the kind of contract he got! I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t play the whole season, hope I’m wrong.
totally agree they’re doing it for marketing purposes to have somebody as the face of the franchise but I think we should flip them for a couple of good prospects or more
With an 82% stolen base success rate, it looks like he is a pretty good baserunner. This is not a Travis Jankowski situation.
4th best BsR in baseball. Myers is not just good on the basepaths, he is one of the very, very best. That is the difference between subjective observations and the stats. BsR takes into account more than just stolen bases too.
Yeah 28 SB for a 1B…. he must be a terrible baserunner. Myers is a stud, and you’re a hater.
Stud? He hit .210 on road with 10 knocks and 36 Rbis and 91 whiffs.? That’s a stud?
Myers is not overrated. He will be potentially multiple season 30/30 guy for the padres.
@Tasman, by that logic, Billy Hamilton is the worst base runner in baseball. Myers is amazing. If you want overrated, look at the top 10 first baseman list, but don’t hate on Myers because he’s “not proven.” BURNED!!!!
Base running doesn’t just mean stolen bases. It’s taking extras which is what he and the Pads weren’t very good at
You couldn’t be more wrong. According to FanGraphs, the Padres led the rest of the league by a considerable margin in BsR, their weighted baserunning metric. Baseball Prospectus has the Padres second to the Diamondbacks in their similar BRR stat. The Padres are one of the best teams in the league at “taking the extra base” and creating runs by their selective aggressiveness on the basepaths.
Cmon 1B that slides headfirst with chronic bad wrist are not easy to sign
The Padres have to overpay players to stay or to come, just like the Rockies.
Not really.
No marquee free agent will ever sign with the Padres unless they offer him the most money
Janes Shields signed with the padres for 5 mill less than the giants offered. google.com/amp/www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/shields-…
So there goes your argument as Shields was a marquee free agent at the time of the signing.
The Giants retracted their offer to Shields after he didn’t accept it and they re-signed Peavy and Vogelsong. At the time when Shields signed with the Padres, the Giants’ offer was no longer on the table. The article you linked to even says that. Do you actually read your sources before spouting them?
The Cubs offered Shields a slightly higher AAV than the Padres but were not willing to guarantee the fourth year like the Padres were. The Padres’ offer was the most attractive one Shields had when he signed. He even got an opt out, which does carry some value even if he didn’t end up using it.
You literally said, “did not accept the offer” which was 5 mill more than he wound up getting from the padres. Hence, he took less money than he was offered from other sources. No matter how you spin it the padres did not offer shields the most money. Giants did at 80 mill. He chose to take less for an extra year. But the padres didn’t offer the most, which was your original point disproven by shields taking less money for more guaranteed years.
Also reports were someone made him an offer of $110 mill. But couldnt 100% verify that but he supposedly turned that down as well, speculation as to why. google.com/amp/kingsofkauffman.com/2015/01/12/jame…
So he turned down 110 and turn down 80 to wind up taking 75. But yes the padres paid the most money to sign a marquee free agent.
He didn’t accept the Giants’ $80m offer because that was early in the offseason when he and his agent were aiming for 5 years and thought they would get it. Had they known that they weren’t going to get 5 years, they would have taken the Giants’ offer (assuming the opt out was worth less than $5m to them, but only Shields and his agent know the answer to that). At the time when Shields signed with the Padres, the Padres were offering him the most money. The Giants’ offer doesn’t count because it was no longer on the table. Shields did not take less money to play for the Padres because more money was not available to him when he signed.
Oh and if you seriously believe someone offered Shields $110m, that tells me all I need to know about you (along with your insistence that the Matt Kemp trade was a good trade for the Padres). Shields’ agent even admitted that the $110m offer never happened.
#getsmacked
He finally got his wrist problems fixed with surgery, so hopefully now he can stay out in the field longer.
Looks like a pretty fair contract to me.
Very fair contract and appropriate given the landscape of where the Padres are at as a franchise. They identified the player the want to build around, he is still fairly young, has been through adversity so far in his career & for those reasons the organization feels as though he has what it takes to rub off on the young players to get them over the hump during these next trying years to say the least.
Like another commenter eluded to, San Diego will have to overpay for talent until they are creditable. Winning will cure that but until it does this is what the recipe has to be.
The Padres don’t have to overpay for talent, they just want to underpay, thus no talent.
Doesn’t it mean anything when a player rebounds from being sidelined, due to injury, to 157 games afterward?
If he puts up 15 WAR over the next 5 seasons it will be a fair market contract. Not unrealistic, but seems like a lot of unnecessary risk on the team.
Well he’s also still under arb control and they didn’t have to bid against anyone else.
Pretty rare to find an overpay pre free agency, but here it is.
Well if you look deeper on the signing bonus and how it is paid out. 1M paid within 30 days of the contract signing, 5.5M in Nov of 2017 and 8.5M in Nov of 2018. Match that up with his salary of 1M, 2M, and 2M in during the Arb years and they got him for about the same as what would have been awarded.
2017 is 1M salary and 1M bonus ( less than the projected 4.7M)
2018 is 2M salary and 5.5M bonus
2019 is 2M salary and 8.5M bonus
it is not schocking Buster yet again disagrees with the direction of the Padres and this current front office.
Myers might be somewhat of a risk of a contract, but it’s back loaded also, so he will be really cheap for the next 3 years. Not to mention if he has another good year this year he probably would be in line for a 100+ million contract, so it goes both ways.
It’s also probably not a coincidence he was injured during the years he played OF, yet played 157 games at 1B
if you actually look at the contract he’s only getting paid 2mil for the next three seasons he won’t actually start making his real money until 2020 which then t be y could cut bait of he’s not performing but it’s shortsighted to say he’s being overpaid when in reality that’s the market value
No they can’t cut bait if he’s not performing after 2019. No one is going to take him in that case and they’re not going to release him and pay the balance of his contract. He’s ours for better or worse through 2022.
Unfortunately the Padres recent history is full of examples of dumping players and eating the contract. Kemp/Olivera, Upton Jr., Shields, Ramirez…
Not a surprise that its Buster Olney that wrote that crap article about industry criticism. It’s Petco Park and a former #1 overall prospect in baseball that has performed at times and had some injury setbacks. It’s fair value for a player of his caliber.
Oh what do you know, an article where Buster Olney trashes the Padres? Geez, the guy needs to just move on and quit being so salty. The Padres moved on from him as their beat writer what 15 years ago? He ran and ran and raaannnn with the Pomeranz situation to the point where it was just over-kill & now he bashes the team for extending a guy they feel is the face of the franchise during a rebuild.
Cmon buster, there are bigger fish to fry out there. She broke up with you years ago & is already happily married to another man, stop spying on her, creeping on her Facebook, & talking crap. Let it go buddy.
Tell us how you really feel lol
2 players in baseball went 28/28 last year. Myers was one of them. Guess the other one.
Myers was 4th in BsR among all players, which is not included in WAR, and no 1B was even close. He is an exceptional baserunner.
Myers was 8th in WAR among 1B.
Myers was 12th in HR among 1B.
Myers was 12th in wRC+ among 1B.
Myers was 4th in percentage of baserunners that scored among 1B.
Myers was 5th in runs scored among 1B.
Myers was 1st in UZR among 1B.
Myers was 4th in DRS among 1B. He was an exceptional defensive 1B in his 1st year at the position. He will only get better.
Myers will be the only 1B under 27 that ranked in top 15 in any of those categories. The Padres will have 5-6 seasons of Myers at his prime.
The Padres made a great deal locking him up for the rest of his arbitration years and 3 of his FA years.
You can be assured that if Olney wrote it, it’s anti-Padres and completely wrong. The guy is a complete hack.
So hes a good defender who’s middle of the road offensively
See the top sentence.
That’s a great breakdown, and I totally agree. Myers will be entering his prime, and he’s now fully healthy. This contract could end up working out very well for the team if he can keep building on what he did last year, especially when you factor in his future arbitration years and such.
All that tells us is that he excelled defensively and on the basepaths compared to other 1st basemen. 12th out of 30 (for home runs and wRC+) says he’s basically middle of the road. Do you ever actually pay attention to what you are typing?
Ryan, STFU. Do you ever pay attention to the facts? 1st you argue that Myers contract is a good one then you try to argue that he is not a good player. What it really means is you want to argue, not discuss baseball or pay attention to facts. Here are the facts. Offense in baseball includes baserunning. Baserunning includes far more than stealing bases. Myers is the best at baserunning among 1B by a huge margin and one of the top 5 among all players. WAR doesn’t take into account any part of baserunning other than stolen bases. Now, go look at my first sentence. Myers was a top 8 1B according to WAR and when you include BsR he is even better. He is 26 years old so just starting to hit his prime. He will be among the very best 1B for 5-6 years or maybe more. End of discussion.
No, I will never STFU. You still can’t bully people into silence just because you don’t agree with them.
I never said his contract is a good one or a bad one. That remains to be seen.
I never denied that Myers was good at baserunning. I actually said he was good at that.
He was 8th out of 30 1st basemen in terms of WAR (which doesn’t include baserunning but does include hitting and fielding). Top 8 out of 30 is in the 73rd percentile. So definitely good, but not great. He will be among the very best 1st basemen in the game IF he learns to stop swinging at bad pitches.
NOW end of discussion.
Since none of you guessed, the other player that went 28/28 last season was Mike Trout. Pretty good company.
28/28 has only been done 29 times since 2000 and only 14 players have done it. The only 1B was Myers.
He’s a moron sliding headfirst as 1B with chronic bad wrist
Good ol’ Buster sure loves stirring the Padre pot doesn’t he?
Myers had an .873 ops first half compared to .697 second half. This was his first full year in the bigs. He probably wore down mentally. It would be a safe assumption that he continues to produce closer to his first half stats moving forward.
What are the first 3 letters of assumption?
When you assume you make an ass of u and me.
Wore down playing on such a big market media town on last place team lol
Call it right now, Pads sign Erick Aybar to a minor league deal with invite to Spring Training to compete for job at SS.
Sure, why not?
I would say that is a good call and I wouldn’t mind signing Aybar. The problem is that our GM said earlier this week that that option was off the table and that we are looking to trade for a shortstop to compete with Sardinas. Geaney, our Director of Player Development, said that the Padres were looking to trade for a shortstop. Two pieces since January 1st by AJ Cassavell, the Padres beat writer for MLB.com, have said that we are looking to trade for a shortstop, but that signing one was probably off the table. So many rumors on here about us trading for a shortstop, but I haven’t seen any about Preller signing one, even to a minor league deal.
People change their minds and I’ll put a Mike Trout autograph baseball on it
Wow. That’s a piece that will be worth some serious coin. Did they already sign him and no one has reported it yet?
Aybar? Did we not learn our lessons with Alexei Ramirez, Clint Barmes etc. Aybar can’t really play short anymore.
A minor league deal won’t hurt us and it’s not like our in-house shortstop options are much better.
Heck, why not just play Trea Turner there and wa….oh. Never mind.
Please, no. At this point he’s no upgrade over Sardiñas on either side of the ball. Let Sardiñas, Cordoba, and Rondon handle the job unless a better YOUNG option comes along. No sense giving the job to an aging player who isn’t going to increase his value this season. Aybar has as good a chance of becoming 2016 Alexei Ramirez as anyone.
Nope no reports of an Aybar signing anywhere, just a gut feeling.
How about Hanser Alberto?