Padres catcher Austin Nola’s season is over, manager Jayce Tingler announced to reporters (Twitter link via Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune). He’d been attempting to play through a strained ligament in his left thumb, but he’ll now undergo surgery to address the issue. He’s expected to be ready for Spring Training 2022.
Nola’ third IL stint of the season will bring his year to a premature end. San Diego acquired Nola at last summer’s trade deadline while he was amidst a breakout campaign with the Mariners. His pace fell off a little bit down the stretch, but he still entered 2021 as one of the better catchers in baseball.
When healthy, Nola continued to produce on both sides of the ball. He hit .272/.340/.376 with one of the league’s lowest strikeout rates (9.8%). That’s exactly league average offense by measure of wRC+, a significant cut above the cumulative .228/.305/.392 line managed by catchers leaguewide. And Nola rated as a slightly above-average pitch framer, per Statcast, a continuation of his career trend in that regard.
Unfortunately, a series of health woes — fractured left middle finger, left knee sprain and today’s thumb strain — limited the 31-year-old to just 194 plate appearances in 56 games this season. Getting a full season from Nola will be key for a San Diego team that’ll look to contend in 2022. A miserable second half will almost certainly keep the Friars from the postseason this year, but they’ll bring back an extremely talented core in hopes of sticking near the top of a competitive NL West. A late bloomer who didn’t make his MLB debut until his age-29 season, Nola won’t be eligible for arbitration until the end of next year and isn’t on track to reach free agency until the 2025-26 offseason.
Explains his lack of power this year
He had more home runs this season than his brother has hit in his career so I’d say he’s still on the upswing
I guess Aaron’s problems have been sympathetic.
The team’s season is over anyway.
Is today National Baseball Player Surgery Day or something?
That’s NBPSD to us true fans. Notice the “SD” at the end.
That trade was terrible!
Not for the M’s 🙂
The Padres. Lol.
If someone told you back in April that with 10 days to go in the season that it was very possible the Padres would miss the playoffs, the Dodgers could be a wild card, and the Yankees could miss the playoffs, you would ask that person what he was smoking. Yes, there’s still 10 days to go, but this possibility is very real.
And in reality, if the White Sox didn’t play in such a crappy division, who knows how likely they would’ve made the playoffs.
Crazy season.
Why are we still overrating the Yankees? I didn’t understand all the fuss entering the season. Pedestrian starting pitching after Cole and there was no way LeMahieu was going to hit .36o again.
The Padres? They finished six games behind the Dodgers over a 60-game season, which equates to 16 over 162. And they otherwise hadn’t had a winning full-schedule record since 2010. It’s a big leap from there to catching a team that has been averaging 100-plus wins-per-162-games over the previous four seasons.
The Mets were another hot prediction people were making. With predictions, it seems like one person gets the ball rolling and everyone else cribs off that person in order to look smart. When it doesn’t work out, they use injuries as an excuse.
Good points. I will say that the Padres made some big additions in the off-season (Darvish and Snell) and I don’t think many serious people thought they’d catch the Dodgers, but many thought they’d make the WC game. Nobody saw the NL West having two 100-win teams and one of them being the Giants, though.
There was much reason for Padres hoopla. Imagine a rotation with Clevinger, Snell, Darvish, Musgrove, Paddack and Lamet. And the Padres’ offense is just fine with Tatis, Machado, Cronenworth, Hosmer, Pham, Grisham, Myers, Nola. The difference is that the Padres did not have pitching depth like the Dodgers. Instead of Arrieta and Velasquez, I expected to see MacKenzie Gore, A. Martinez, S. Wilson, R. Lawson, E. Elliot or R. Knehr. In contrast, the Dodgers had Buehler, Kershaw, Urias, May and Bauer. Gonsolin and Price were good enough and they went and got Scherzer. The Dodgers have enough pitching that if they make it to a 7 game series, I would be ready to use Urias as the super closer. I trust Urias not Jansen. Scherzer, Buehler and Kershaw can start. Treinan is ok, though I could do without his right wing conspiracies and anti-vax nonsense. I sure hope that we do not see Trevor Bauer again in a Dodgers uniform. Make a deal, give him full salary for 2021, and negotiate to cut him loose. Cardinals have won 13 in a row, if there is a one game playoff, Scherzer pitches 7 innings and Urias the last 2.
The Padres will likely end up sub-.500.
Did someone say “operation”? Time to remove the funny bone. Let’s hope the surgeon isn’t a butterfingers.
youtube.com/watch?v=2XHqP4wLOzA
Makes sense, as the Padres are just playing out the string.
Calling up Luis Camousano?
Campusano.
Campusano dealing with an oblique injury.
Nah, Rivas.
“ He hit .272/.340/.376 with one of the league’s lowest strikeout rates (9.8%). That’s exactly league average offense by measure of wRC+, a significant cut above the cumulative .228/.305/.392 line managed by catchers leaguewide.”
Um, unless a number is wrong somewhere, is the 19 point OPS gap from Nola to the average catcher really a “significant cut above”?
AJ Preller has announced that Nola’s thumb and two unpaid interns in the ticket office are the real reasons why the Padres tanked and he’s an incompetent imbecile who’s never won anything, yet remains employed……..
He will have been injured for 106 games when this season ends. In 3 seasons he has started 88 games at catcher. In 2020 he was injured part of the 60 game season and had 38 starts at catcher. He only started playing catcher in 2019 when he had 4 whole starts in the majors. He was also injured that season. Maybe I am missing something, but I see a pattern of injuries here. He will be 32 yrs old in 2022 and most player’s performance starts going down and injuries go up after 30.
To me Nola is a great trade candidate. Let some other team have his age 32-33 years before he is arb eligible.
They didn’t trade for him to flip him. They traded for him to use him. 30 y/o late bloomers in the middle of career years aren’t the type of players you trade for to “fix and flip.”
Not much of a career year when he missed 106 games due to injuries, is it? His offensive numbers were 19 points above league average for a catcher. Not mind blowing stuff. Decent, not great. The Padres developed all those prospects to flip them, so why not flip a guy that is injured more than healthy, on the wrong side of 30, and is intriguing enough to get a decent return?
Career year when he produced his best personal WAR total in a single season and the season in question was 37% as long as a normal season. It was obvious that the Padres were buying high on him when they traded for him. Players like that aren’t acquired to be flipped later on. They are acquired to be used. That is the reason they wouldn’t flip him. They aren’t going to get a better return than they gave up to get him if they do trade him. If the plan was to flip him he never would have been traded for in the first place.
Because they get nothing for him, no team wants him. They can just hope for a bounce back next year,otherwise you have to DFA him in late may. There is no trade value, Nobody wants a 32 yo catcher who barely played the last two years.
@dominikk85 Well maybe not nothing. But certainly not as good a package as Ty France, Taylor Trammell, Luis Torrens and Andres Muñoz.
@DiegoDuder are you ever going to provide proof of your assertion that Manny Machado doesn’t sign if the Padres don’t sign Eric Hosmer first or nah?
outinleftfield10 hours ago
To me Nola is a great trade candidate. Let some other team have his age 32-33 years before he is arb eligible.
=============================================
Probably what Seattle was thinking when they shipped him to SD.
Dear padres ,
Thank you
Ms fans
Baseball is a field of dreams. This spring Padres fans and I were dreaming of the prize. I’ll keep dreaming… I loved the spring.
Another hit for Preller, the king of bad juju.
Remember when the Padres didn’t have anywhere for Ty France to play? So they traded him for this guy.
Then signed Ha Seoung Kim
Then traded for Adam Frazier.
Good times brought to you by AJ Preller
Don’t forget Mr. 3 year deal with multiple opt outs, producing a below average 660 OPS, Mr. Profar
Exactly. Preller has burned up like $49 million between Kim & Profar and neither are MLB starters.
That’s my chief concern about Preller. It seems like he is playing fantasy baseball. You need backups, but they had Cronenworth. Then they had to back him up with Kim, and then had to back up Kim with Frazier.