The Winter of 2014 has been an extremely busy time for the Padres so far, as their new GM, A.J. Preller, has been wheeling and dealing like crazy. Over the years, the Padres have always had good pitching, heavily because of manager Bud Black, but offense has been limited, as San Diego has not seen their team in the playoffs for the past 8 years because they cant score runs. The lack of run production (535 total runs in 2014; last in MLB) has inspired newly hired A.J. Preller to set the bar high for 2015 Padre offense, as he planned to aggressively seek premier bats on either the trade or free agent market this offseason, so as Christmas approached, Preller had made his presence very visible already.
The first move made toward offense this offseason was a trade that brought Matt Kemp to San Diego in exchange for some prospects and the underperforming Yasmani Grandal. This was about as big of a splash a new GM could make for his new team, but Preller was far from done after finalizing the Kemp trade on December 18. The next big move A.J. made was acquiring Wil Myers in a three-team mega deal with the Rays and Nats. Getting the superstar youngster Myers, who was a top MLB prospect, was not as big of a trade as the Matt Kemp acquisition, but it adds great young talent to the youth of the Padres. After completing deals for Kemp and Myers, A.J. Preller decided to just go right on ahead and compile a new outfield to have in Petco Park. So Preller took advantage of the numerous trade rumors linked to the Braves LF, Justin Upton. On December 19th, the Padres reported a deal involving some of their top prospects and the Braves’, Justin Upton. After that, Preller decided to fill the offensive hole he had created at catcher, after trading away Grandal, so in a deal with the A’s, that occurred around the same time the Upton acquisition happened, the Padres acquired Derek Norris. So, now Sneaking up on New Years’ Eve, A.J. Preller has “wowed” the baseball world after putting together a brand new outfield, which has the potential to be a massive three-headed monster, and by the way a new offensive driven catcher too.
Matt Kemp and Justin Upton are for sure offensive producers as they have been established all-stars for numerous years, but Wil Myers has only played in a total of 175 games during his first two full seasons in the majors and Derek Norris just came out of his first productive career campaign in 2014. Norris and Myers may not have had played in many major league games so far in their careers, but Myers has somewhat lived up to his potential, while Norris was an all-star in 2014 batting .270. So adding these 4 bats to the shaky San Diego batting lineup, will significantly improve run support for the always-good Padre pitching staff. In 2014 the Padres, basically, had a question mark at each position, offensively speaking, so to add 4 solid bats to the lineup will at least increase the team batting average and runs scored. The 4 combined in 2014 averaged to produce a batting average of .266 with 60 runs, 26 doubles and 18 homers, which is not all-star caliber, but the Padres in 2014 did not have a single player come close to producing those kind of numbers.
Having two young shiny bats and two established all-star veteran hitters is going to not only going to increase the Padres .226 batting average, but hopefully add 10 wins to San Diego’s 77 victories put up in 2014. With offense on the brain, new GM, A.J. Preller, looks to keep increasing his team’s offense, while Bud Black keeps the pitching down around the 2014 ERA of 3.27.
