Pining for Kris Bryant

The Padres need some outfield depth. The Cubs are looking to restock their minor league system. Could this be a match made in baseball heaven?

We’ve spent a lot of time during the early parts of this season (yes, it’s still early) talking about the San Diego Padres’ starting pitching rotation. What we haven’t talked enough about, at least I haven’t here on Bandwagon Beach, is the team’s lack of outfield depth and how it is just as worrisome as the innings that the team needs to find.

To be fair, I thought the 2020 San Diego Padres had worrying outfield depth. “They’re one injury away from a disaster,” I would say. However, over the course of such a short season, it ended up being fine. Tommy Pham got hurt, Jurickson Profar took his job (after having his own job taken by Jake Cronenworth), and nothing bad happened.

In 2021, something is wrong with Tommy Pham. Either he’s injured or washed up or he stepped on a crack, but he’s definitely not hitting and can’t be trusted to be in the lineup every day. It’s like a major injury but not.

One thing it has shown is that the Padres’ outfield depth has only gotten worse since last year. There is no Josh Naylor or Ty France, who could play out of position. There is no Taylor Trammell or Edward Olivares, young kids that could play great defense while you wait for the offense to come around.

The only option to replace Tommy Pham has been Jurickson Profar, who has predictably been a replacement level player both on offense and defense.

That’s not to say I don’t like Profar, because I do. I just like him a lot more as a utility fielder with a decent bat off the bench who can play in half the games. So far, he’s played in 34 of 35 games and is 4th in the team in plate appearances, behind only Hosmer, Cronenworth, and Machado. That’s too much Jurickson Profar.

At some point, a Padres outfielder is going to get injured enough to need time out of the lineup. That just happens. It’s already happened with Trent Grisham, which led to a lot of Tommy Pham in center field. Wil Myers is currently fighting through some injuries without any real hope of relief. Profar is not made of adamantium, he could get hurt too.

When that happens, what are the Padres’ choices? Right now the list looks something like this:

• Tommy Pham

• Brian O’Grady

• Jorge Mateo

• J̶o̶r̶g̶e̶ ̶O̶ñ̶a̶ (injured)

• ???

Mateo is an infielder by trade, and bounced a ball off his glove and over the wall earlier this year. O’Grady probably deserves a shot but also probably isn’t an MLB hitter. And Tommy Pham is broken in some way.

At some point, Tommy Pham is going to get on a hot streak or the San Diego Padres are going to need to release him and use his roster spot for someone they can trust to play in the outfield for a stretch.

The (nuclear) internal options

I don’t believe any of this is realistic, but I feel the need to lay it out here before someone asks about it.

Yes, the Padres could move Fernando Tatis Jr. to the outfield to potentially help with his throwing issues. That would free up shortstop for, presumably, Ha-Seong Kim and his Gold Glove defense. However, that probably creates a similar situation because Kim’s not hitting much better than Pham at the moment (he’s actually been just a little bit worse).

The Padres could also call up C.J. Abrams and put him in center field, a position that he’s never played in a minor league game or even a spring training game, but that would seem to be a little short-sighted.

Let’s assume that, unless Brian O’Grady breaks out this year, the Padres need some external help in their outfield.

Target acquired

I called this post “Pining for Kris Bryant” because he’s the name that has been most associated with the Padres over the last year or so, both because he has history in San Diego (playing at USD) and because he’s a really good hitter.

Just from a numbers perspective, Kris Bryant would be the best hitter on the Padres right now. He’s also gone from being a good 3B to being a good utility player, somehow. In addition to playing 3B, he has also played 1B and all three OF positions this season. That’s not a typo, he’s played a lot of center field and hasn’t been terrible at it.

From a perspective of fit with what the Padres need, he’s probably perfect (I’d prefer if he were left-handed to balance the lineup, but whatever). He’s even probably attainable, being in the last-year of his contract and very unlikely to sign an extension with the Chicago Cubs.

Since he’s a client of Scott Boras, he’s likely to sign with whatever teams offers him the most money. That means, whatever team trades for him understands that he’ll be a rental: a player that can help your team this year and will then leave.

The Padres haven’t shown any fear of trading for rentals in the past, but the stakes have never really been this high. The Cubs will demand one of San Diego’s top prospects as the price, and maybe more, to have Bryant take over the LF spot from Pham/Profar.

Before we go that far, just because it looks like Preller is trying to keep this contention window open for the next 3 years or so, maybe we should look at what other options are out there?

Quickly shopping for (other) outfielders

This thing could get really, really long if I start digging through every outfielder in MLB, but I’m going to just grab some names and see how we feel about them.

Now, because the team doesn’t really have a worthwhile backup for Trent Grisham in center field, I want to find someone that can potentially fill that role as well as someone that can produce at an offensive level above that of Pham and Profar.

Bryan Reynolds - You should be familiar with this name because Reynolds torched the Padres as a member of the Pirates this year (see above). He has split his time between LF/CF this season. His .291/.381/.470 slash line is not only really good, it aligns well with his rookie season numbers (2019). Reynolds was oddly terrible in the 60-game season last year.

Tyler Naquin - The Reds are strangely exciting this year, but probably not good, and stand almost no chance of winning their division or getting a Wild Card spot. Naquin is their CF most games (doesn’t mean he’s been great there), and his .278/.365/.578 slash line is a fun one. At 30 years old, he’s probably not a part of their long-term plans. Like Reynolds, he was terrible in 2020.

Andrew Benintendi - I’ve always been a fan of this kid, who wouldn’t cost the same as Bryant but is 26-years old with a good amount of potential. After a terrible 2020 with Boston, he has found his stroke again in Kansas City. Doesn’t play a lot of CF but is left-handed and can play either corner OF spot well.

Yasiel Puig - Last seen signing with a Mexican baseball team last month, I don’t think this one is realistic. Unfortunately for Puig, he causes too much trouble and came to MLB too late in life. As a streaky 30-year old, MLB teams don’t consider him an option anymore.

As I said, there are lots and lots of other outfielder options out there. These are just some that I found very quickly. Let me know in the comments if you have any outfielders, besides the ones mentioned above, that you’d like to see A.J. Preller investigate as he waits for Tommy Pham to figure it out at the plate.

Once we get into July, we’ll have a better idea of what the Padres need the most and what the asking price will be for a guy like Kris Bryant. For right now, we can just see potential peril coming up on the horizon and wonder about how Preller might work to avoid it.