Padres to re-sign Jurickson Profar

10:32 am: Profar’s contract contains an exclusion clause after each of the first two seasons, tweets Jon Heyman of MLB Network.

10:02 am: The Padres have agreed to re-sign the infielder / outfielder Jurickson Profar on a three-year, $ 21 million contract, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan (via Twitter). Profar is represented by the Boras company.

A new deal with Profar marks the last strike of an ultra-aggressive winter for the Padres, who have already acquired Blake snell, Yu darvish and Joe musgrove in the commercial market in addition to signing the superstar of the Korea Baseball Organization Ha-Seong Kim on a four-year contract. Kim’s ability to bounce back into the infield and support the trio of Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake cronenworth at any position probably means Profar is doomed again for more work on the outer grass than in the infield, although his versatility will allow him to be deployed virtually anywhere skipper Jayce Tingler sees fit.

The three-year duration of the Profar deal is a bit of a surprise, although the Padres have had some competition for the 28-year-old. The Royals were known to be interested in Profar and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets that the Red Sox “tried hard” to sign Profar before he finally returned to San Diego.

The 2020 season was Profar’s first with the Padres, who acquired him last winter as part of an A deal. Profar had a disastrous start to the season, but had a scorching streak during the season. the last three-plus weeks of the season to end the year with a .278 / .343 / .428 batting line.

Profar’s season is representative of the difficulty of evaluating players on the heels of such a short year; the end results look solid, but it’s also worth noting that on August 27, Profar was beating .181 / .291 / .319. This was certainly a cause for concern for some clubs, as was whether Profar was ranking in the 23rd percentile or worse in terms of exit speed, hit rate and barrel rate, according to Statcast.

That said, Profar was clearly a fairly popular free agent. This is completely understandable considering that in 2013 he was considered the No.1 consensus in all of baseball. Profar exploded into the Rangers system after being signed as an amateur in Curacao, making his MLB debut at just 19 in the final weeks of the 2012 season. Unfortunately for him and the Rangers, a pair of Shoulder injuries led to multiple surgeries, wiping out two full years of development.

Profar never established himself as a regular in Texas, struggling to find playing time behind a veteran on the field who included players like Adrian beltre and one in the prime of life Elvis Andrus. Profar had an above-average plateau year in 2018 as a utility player, but still found himself traded to Oakland that winter – a game that didn’t come off at all. The As picked up Profar in hopes he could consolidate second base for his final two years of team control, but he battled a borderline case of yips that resulted in a series of pitching errors and n ‘ hit that 0.218 / .310 / .401. in 139 games. Oakland traded him to San Diego after that year alone.

Despite a three-year agreement, Profar is still in many ways a project. The 2020 and 2018 seasons are the only two years he’s been at least average on the plate, and as last season showed, he has yet to find much consistency in the dish. That said, it was the general manager of the Padres, AJ Preller, who was leading Rangers international reconnaissance operations when Profar originally signed at the age of 16. Based not only on the surprising size of the contract, but also the multiple opt-out provisions, Preller apparently remains convinced that Profar can match or exceed last year’s composite production.

That said, the inclusion of the two opt-out clauses effectively undermines any benefit to the Padres in this contract. If Profar returns to his ways as a lightweight utility piece without a position where he’s a true more defender, the Brothers will be on the hook for the full $ 21 million. If at some point he behaves at an above average level, he will surely return to the free market in search of a bigger deal, especially given his relative youth. The best outcome for the Padres would be for Profar to rake in 2021 and return to the market, and this contract structure is essentially a $ 21 million bet that it will.

The Padres were already due to open the season with a payroll of around $ 167 million before their new deal with Profar. It would have been a franchise record in its own right, but the ownership of the brothers will continue to thwart the common trend of loss of payroll taken by most clubs this winter, instead of spending at new levels in their efforts to dethrone. the Dodgers, who won. eight consecutive division titles and, of course, toppled the Rays in the 2020 World Series. The $ 7 million annual value of Profar’s deal also pushed the Padres to over $ 177 million in tax liabilities from luxury.