The Padres have acquired first baseman/outfielder Matt Beaty from the Dodgers in exchange for minor league right-hander/infielder River Ryan, per a team announcement. The Padres announced Ryan, a two-way player in college, as a pitcher in their press release. The Dodgers initially announced him as an infielder, but Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register tweets that they still plan to give Ryan opportunities on the mound.
To open space on the 40-man roster, San Diego placed left-hander Drew Pomeranz, who underwent forearm surgery last August, on the 60-day injured list. Beaty was designated for assignment by Los Angeles last week.
Beaty, 28, was a somewhat surprising DFA by the Dodgers, as he was fresh off a .270/.363/.402 showing in 234 plate appearances last season. While Beaty didn’t show substantial power (seven homers, four doubles, one triple, .132 ISO), he walked at a league-average clip, was plunked 10 times (thus driving up his OBP a bit) and made contact at an above-average rate. Beaty fanned in 18.8% of his plate appearances last year and has a career mark of 16.4% — well south of last year’s 22.6% league average (excluding pitchers).
The Padres have been on the hunt for outfield upgrades for much of the offseason but have also reportedly been hamstrung a bit by payroll concerns — a driving factor behind their reported efforts to trade Eric Hosmer and/or Wil Myers. It’s been a generally quiet winter for the Friars, who’ve added a bit to their bullpen (Robert Suarez, Luis Garcia) and signed Nick Martinez to a four-year deal that is laden with opt-out opportunities. Offensively, the lone addition of note thus far has been Luke Voit, whom the Padres acquired from the Yankees last week.
Beaty will give San Diego an option in left field, where utilityman Jurickson Profar had been among the leading candidates for playing time. Beaty can also spell Hosmer at first base or mix in at designated hitter if Voit is unavailable. In addition to his work at first and in the outfield corners, he’s spent a bit of time at third base, but defensive metrics aren’t especially bullish on him at any of the positions he’s played thus far in a small sample of innings. He also has a minor league option remaining, so the Padres don’t necessarily need to commit to keeping him on the big league roster all season.
Ryan, 23, was an 11th-round pick out UNC Pembroke just last season. Though he pitched to a 2.32 ERA with a 29.7% strikeout rate and a 7.8% walk rate in 93 innings of bullpen work during his NCAA career, the Friars didn’t actually put him on the mound during last year’s pro debut. He spent a dozen games with the Padres’ Rookie-level affiliate in the Arizona Complex League and batted .308/.349/.436 with a homer, two doubles and four stolen bases in 43 plate appearances.
He’s a double-agent!
Double agent? That’s the problem.. if he was a HOME RUN agent he wouldn’t have been traded
I had never heard of River Ryan before but looked him up. Nice stats in college hitting and pitching. Plus 5 years younger than Beatty.
I used to think all the trades I made on MLB The Show were unrealistic, but the Padres have changed my mind.
Which side do you think won?
Premature (mini) inquisition.
This could be a bite you in your ass for either team, more recently for the Pads. 6 or 7 years for now, Ryan could be up the River, and a topic of discussion, for LAD
I think both sides win on this one. Matt Beatty will start as a SDP. River Ryan looks like an outstanding lower MiLB prospect.
River Ryan is a lottery ticket, I wouldn’t call him an outstanding prospect.
Matt Beaty has a quick sweet swing, a pity it’s now against the Dodgers
I am a Padres fan. When I saw the headline, I thought, “Wow, LA just doesn’t fear SD at all.” That might still be true, but Beaty doesn’t seem like much of a factor. He has more PH appearances than games at any of his 4 corner positions. Still, he has 18 homers in 556 career plate appearances.
Someone help me out. After the DFA, could LAD have traded Beaty to anyone or only the Padres if they put in the first waiver claim?
Anyone they want
They have 7 days to either trade him or waive him
Apparently the sides were happy. Surprising to see a deal within the division.
Was the last trade between these two the Kemp / Grandal deal?
Think so. Too much is made about trading within a division. The Dodgers were looking for their best offer and they got it from the Padres.
Agreed. If the Dodgers really thought Beaty was enough to impact the division race they wouldn’t have put him on waivers to begin with.
Yep. But we’ve also seen plenty of impact trades within a division. Both teams are getting something they want/need and that’s always the top priority.
I can almost guarantee he will have a hit to beat them this year. Always happens to guys they cast off. Shocked they dealt him to the padres.
It was undoubtedly the best prospect they were offered in exchange.
@Jordan5…..I “almost guarantee,” great way to chop yourself off at the legs.
sure but now that you’ve guaranteed it, it won’t happen. Double jinxed
Reverse day, no take-backsies.
Beaty 4 MVP now!
I wonder if it’s to make room for Alvarez or Lamb.
No way Alvarez – he’s slated for minors
It was to make room for Hanser Alberto
I really thought the Guardians would have made an ideal landing spot for him.
No room on the 40.
Therein lies the primary issue in dealing a Matt Beatty. How many other clubs have the space or evaluate Beatty as someone worth bumping someone else off the roster.
As a Dodger fan, he was likable in interviews. But his defense left something to be desired.
River Ryan? That’s some kinda name.
FWIW, the fastest-rising boy names,per nameberry.com, are Sekani, Ermias, Amais, Kyro & Ambrose.
I once remember reading about someone who was rebuked while trying to name their kid “Bus Stop #3” cuz that was where the kid was conceived lol.
I like River. It runs deep.
Yeah, there was a period of about 5-7 years where almost anything wasn’t off limits in naming kids, and celebrities only fed the embarrassingly popular trend.
At first, people were just coming up with stupid ways to spell normal names differently…Like Mehshell or Rihyan or other more egregious slaughtering of names…Then, when that wasn’t enough to be “different” that’s when people starting coming out with the stupidest names like holidays, cities, places, favorite foods, etc. even, I guess apparently stooping as low as places kids were conceived…lol
Absolutely, dumb that some of these kids forever have to carry the stupidest most moronic names now, solely because his or her parents wanted to be “different.”
I named my kids John,Tom, Mathew, Marc, Luke, and buster. Now coincidently they have rare names lol. John and Tom came first, then they kept coming, so we went with Bible names that was until Buster was born in early 2011.
I would rather have a weird name that is a common word or name like “Trumpet” or “Capone” than a common name with a weird spelling like Mehshell or Rihyan.
Sounds like yall have too much time on your hand if you care so much about what other people name their children
River Phoenix …. Ooppps. Sorry.
His name will be Seven!
Beaty is a great example of why WAR is an imperfect science to say the least. During his 3 partial seasons in MLB, Beatty has hit .262/.333/.425 over 503 official at bats, which is basically one full season of baseball. During that time, he has hit 24 doubles, 18 HRs, 91 RBI with an OPS of .758, yet his career WAR is -0.1 ??? Even with marginal defense, this performance certainly deserves a positive WAR of at least 1.0 if not higher than that. Meanwhile, Joey Gallo gets a 4.7 WAR for a horrible season last year (batted .199/.351/.458 with 77 RBI), Sure, Gallo is a great defender with power and a good eye at the plate but Gallo hurt his teams much more than he helped last year. I just don’t get it.
How exactly did Gallo hurt more than help last year? .351 OBP and .458 SLG (123 wrc+) + strong defense + strong baserunning sounds like a very good contributor even if he wasn’t great in his stretch run with the Yanks.
On Beaty, you kind of answered your own question. His defense isn’t marginal, it’s just bad. And he’s already a significantly worse bat than Gallo.
WAR is certainly imperfect but not nearly as imperfect as you’re implying. If Beaty was a more positive contributor the Dodgers simply would have used him more. That they did not while also bringing in other guys should be telling enough,
@averagejoe – Gallo failed the eye test all season long. He hit 38 HRs, but only ended up with 77 RBI on the season so he left countless base runners on in clutch situations. Sure he walked a ton but he was terrible with RISP and was a constant rally killer at the plate with both his teams. There is no way he was worth 4.7 WAR last season.
The Yankees did not have a lot of baserunners and that was the problem. The team did not work counts and take their walks. Gallo at least worked the damn count. They fired their hitting coach because of the all or nothing approach of the whole team. So some of Gallo’s struggles was a team philosophy struggle. Beatty is not the same class of player as Gallo let’s not even attempt to go there but -0.1 WAR does seem a bit harsh because dude is a notch better than most replacement players. Long term LAD could win this trade having a pitcher that can hit but short term this is what San Diego needed.
The eye test failed you. Gallo had an .840 OPS with men on base. With 2 outs and RISP he had a .771 OPS. Both are significantly higher than league average.
A run saved is worth a run scored. Defense matters. Gallo was not just good on defense, he was great.
All you are getting across is that you don’t understand WAR.
I think you kind of answered your own statement – defense matters in WAR. As does OBP. Both areas in which Gallo is superior over Beatty.
While I agree that WAR is not great, people who have been around for a while, like myself, need to let go of batting average as a useful stat. I don’t mean to speak for you, but maybe his .199 BA stands out to you because of that very reason.
While batting average isn’t a tell-all stat, it doesn’t mean nothing. A walk is not as good as a hit. Nothing happens on a walk except for a base for the batter and any forced runners.
Unless ball 4 gets away from the catcher.
Plenty happens on a walk. The pitch count goes up to 4 minimum. There is a man on base for the next batter. If the person who walked is a good baserunner he can distract the pitcher. And with a walk you are pretty much guaranteed not to get into a double play. Walks are very useful. I will take s .250 hitter with a .380 OBP over a .300 hitter with a .330 OBP all other things being equal.
WAR is a junk stat. By trying to too much it ends up doing very little.
Junk is an overstatement. It serves it’s purpose.
WAR is used to determine relative value with margin for error. The difference between players with 4.5 and 4.2 WAR is within the margin of error, you can’t say one is definitively better than the other. The difference between players with 2 and 4 WAR is significant and you can comfortably say the 4 WAR guy was better.
Does WAR have shortcomings? Sure, it’s limited by quality of inputs. Defense metrics aren’t great and I’d like to see a flavor of WAR incorporate OAA. Reliever value doesn’t appear to be captured well and the difference in FIP based and ERA based WAR can be substantial.
That said, WAR does what it’s supposed to do when used correctly and calling it junk with no specific reasoning is lazy.
You’ve included some of my “lazy reasoning” in your response, so if I’m being lazy then so are you. To begin with, defensive metrics are a BFM. They mostly report noise, so right off, including them in a statistical model that is supposed to calculate player value is a problem. Then there’s the problem of weighting. Why, how and how much are some play factors weighted more than others? But most importantly, I’ve never seen WAR ground-truthed. It’s supposed to predict victories, but does it?
This is why we’ve got multiple flavors of WAR. Nobody agrees on what it should do, or how. That’s the definition of a junk stat. Meaning, it’s little more than a number that takes on validity just because it was spit out by some formula that hardly anyone really understands. Not how statistical modeling works. Hope this reasoning isn’t too lazy for you.
Blueskies…as a fellow Dodger fan-I often don’t agree with you (the Bill Plaschke of MLBTR).
But in this case, I sort of agree. You make a good point about WAR. Fan graphs and BaseballReference have their own WAR version and other sites likely do as well.
As I understand it, WAR is a calculated metric based upon a number of statistics.
It seems like an overly analytical way to reduce a player’s performance to one metric.
A small handful of stats seems more effective in measuring a player’s performance than a simple WAR number.
For hitters, triple slash while noting DRS and OAA seems to accurately asses their overall performance. For pitchers, FIP, BABIP, and K/BB ratio work well.
This site and other have moved toward a K% stat that makes less sense to me ( unless regular games were 10 innings).
Every stat or metric has it’s own up and downside.
WAR is a counting stat for people that don’t like counting stats.
WAR is subjective, as stated by FanGraphs:
“Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is a concept rather than one individual statistic. Given that the definition for WAR is somewhat subjective, different groups of people have arrived at different calculations.”
Subjectivity can lead to agenda driven results.
I agree with you Blue. But I’d be interested in what you mean by the noise associated with the defensive stats.
The Bill Plaschke of MLBTR…. that’s pretty funny. I don’t know whether to feel insulted or complemented!
I’ve looked at the WAR formulas. They are kitchen sink stats. They are based on the theory that if you throw everything in and hit blend, the number it spits out means something. A lot of fans take the number as a kind of gospel, without examining any of the assumptions that went into it. It wouldn’t be very difficult to prove that the numbers are meaningful, but I’ve never seen anyone take the trouble to go through the exercise.
As you say, real evaluation of a player takes using a number of statistics, and also the recognition that not everything is easy to quantify. Getting it right might just involve considering more than one thing at a time, and applying observational skills to the process.
@rememberthecoop. Defensive stats are highly unstable. They often rate players as being plus defenders one season, and negative defenders the next, when probably the player’s actual skills haven’t changed. When I bring this up, the answer is often that you need to average defensive metrics over several seasons. Whoa, wait. The typical position player probably has a thousand or more defensive encounters in a season, but this isn’t enough, and we need to consider thousands more? This tells me there’s a problem with what is being measured. Defensive skills are hard to quantify and coming up with a number doesn’t mean you’ve actually done it.
It’s like putting a thermometer where it gets sun on it some days. The answer to the erratic temperature readings isn’t averaging them over a month, it’s moving the thermometer to where it reads consistently every day. Not more data, better data.
Yes, WAR does predict victories. The teams with the highest WAR had the highest win totals. In 2021, only 2 teams had a variance greater than 3 wins. When you get to that large of a sample size, WAR is highly accurate.
What WAR does not do is work in small sample sizes. You need about 3 seasons of data for an individual player to get a clear and predictive measure of performance. The developer of the stat has repeatedly said so.
The problem is people with no statistical education trying to apply WAR to small samples for comparing individual players.
When it comes to the defensive metrics used they are both zone based, so in an era of extreme infield shifts defensive zones of responsibility became hard to measure.
When it came to 1B and Catcher they are completely useless because the main responsibilities of those positions on defense are not included in WAR in any way.
For OF, all of the defensive metrics are fairly close on measuring performance.
EVERY team in MLB uses WAR in decision making. The teams employ the best and brightest in analytics and they use the stat. They incorporate other data when it comes to decisions about defense, but the bottom line is WAR works so they use it.
So to try to say its a junk stat is completely incorrect.
If I’m wrong, it isn’t for any of the reasons you suggest.
First of all, if you have any information to show that WAR correlates with real-world wins, please supply the linkage. I have looked multiple times for this and never found any.
Second, please refer to my earlier comments on sample size in defensive metrics. If a stat is stable and based on good data and a valid mathematical model, then looking at one season of data should not be an issue.
Third, how do you know where defensive metrics work and where they don’t? Do you have a basis for saying this or are you just assuming?
Finally, you can say teams use WAR in decision-making but how do you know? Teams never advertise how they make their analytical decisions. More and more they are relying on proprietary data and analysis. That’s how they hope to find an edge they won’t get by using some off-the-shelf stats we can all read on Fangraphs and elsewhere.
Beaty is a butcher on defense and those offensive numbers you posted aren’t anything special
Perfect replacement for Tommy Pham. They won’t miss a beat.
Parallel move except in perhaps Gaslamp-area activity.
Losing Strip Club Tommy will truly hurt Pacers.
Sounds like you’re just getting mad about something you don’t understand
WAR is calculated based on how much someone plays, a total, it isn’t a ratio based stat when you look at Baseball-Reference’s WAR for Matt Beaty his only negative WAR season comes from an abysmal 2020 of which he produced a -0.5 brWAR, and was below average on both sides of the ball. The rest of his seasons 2019 (0.3 brWAR), and 2021 (0.1 brWAR) were due to A. a lack of plate appearances, and B. abysmal defensive WAR
It’s also worth mentioning that Baseball-Reference isn’t the only source for or interpretation of WAR; Fangraphs has Beaty’s career fWAR at 1.2
as for Gallo? the only “horrible” part of his 2021 season; was his batting average at .199, but he makes up for it in OBP and SLG. Gallo walked the most out of anyone in the AL, and contributed 38 HRs, leading to a .808 OPS – almost exactly .050 > greater than Beaty’s career total, he did that whilst producing (according to Baseball-References and not Fangraphs) above average defence, and with more plate appearances than Beaty’s entire career, which is why his 2021 brWAR of 4.7, and fWAR of 3.5 is significantly greater than Beaty’s
The other horrible parts of Gallo’s 2021 season were 13 doubles and only 77 RBI while he hit 38 HRs. He left a ton of runners on base and was the antithesis of clutch last season. He’s one of the last players in MLB I want at the plate with 2 outs and a runner on 2nd base.
The percentage of players in MLB that I would want up with 2 outs runner at 2nd has decreased massively over the past 25 years. Bat control is a lost art.
signed, Gywnn T., R. Carew & H. Wagner
I have hope for Nick Madrigal, if he can come back from that terrible injury.
bWAR weighs defense very heavily. Personally, I prefer to use fWAR when looking at position players. It balances defense and offense better imo.
I also prefer FanGraph WAR.
MLB and MLBTR prefer Baseball Reference. That says volumes.
It feels like you are cherry-picking a bit.. Th OPS+ is Beaty 101, Gallo 121. In this case, it really gets into how much you prefer singles over walks. While Gallo’s average was only .199, his OBP was still a pretty good .351.
And it depends on which WAR you use. bWAR has Beaty as -.01, while fWAR has him at 1.2.
Past that, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to any single stat. None of them are 100% perfect. But the alternative is no stats at all.
It sure seems like you are punting on the main issue. The alternative to not putting much stock in WAR because of its flaws isn’t no stats at all, it’s looking at less flawed stats with demonstrated predictive value. No statistic does this perfectly, but some do it a whole lot better than others.
ALL stats are GENERALLY relevant; and only that. Moreover, they represent individual achievement, vs. phenomena that actually helps a team win a baseball game.
ALL stats are so; they give a general field of analysis, but only in a very general way.
All statistics are not created equally. The purpose of stats is to explain variability in probabilistic events, IOW the likelihood of something happening. The better any given stat does that, the more value it has in making predictions. WAR (in its various flavors) is supposed to predict game wins, but as far as I know, nobody has ever tested whether it does. So, what does this mathematical model explain or predict? Anything?
@blueskies
War is wins above a replacement player.
Warp.
A player that is cheap and freely available.
The conclusion is. How much would be lost if that player was replaced by a replacement player.
A catcher worth 4 war. Team theoretically lose 4 more games by replacing him with another catcher during the same amount of time that he played.
Im not sure there could be even a near perfect stat. Anything simplified, people will want it more complex for every variable. Then when it’s complex, its too complex for some.
I had to make a profile just to post this
beyondtheboxscore.com/platform/amp/2018/12/26/1815…
You missed the point. There’s no evidence that WAR measures the very thing it purports to measure. This would not be a particularly difficult thing to prove but nobody seems to be interested in even investigating the question.
Interesting question on preferring singles over walks. I do think that walks are important but singles are always more valuable than walks. At best, a walk is as good as a single but never as good as a single as a single can drive in a runner from second or move a runner from first to third. So, in the OPS calculation shouldn’t a single be worth more than a walk?
@mlbdodgerfan Singles are worth more in OPS, because they count towards both. Walks don’t. Though we shouldn’t really be comparing walks to singles…we should be comparing walks to hits.
You are right, with marginal defense his WAR would be higher. However, with really bad defense it is lower.
The imperfection lies in the assumption that each small sample of bad defense would be repeated on a larger scale throughout an entire year. Which I highly doubt.
If given a full time or close to full time look in left field I’d bet, and the Padres are betting, that the defense would improve. Perhaps after a couple hundred innings he climbs to marginal at defense.
Then his WAR would take a big jump.
You are correct Halo! Also, Beaty’s ‘awful’ season was 2020 where he only had 50 ABs. It’s hard to measure someone’s true value over a small sample of 50 official at bats.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the Padres got a player who appears to be substantially better than 0.1 WAR career to date. I hope he comes back to haunt the Dodgers for releasing him.
Hi. I think for generating War. The worst stat of Beaty. is his fielding runs generated.
Beaty pinch hit. Alot. I can see this being missed. It may be that fangraphs only breaks this stat down. If you don’t field. How do you get that value?
His first season. When he did play 1B. It measured really really bad.
This last season, his 1B play measured much better. But he played more OF. Which measured really really bad.
Yes, Beaty’s career plate appearances combined are equivalent to a full season, but he has 97 games at PH and 155 playing defense. PHers surely take a haircut on WAR.
In 2013, San Diego OFer Chris Denorfia had 520 PAs and had a 4.2 WAR according to baseball-reference. Nobody took that seriously and the rest of his career was -0.2 WAR and less than 500 PAs in 2 seasons.
Beaty’s defense isn’t marginal, its horrible. Among players with 800+ innings in the field from 2019 to 2021, Beaty is 110th of 130 players.
Joey Gallo is a great defender. On that same list his defense ranked 19th.
Also, Gallo had a better OPS last season than Beaty has for his career .809 is better than .758 by a huge margin. Gallo contributed more on offense last season than Beaty has during his career.
Defense matters. Saving a run is just as valuable as scoring a run.
That poor Dodger fan with the tattoo
No Ragrets
Like what would ya say?
Would be nice to know more about Ryan. At the college level he both hit and pitched very well, but the Padres assigned him to their rookie league. Just based on the numbers he seems more advanced than that.
His numbers look intriguing but are at levels where it’s tough to gage the upside. The Pads were desperate for OF help so LA had them over a barrel. This looks like a nice deal for both teams though, immediate need for Pads.
It does seem a little odd though, like Germany continuing to import oil from Russia
like Germany continuing to import oil from Russia
==========================================
They decided to shut down their nuclear power plants, without having an alternative fuel supply. So the burn coal instead to help the environment.
Who could’ve anticipated that Putin couldn’t be trusted.
“They decided to shut down their nuclear power plants, without having an alternative fuel supply”.
We’ve seen in Ukraine how reliable nuke plants are when in the hands of terrorists.
Despite being a cloudy place, did you know that Germany produces a large % of it’s electricity from grid-tie rooftop solar? USA is waaaaay behind on that.
Apparently the global implications of this trade were not fully appreciated.
lol
Good trade for the Padres. we need left handed outfielder, and yes I’m happy to the trade. and yes I posted before,when DFA’d Beaty.
When you look at the SD outfield depth chart this is kind of a no-brainer. They absolutely had to acquire someone else, it’s not like they could roll into a season with 2 actual OF (Myers and Grisham) and a utilityman (Profar) as your only 3 “OF”.
Seems like he’s mostly OF help now, but ultimately if they can ever dump Hosmer they could probably get about the same production out of Beaty at 1B for a fraction of the cost so that’s might be a longer term angle here.
I’m glad Beatty is gone. Hosmer is 10 times the player. Same bat to ball skills wit good defense lil more pop, way better base running.
On Hosmer having “way better baserunning” than Beaty. That’s like saying a Pinto is faster than an AMC Gremlin
I don’t know if you’ve seen Hosmer defend much last year, but he’s not the defender he once was with KC. He still makes the routine plays, but his range is limited and he makes tons of mistakes once any complexity is added to the play. Lots of balls in the dirt or slightly off line that he muffs.
Hosmer had a lower slugging % than Beaty last year and hit 12 HR in a full season’s worth of ABs whereas Beaty hit 7 in only 1/3rd of the chances. I’d wager if they both played an equal amount you’d get at least equal pop out of Beaty.
Let, the River run…Let Dodger dreamers, wake the nation!
He’s glad to be off Los Karens I am sure.
Padres: Trade Franmil Reyes because he sucks at defense
Also Padres: Let’s get Matt Beaty in here
#youredoingitwrong
That trade went down a few years before before the DH was in the NL. It was also about acquiring Trammel, so at the time they were trading a player who they thought was a DH for a top 100 CF prospect when they were going to need a CF.
It ultimately ended up being a pretty bad move considering Trammel’s value went down and they sent him to SEA as part of the Nola deal, which also wasn’t a very good deal . So yeah it’s fair to say SD would be better off if they had kept Franmil and that was a bad trade, but at the time the rules were literally different so I don’t think you can compare the two deals.
LA also got hit with the Yordan Alvarez trade around the same time, same decision. Probably the only bad trade Friedman has done.
Alvarez was a Dodger all of 90 days. He was like 18 years old when they traded him. That is literally nothing like the Reyes trade.
Reyes had already played RF in the big leagues for parts of two seasons and was getting better as a hitter at an astronomical rate.
The Scherzer trade?
The other thing to consider is that Beaty hasn’t played enough in any one defensive spot in the majors yet to determine if he’s an ‘awful’ defender or not. He’s one of those guys who if he gets a chance to play one position on a semi-regular basis, I’m sure we’ll see significant improvement. He’ll get plenty of at bats as a DH in San Diego but there’s a case to be made that he should play quite a bit of first base too considering their other option is Hosmer. I think this has a chance to be a great trade for San Diego. They really didn’t give up that much to get him and Beaty is extremely motivated to get more MLB playing time so they will get his best efforts. I could see a Luke Voit type of jump out of him when he was traded from St. Louis to the Yankees. Beaty probably won’t hit as many HRs as Voit did but I think SD will be pleased with his offensive output.
If Matt Beaty is the DH San Diego has got real problems on their hands.
The hope really has to be that he can make the grade in LF. Hosmer for all his shortcomings is a legit big league player. Though clearly overpaid he will give you professional at bats, Profar is the only option in LF right now, and Beaty probably has decent chance of earning time over him.
@ Dorothy. The Pads already have 3 options at 1B, one is a very good option (Cronenworth, but he’s their regular 2B), then there’s Hosmer and Voit. Voit will DH more than anything else. Point is, Beaty won’t see time at 1B unless there’s an injury, leaving him to find ABs as PH or in LF, where I don’t see him getting more than 40% of the starts due to the empathy the team seems to feel towards Profar. But if Profar has to spell Kim or Cron in middle infield, or Grisham gets hurt (which would be a major catastrophe for the team because there is no replacement other than Profar), then Beaty will get more ABs as LFer.
This was a necessary signing for Pads as they were entering the season as the only MLB team without an complete OF. Beaty is at least a MLB-caliber player, and between him and Profar the team will have more options in LF as they start the season.
The Padres offense would actually be really good right now if they hadn’t made those two awful trades involving Ty France and Franmil Reyes. Preller basically traded Reyes (Trammell), France, Torrens and Andres Munoz for Austin Nola and Austin Adams. Yikes.
Matt Brash too.
He hasn’t made an impact yet but he’s a big leaguer. Might be a valuable one too.
Don’t remind us padre fans. If the Pads still had France and Reyes, it would be a dirty lineup
The issues with Beaty are:
1-He’s never much minor league success which might predict good results. 4 HRs in 250 ABs in the PCL/AAAW.
2-The career OPS+ of 101 is distorted because 90% of his ABs were against righties. That 101 comes down if you normalize the splits.
3-He will get no ABs at 1st, since Hosmer is a lefty.
4-He can split time with Profar in LF, but since Profar is a SH, and a better fielder, is starting Beaty over Profar, even against righties, a value-added move?
I can see they needed an outfielder. That being the case, why trade Frasier? Frasier is a much player player, at a marginally higher cost.
Have you seen Beaty play? I don’t think we have to wait to say that he is terrible in the field.
Good luck Beaty!
You know that a team doesn’t fear a player or a team when they trade a player in his age-29 season to a division rival.
Padres have too many position players, which can pose a problem.
I don’t think they have too many position players at the moment, with Tatis out. Profar (the starting LFer) is the only backup in the infield if they end up sending Abrams to minors to start season. And because they’re keeping 3 catchers, Mazara & Thompson likely go to minors, leaving just one backup OF (Beaty).
What the team really needs heading into opening day is late inning RP help. Yesterday Pagan looked like August-September Pagan – batting practice. He’s the closer? Pom and Garcia are hurt. Suarez has no MLB experience. Lamet can’t be depended upon. If there’s one thing the SDP have excelled in over the past two decades it’s having a strong bullpen. This year might be the exception.
Padres really don’t have too many position players, they have good starting options at most positions, but once you peel back that initial layer they have don’t have backup. It’s a lack of depth, which is basically the problem they had with their starting pitching last year. On paper Darvish, Clevinger, Musgrove, Snell, Lamet looks awesome, but when Clev, Lamet, and Darvish are hurt and then Snell has an off year you end up signing guys off the street that have no business starting for an MLB team because you have no other options.
That’s kind of what they have this year in terms of position players, aside from at catcher where they actually do have too many guys. If they have any more injuries, their backups are basically guys starting at other positions. They could really use another Chad Pinder type utility guy to help backup and provide depth.
Agreed.
Kevin Acee article in UT this morning was strongly suggesting Abrams might break camp on roster. If that happens there won’t be a lack of IF depth, but the problems with MLB-quality OF depth will be there, even with Beaty signing.
I’m concerned about Grisham….the team lacks a back up at CF, and I’m not sure (based upon ST) he’s resolved his issues at plate that caused the slump in 21′. His defense keeps him in the game, but he also gets nicked up easily. If he goes lame they don’t have a viable replacement in CF.
Snell was never as good as advertised. Rays were smart to trade him when they did. Look at his career FIP and innings pitched.
I stand corrected on the position players but thinking Tatis and Abrams are in the mix and I think of a guy like Kim who really should have more of a role but doesn’t.