Padres News: Jedd Gyorko Looks Ready to Go

In my head Jedd Gyorko of the San Diego Padres will definitely succeed this season.

To me, there is almost no way that he cannot. How many players in baseball season had strong rookie seasons followed by sub-par sophomore seasons, then rebound? Should Jedd just go to his new teammate Wil Myers for advice?

Bud Black addressed the topic the other day, as reported by our friends at FriarWire, and said he is also very confident that Gyorko will bounce back and show the power he displayed his rookie season; where he set a record for homers and the fourth highest slugging percentage all by a rookie in a Padres uniform.

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"“He looks more like Jedd physically than he did last spring, he worked hard in the off-season after 2013 on his conditioning. He didn’t look as sturdy as he does now. He is where he needs to be on how he looks.”"

Of course, spring training IS more about looks than actual performance. In his 2013 spring training performance, Gyorko hit zero homers and .257. In 2014, he launched just one homer and hit .262. In other words, it appears that spring training doesn’t show us much about Jedd’s regular season forecast.

Much has been made of the fact that now, with new offensive support around him in Justin Upton, Matt Kemp and Wil Myers, it will take a lot of the pressure off of Gyorko and allow him to see better pitches. 2014 was a slow start for Jedd and as he pressed the more he struggled to do any good with the bat. Black addressed that time as well:

"“We were scuffling as a team at the start of last season. To a man every one tried to do too much. When that happens the results usually don’t go your way.”"

So, we can hope that Jedd relaxes, gets his quality swings in this spring, and is ready to just play his part in the Padres lineup this year. He isn’t supposed to lead the team in home runs anymore, but he certainly will be leaned on to be a consistent offensive middle-infielder with shortstop likely to be more glove-heavy than pop. Of course, if he comes back and hits another 25 homers and the Big Three do what we hope they can do, the Padres could finally reverse the idea that home runs go to die in the Petco Park outfield.

The Padres team record for home runs was set in 1970 at 172. With a little luck and consistency from all facets of the team, Jedd Gyorko might have a hand in topping that 45 year old record in 2015.

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