San Diego Padres: Are we giving up on Manuel Margot too soon?

A sign of hope

Could there be hope for Margot as an every day player?

Let’s go back and look at his Minor League numbers and see what they tell us about his potential.

over 1,841 Minor League at-bats he hit .287/.349/.423 with 29 home runs and 164 stolen bases.

In his last full season in the minors back in 2016 he hit .304/.351/.426 with 6 home runs, 30 stolen bases, and an OPS of .777 in 124 games and 517 at-bats.

I think most of us would certainly take those numbers from Margot along with his Gold Glove-caliber defense in center field.

The biggest issue with Margot is his low OBP numbers, which is something the Padres are trying to fix as a team going forward.

It seems unrealistic to think he could suddenly put up a .350 OBP like he did over his Minor League career, but even if he just sat around .325 that would be a huge improvement.

And while he doesn’t take a ton of walks, that’s not the problem. His BB% of 8.6 in 2019 was about league-average among outfielders with over 400 plate appearances.

One big difference from the minors to the majors is his K%. It was around 12 percent in the minors and has skyrocketed to around 20 percent in the big leagues, which is typical.

With his speed, just putting the ball in play a bit more will help his average and on-base numbers go up.

But again, his K% isn’t horrible compared to other big league outfielders. That ranked as the 24th best percentage among outfielders in 2019 with over 400 plate appearances (tied with Mike Trout).

Really, the only thing that sticks out for Margot that he could improve on is his hard-hit percentage. In the same filter used, he ranked 78th among outfielders in 2019 with a hard-hit percentage of just 35.6 percent.

That ranked 11th on the Padres last year among the 14 players who had over 200 plate appearances. Only Ian Kinsler (33.2), Greg Garcia (32), and Austin Hedges (31.6) didn’t hit the ball as hard.

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I don’t know if hitting the ball harder is something that can be taught or learned, but I don’t see anything else in the numbers that shows a ton of hope for improvement.

His walk rate and strikeout rate are average with the rest of the league and his BABIP shows he’s not unlucky when he does put the ball in play.

I really think it just comes down to putting the ball in play more — perhaps dropping his K% from 20 to 15 — and hitting the ball hard (getting his hard-hit percentage at least over 40).

His linedrive percentage of just 16.4 percent in 2019 was terrible as well. That means he was either hitting weak groundballs or flying out. And he doesn’t have the power for those flyouts to leave the park consistently enough with a HR/FB percentage of 9.8 percent.

To answer the question in the title, I don’t think we are giving up on Margot too soon, I think we know exactly what he is at this point.

And I don’t mean that in a bad way, Margot is a very valuable player.

We haven’t even touched on his defense. He had 6 DRS in 2019 and a UZR of 5.8, which both ranked in the top 15 among outfielders last season.

But unless Margot can suddenly find a way to make more consistent, hard contact, I don’t see him ever blossoming into an every day player.

The ceiling for Margot at the big league level is a .260/.320/.425 hitter with 15-20 home runs and 20-plus stolen bases that plays Gold Glove defense.

That’s a pretty good player, and a ceiling I think Margot can reach. But again, this is the season he has to prove it’s possible.

A good thing going for him is that I feel he’s the only true center fielder on the roster. And for that reason alone he’s going to make this roster out of spring training and at the very least will be a defensive replacement.

I’m certainly hoping for the best with Margot and I would love to see him reach his potential in 2020. However, I’m not counting on that, and with the competition in the outfield I’m not sure he’s even going to get the chance to prove what’s possible because he won’t get consistent playing time.

In conclusion, I think Margot is a very good fourth outfielder who could fill-in if a starter got injured. But I don’t think he has what it takes offensively to be an every day outfielder on a winning team.