May 22: Gonzalez has officially signed a two-year deal with the Golden Eagles, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The MAS+ client will be paid $2MM through the 2026 season.
May 19, 7:50pm: Gonzalez has an agreement with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, reports Francys Romero.
3:44pm: The Padres have placed outfielder Oscar Gonzalez on unconditional release waivers in order to allow him to pursue an opportunity in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, reports Dennis Lin of The Athletic. With Gonzalez being granted his release, San Diego is down to 37 players on its 40-man roster.
Gonzalez, 27, signed a minor league deal with the Friars back in November. He’s appeared in 21 big league games and tallied 61 plate appearances while hitting .220/.246/.237. The Dominican-born slugger showed promise during his 2022 rookie campaign with the Guardians, bursting onto the scene with a .296/.327/.461 batting line and 11 homers in 382 plate appearances, but he’s hit just .216/.241/.293 in 241 MLB plate appearances since that time.
Gonzalez posted league-average offense with the Guards’ Triple-A club in 2023 and was a slight bit better than average in the Yankees’ system last year, but he’s been on a blistering tear in El Paso this season. It’s only 57 plate appearances, but the righty-swinging corner outfielder touts a .333/.368/.704 line with the Chihuahuas. The Pacific Coast League is notoriously hitter-friendly, but he’s still been 54% better than average in that time and now touts a career .285/.321/.502 output in 1212 Triple-A plate appearances spread across parts of five seasons.
The Padres have had some of the worst production in baseball out of left field in 2025, hitting just .190/.236/.268 as a whole from that position. The resulting 44 wRC+ (indicating they’ve been 56% worse than average at the plate) ranks 28th in MLB. The bulk of Gonzalez’s plate appearances — 42 of the 61 — came as a left fielder. He’s combined with Jason Heyward, Brandon Lockridge, Tirso Ornelas, Gavin Sheets, Jose Iglesias and Connor Joe to compile that floundering left field line at the plate.
As it stands, left field seems likely to be an area of focus for the Padres when the deadline rolls around. The 27-18 Padres, sitting just one game behind the Dodgers in the NL West, look like surefire buyers. The farm system doesn’t have much in the way of immediate help to offer. Most of the outfielders in Triple-A are journeymen types who aren’t on the 40-man roster. Names like Tim Locastro, Forrest Wall, Mike Brosseau and Bryce Johnson have all logged time there with El Paso.
Twenty-six-year-old Yonathan Perlaza, a former Cubs farmhand who signed a minor league deal with the Padres after a nice performance in the KBO last year, is hitting .293/.335/.463 — but that’s about 8% worse than average in the PCL’s supercharged offensive atmosphere and he’s fanned in 28% of his plate appearances. It’s a dire situation, so any of those Triple-A names could get a look at some point — particularly with three vacancies on the 40-man roster. In general, the Padres’ system is lacking in impact outfielders after years of aggressive dealing on the trade market.
Get the feeling the SpongeBob schtick might catch on in Japan
I’m not surprised Gonzalez is heading to Japan. The Savannah Bananas auditions at last weekends, Los Angeles “Dance Off” were a complete disaster.
At last word, long after the dance event was over Gonzalez was still trying to “bust a move”.
This guy wants no part of the padres it’s understandable
Doyer Fan?
How’d the dads hurt you so badly?
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Best of luck, OG!!!
Any idea if Peralta has anything to say about it? Maybe not wanting to play or May want too much money – there are a lot of teams in mlb and he is sitting at home for reasons that probably don’t have anything to do with SD having the ability to just magically insert him into LF.
Seriously though, don’t you imagine that AJ and his camp had at least a conversation in the past 8-9 months?
Is he unsigned?
yeah he still a FA
I am a Padres fan and I want Brandon Lockridge to develop in the majors. Perhaps Tyler Wade can play more OF for the time being as he is hitting much better this season than last season.
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Gonzalez had his chance and couldn’t deliver. Good luck to him in the Nippon league. Maybe he’ll come back to the Pads as a better hitter at some point.
LF underproducing should not be a problem causing the Padres to lose six games to two sweeps in the past couple of weeks. There’s enough offensive talent, and the Pads have sufficient plus-defensive options for LF, that it shouldn’t matter. On the other hand, if Bogaerts can’t find his swing, if Tatis slump lasts more than a couple of games, if Merrill’s brief slump becomes a sophomore jinx, if the “bad bullpen” is more the norm than the “top bullpen in the majors”, if the starting rotation slumps, and so forth, then adding a middling LF to the roster, providing slightly more offense, will not change the destiny of the 2025 Padres.
So, I’m kinda ‘bah” about Heyward at the moment. The ’25 Padres have huge talent and Shlidt has pulled them together as a team, so we fans ride the horse we have, right? The VERY LAST thing I would want to see, is Preller trading away someone like de Vries for a mid-season upgrade of a aging IF or OF in his “walk year”, someone with a little bit of more punch and with maybe 20% higher batting average.
Stay the course, except get back on track. There’s a couple of pitchers returning soon who should be able to help.
Add Hart to the equation – he has been doing really well on the hitter friendly AAA.
Remember the days where there were 4-5 guys in lineup hitting .170-.220?
Every team in mlb has 1 or 2 weak spots so yeah, let’s keep running some guys out there until one sticks.
I also remember 2023 when the middling players as well as the stars on the team weren’t very good with RISP. Those days seem to have returned.
Brew – thinking the same thing. Also, that year record in extras was something like 2/21 with the wins coming the last week of September!
Good for SD that LAD has been struggling but also, dang SD could be up 3 games right now working on a cushion instead of trying to hang on.
Maybe so , but I’ve never seen Gurriel play left field
Ok – 1 truth that fails to add anything to the question of why Peralta isn’t playing LF for the Padres.
Yuli was signed as a bench bat / 1b.
Think Donovan Solano – who isn’t doing well do a lot of money (for a guy that brings what he brings) BTW.
If anyone was the Peralta replacement it was Heyward.
Good for Gonzalez. Go get paid.
“In general, the Padres’ system is lacking in impact outfielders after years of aggressive dealing on the trade market.”
Yeah, that hangover after the Soto binger is getting a little rough. James Wood would have looked really good in Padre brown.
I think the stats on how poorly Pads LF have been is a bit misleading. Wade and Lockridge have both done fairly well offensivly.. but did better when both had to fill in at CF.
So in an odd way, the padres in house options have a better track record this year than the padres LF have been.
Looks like Rakuten is replacing Maikel Franco with Oscar Gonzalez
I’m surprised they kept Franco for as long as they did.
Yeah, I’m pretty surprised too. Franco never even had an ops+ above his 2023 season (94 ops+)
Gonzalez did nothing but hit in AAA but was barely given a cup of coffee in San Diego while the Padres kept trotting Yuli Gurriel out there. Some teams seem to win in spite of themselves…
MLB caliber player IMO
We loved him in Cleveland. But he has the same lack of strike zone selection that Franmil Reyes and Jhonkensey Noel has. I’ll never forget his Game 3 HR in the ALCS. It’s one of the most exciting plays I’ve seen in person.
Get that money Oscar
Roughly 10 times what he would have made shuttling from El Paso to San Diego. Congrats Oscar.
LF has been a disaster for the Padres. Also, why hit Tatis lead off? I get the higher you hit the more ABs over the course of a year (about 20 for each spot in the lineup) but it just guarantees that for about 150 ABs, he’ll hit with no one on base. Hit him second.