Good morning,
Jurickson Profar is home.
He loves the Padres players he grew close to during three seasons, from 2020 through ‘22. He is comfortable in the place where he has had his greatest success and where it is sunny and warm and the people are generally pretty chill.
“I grew up playing in an environment like San Diego,” Profar said, later mentioning the similarities with his native Curacao. “It just brings the best out in me.”
The Padres brought Profar back to be exactly who he is being.
They didn’t know he would hit .333/.434/.578 over the first two weeks’ worth of games and don’t know how long it will last. But they figured he would start well after a full winter of playing in the Dominican Republic and right on through the Caribbean Series in early February. They figured even if he got on base somewhere near his career rate of .323, they could benefit from a player who is often in the middle of rallies, who hates losing, who plays the game right, who has baseball instincts and who makes baseball more fun for his teammates.
As Jake Cronenworth explained when Profar was signed to a $1 million contract on Feb. 12: “He’s kind of like the glue guy.”
You can read in my game story (here) how yesterday’s 10-2 victory over the Cubs came about — with Profar in the middle of the Padres manufacturing runs early and their pouring it on late and Dylan Cease providing a boost for the pitching staff as the team secured its first winning series of 2024.
You can also read about one of the game’s heroes who was almost a goat — Ha-Seong Kim, whose shaky defense continued along with his recent resurgence at the plate — in Jeff Sanders’ notebook (here) from the game. (Also in that story is a quirky fact about Cease’s repertoire and the explanation for the unique starting time for some Wednesday games this season.)
Now, let’s talk about the Padres’ most valuable player through the season’s first 15 games.
“He has been the most consistent guy on the team so far,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “He is a baller. The guy is playing winning baseball.”
Profar had a nine-game on-base streak stopped on Tuesday, one of just two games this season in which he has not reached base and one of four in which he does not have a hit.
Profar has adopted a more aggressive approach at the plate this season, generally swinging earlier in counts.
He credits his refined approach to time spent with Tatis and his father while in the Dominican playing for Estrellas, which the younger Tatis also played for and the elder managed.
“You’re always learning,” Profar said. “The winter ball really helped me this year bringing back everything.”
He also credits a full spring training.
Profar left the Padres as a free agent after 2022 and did not sign until the week before the ‘23 season — a one-year deal with the Rockies for slightly more than what the Padres deal he opted out of would have paid him. He made his season debut for Colorado in the team’s fourth game.
“It was very frustrating,” he said. “People don’t know. It was terrible last year — not only playing baseball, the state of mind was bad. Just (starting) late and no spring training, and then the team telling you, ‘Hey, you have to go’ when I wasn’t (ready). I wasn’t there. They made me get ready for the season (after) just two days in Arizona.”
Profar batted .236/.316/.364 for the Rockies, who designated him for assignment at the end of August. He signed with the Padres in early September and batted .295/.367/.409 in 14 games while the team went 16-5 with him on the roster.
On Wednesday, his two-run homer in the sixth inning essentially iced the game, giving the Padres a 7-2 lead. It followed his grand slam Saturday in a 4-0 victory in San Francisco. His 10 RBIs are tied with Luis Campusano for second on the team behind Cronenworth’s 13.
“This is the Profar that we know,” Cronenworth said. “… It’s great to have him back.”
Keep pushing
After lacing a ball to right-center field to drive in Manny Machado from first base in the fourth inning, Profar tried to turn the hit into a triple. But he was thrown out on an excellent relay from center fielder Cody Bellinger to second baseman Miles Mastrobuoni to third baseman Christopher Morel.
Making the first out of an inning at third base is one of baseball’s cardinal sins.
It would be inaccurate to say Mike Shildt was entirely pleased with the decision by Profar. But he wasn’t entirely displeased either.
“Those are hard,” Shildt said. “Not just blind aggression, but we reward aggression. I think it’s good, but there’s an appropriate time for it. And first out at third, if it’s a banger, it’s a close play and they make a baseball play, we will live with it.”
If you’re Shildt, you take some bad to build some good. And you trust a player who has three times in the past seven games made a play on the bases by reading a defense and/or a hit in a way that few in today’s game can with such regularity and success.
“He’s a good base runner,” Shildt said. “… If we force (the opponent) to do everything right and it’s going to be a close play and we know that they have to do it perfectly, we’ll take our shot.”
Inside man
Few people do anything with Tatis’ flair. That includes how he reacts to inside pitches.
Tatis was knocked down by an inside fastball in three straight games against the Cubs.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he was brushed back and went to the ground. What Tatis does in these instances is not a flop, but it also usually isn’t nearly as precarious as it might seem.
Tatis hangs in on inside fastballs longer than perhaps any player in baseball, which plays a big role in the frequency with which he ends up on the ground, because he often has to bail at the last minute.
“Probably because I’m more flexible than anybody else,” he said with a laugh about why he waits so long to get out of the way.
Tatis followed the pitch on which he went to the ground Monday by hitting the game-deciding home run. Yesterday, his being brushed back by a 94 mph fastball was part of the lead-up to a walk.
Tidbits
- Machado was 2-for-5 yesterday after going 2-for-4 on Tuesday. It’s early enough in the season that he raised his batting average 40 points to .220 on the strength of those two games.
- Profar was a triple shy of the cycle yesterday, which did not stop Shildt from replacing him in left field with Jose Azocar in the seventh inning. It is the eighth time this season Azocar had entered the game as a defensive replacement, though this was the first time the Padres led by five runs.
- Reliever Yuki Matsui worked a four-pitch seventh inning yesterday. He finished an inning in six pitches Sunday.
- The Cubs were not the only ones who had trouble with Cease’s pitches yesterday. Umpire Jonathan Parra, who made his MLB debut on March 29, called a ball on eight of Cease’s pitches that appeared to be in the strike zone. One of those would have been strike three the pitch before Michael Busch’s game-tying homer in the fourth inning. In five innings, Parra missed one call on Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks, a ball he called a strike. Remember, the “strike zone” we see on TV and on MLB.com is not a perfect representation. Also, Padres pitchers went into yesterday’s games having had the fourth-most pitches outside the zone called strikes.
- Kim stole his fourth base in four tries. Jackson Merrill stole his second base in three tries.
- Merrill walked twice yesterday, his first multi-walk game. His seven walks are tied with Profar for the team lead.
- Merrill was the youngest player in the major leagues when he made his debut on March 20. As of yesterday, he is the third youngest. He is also the third-youngest Jackson in the majors.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, so no newsletter tomorrow.
I will have a story later on our Padres page looking at the team’s early performance and how they assess their progress so far.
Talk to you Saturday.
