Padres Daily: Big day in Peoria; extra thoughts; Crone Zone
Good morning from Peoria,
Today is the day.
The prince will officially be crowned.
The Padres plan a 10 a.m. PT news conference to announce that Fernando Tatis Jr. has signed his 14-year, $340 million contract.
The lag between the deal being agreed to and the announcement owed largely to the physical examination process Tatis had to undergo.
This was more extensive than a normal annual physical and even more so than for the typical free agent contract.
Tatis was poked and prodded and asked every conceivable pertinent question. A representative of a high-end liability insurance carrier was almost certainly on hand for part or all of the process.
The Padres have not confirmed they took out a policy insuring against Tatis being unable to complete the entirety of his contract, but there is virtually no way they haven’t. (As most teams do on such large deals, the Padres insured the contracts given Eric Hosmer and Manny Machado in recent years.)
The premium for the policy, renewed annually, would cost the Padres between $27 million and $34 million over the life of the Tatis contract. Being that Tatis is 22 and presumably in excellent health, the price could be toward the lower end of that spectrum. (The premium generally runs 8-10 percent of the total contract for position players, up to 12 percent for some pitchers.) And remember, Tatis played just 84 games his rookie season due to a severe hamstring strain and a stress reaction in his back.
The plan, of course, is to never have to rely on the policy. But 14 years is a long time. For such a policy to pay out at all, an insured player must miss a certain amount of time. That is generally almost a half-season worth of games.
Anyway, for those of you so inclined, today’s news conference will be broadcast live on Fox Sports San Diego. We will, of course, have extensive coverage on our site.
Really starting
Today is also the Padres’ first full-squad workout, which is scheduled to begin at noon PT.
There may be some players not allowed to participate because they haven’t completed the intake process required due to the MLB’s COVID protocols. That includes testing negative for the virus and quarantining while awaiting the result.
One player who arrived in Arizona later than expected was center fielder Trent Grisham. The Texan was delayed by the storm that hit his home state.
I came to Arizona yesterday and am allowed to attend workouts for the first time today. Thus, I should be able to provide more detail about what players are doing and how they look. It has felt weird writing about spring training from home.
By the way, I had heard how “open” Arizona is relative to the restrictions in California. But seeing the number of people out in public is still shocking.
Less is more
The Padres’ first exhibition game is scheduled for a week from yesterday.
It will probably last nine innings, but it might be seven or five. That depends on what Padres manager Jayce Tingler and Mariners manager Scott Servais decide beforehand. As part of MLB’s healthy and safety protocols, games can be shortened this spring.
Speaking of shorter games, many games were not as long as they probably would have been in the 2020 regular season. And that will be the case again in ’21.
In an attempt to prevent pitching staffs from being overly taxed, extra innings will again begin with a runner on second base.
Tingler was like a lot of people before the 2020 season. He didn’t think he would like the rule, and then he ended up appreciating it.
“It helped us with trying to save pitchers’ arms,” he said. “We never found ourselves in a position where we had to throw a position player. We never got too out of whack being short on arms for the next day. For those reasons … I kind of enjoyed the rule.”
The Padres played four extra-inning games last season, and just one went to the 11th inning. In all, there were 77 extra-inning games in 2020, with the longest being 13 innings. That happened three times. All but 22 of the 77 were decided after one extra inning.
Cronenworth query
Newsletter subscriber Don Massey wrote with this question regarding the young player who finished third in NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2020:
Jake Cronenworth was touted as an infielder and pitcher when the Padres obtained him. Before last season there was some talk he could be used in relief on occasion. … Then he played himself into the everyday second baseman, and I never heard any more about him pitching. And, of course, now the Padres have added a number of veteran relievers. Has all talk of him pitching now ancient history? Does he get any work at all in practice on the mound?
Cronenworth did throw a handful of bullpen sessions last spring but has not since. And it appears his pitching days are over, barring the Padres being involved in a blowout and using him to save actual pitchers.
“Right now, we haven’t even discussed him throwing any bullpens,” Jayce Tingler said over the weekend. “… That has been shut down. His focus 100 percent has been on being a position player.”
Cronenworth, who pitched and played the infield at the University of Michigan, added pitching to his duties in Triple-A while in the Rays organization so he might have a better shot at being useful in the majors. But when he arrived, he was too good a position player to risk him pitching.
Further, the pandemic last year and this season prompted MLB to not limit the number of pitchers a team can carry. And, as Don noted, the Padres appear to be deep with proven relievers.
Tingler indicated that Cronenworth would not be an option even if the Padres were limited to 13 pitchers.
“He’s a big part of what we’re doing going forward on the position player side,” Tingler said. “So I don’t think we’d want to mad scramble and have him prepare.”
One more thing
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