Here comes Nomar Mazara

Another hitter is joining the San Diego Padres in hopes of jump-starting their quiet offense.

I was talking about MLB roster construction with someone a couple weeks ago and stumbled into an interesting thought:

The Padres love reclamation projects. It’s actually a staple to how they go about building their roster. Don’t believe me? Here are guys that flamed out in the majors or minors that are now on the Padres roster:

• Jurickson Profar

• Jake Cronenworth

• Austin Nola

• Jorge Alfaro

• Robinson Canó / Nomar Mazara

• Nick Martinez

• Matt Beaty

And I feel like that’s a fairly conservative list. The Padres got each one of those guys because they were the team that either believed the guy had something left in the tank (Cano), had been misused by their previous team (Cronenworth/Profar/Mazara), or had just never been given the right amount of opportunity to succeed (Martinez/Beaty/etc.).

I have Canó and Mazara listed together for this reason:

Dennis Lin@dennistlin

With Robinson Canó’s official release imminent, the Padres are promoting outfielder Nomar Mazara, according to sources. Mazara had a 1.095 OPS with Triple-A El Paso.

1:47 PM · Jun 2, 2022

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34 Reposts · 158 Likes

The amusing part of this to me was how certain most were that Sandy Alcantara would be released when Canó was added to the roster, and now he gets to stay while Canó goes home because he outplayed the future Hall of Famer.

Anyway, let’s talk about Nomar Mazara for a second and then I’ll find something else to blabber about.

Mazara is a career .255/.315/.418 hitter who was drafted and developed by the Texas Rangers when Preller was in their front office. He wasn’t as well-known a prospect as Jurickson Profar, but we’re finding a similar pattern here. Preller still believes that Mazara can be better than he’s been.

Mazara is a below-average defensive outfielder and spent most of his last couple of stops playing DH as a result. But he has spent most of his time in MLB playing RF, and his splits will tell you that he lines up pretty well for a platoon with Wil Myers…

Mazara vs. RHP: .264/.329/.440
Mazara vs. LHP: .231/.273/.354

The issue with such a platoon is either that Myers has hit LHP terribly this year (worse than vs. RHP) or that he has, for his career, his lefties and rights at almost the exact same numbers.

Doesn’t matter, though. The team needs offense and Mazara has been providing it in El Paso. Should we count on those numbers to mean anything once he gets here? Absolutely not.

We’ve seen time and time again that players that hit well in El Paso, especially with lots of power, get promoted and promptly look terrible. I think, after 6 MLB seasons, we know who Mazara is. He’ll be a bat off the bench to replace Canó, and he’ll be a spot starter if Myers struggles to stay healthy. Basically, he’s playing the role that Matt Beaty attempted to play earlier this season.