San Diego Padres: Jurickson Profar better come ready to compete in Spring Training

The second base position for the San Diego Padres will be an interesting one to watch in Spring Training. The job won’t be handed to Jurickson Profar.

After the San Diego Padres traded Luis Urias to the Milwaukee Brewers earlier this offseason it left a hole at second base and a lot of question marks about the position going forward.

Less than a week after trading Urias, A.J. Preller traded for Jurickson Profar to become the incumbent second baseman for the Padres.

At the time I thought this was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to quickly find someone to fill that spot. But it turns out Preller is a big fan of Profar as he was with the Texas Rangers when they signed him back in 2009.

Profar will be a free agent after the 2020 season and will make $5.7 million this year. He’s going to get a chance to play, but with the depth of options at second base he’ll have a ton of pressure on him.

Ty France, Greg Garcia, and Jake Cronenworth are all on the 40-man roster and are capable of playing second base.

Esteban Quiroz is a name we’ve been mentioning all offseason and he will be competing for time at second base as well in Spring Training.

Profar is looking for a bounce-back year before becoming a free agent, and that’s what the Padres are hoping for too.

He hit just. 218 last year with a .301 OBP in 139 games, but he did tie his career-high with 20 home runs and FanGraphs had him as a 1.3 WAR player.

The 26-year-old (will be 27 in February) did show some promise in the second half of 2019 hitting .228/.342 with an .821 OPS.

He suffered from an unsustainably low .218 BABIP this past season.

That was coming off the best season of his career in 2018 with the Texas Rangers when he hit .254/.335 with 20 home runs and 82 RBI in 146 games.

I believe San Diego would take that type of production from him in 2020.

Is it Projar’s job to lose?

I definitely think going into Spring Training that the second base job is Jurickson Profar’s to lose.

They didn’t trade for him and pay him that much to not at least let him start the season as the team’s primary second baseman. So unless he gets injured or falls flat on his face this Spring, the job is his.

But he’s not getting paid enough that his leash won’t be short. If any of those others players I mentioned show out in Spring and do well when they get the chance to start the season, and Profar doesn’t perform, we’ll get a change at second rather quickly.

Another thing to keep in mind as I briefly touched on in the last slide, is that Profar can play a lot of different positions.

And really, a lot of the Padres’ players have the ability to play multiple positions.

Manager Jayce Tingler has a lot of options to make sure he keeps the hottest bats in the lineup every day.

If Hosmer is struggling and Profar and Cronenworth are hot, then you put Profar at first and Cronenworth at second.

This team has a lot of versatility going into 2020, which is great.

But going back to Profar, when you compare the numbers from 2018 to 2019 it really just does come down to luck. Again, the BABIP is really the only difference from those two seasons.

You have to safely figure that BABIP will go back up and his numbers will go back his career norms, which is a .240/.320 guy with 15-20 home runs, an OPS around. 700, and 2 WAR.

Those still aren’t numbers to get all excited about, but it’s a very solid season for someone hitting down in your lineup.