Is it worth starting the season with star prospects despite losing a year of club control over them? The Mets and the Padres decided it was.
The Toronto Blue Jays announced on Wednesday that they were finally promoting baseball’s best prospect, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., to the major leagues. That same day, the San Diego Padres’ Chris Paddack threw seven shutout innings in a victory, and the Mets held first place in the National League East, thanks largely to their slugging first baseman, Pete Alonso.
“He’s a born leader,” Mets Manager Mickey Callaway said. “He was made for this.”
Alonso is a rookie who had never appeared in the majors before this season. So is Paddack, a 23-year-old right-hander, as is his Padres teammate, shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., who is 20. Alonso, 24, had eight home runs entering Friday’s game, with a 1.086 on-base plus slugging percentage; Paddack had a 1.67 E. R. A. in five starts; and Tatis was hitting .299 with six home runs.
Guerrero, 20, might be better than all of them. He has more walks than strikeouts in his minor league career, and hit.381 with 20 homers last season. His father, Vladimir Sr., is in the Hall of Fame. But the Blue Jays did not promote Guerrero last season, and had no plans to put him on the opening day roster this year, either, even before he strained his oblique muscle in spring training.
By delaying his promotion to the majors, the Blue Jays ensured that Guerrero could not accrue a full year of service time for 2019, meaning he will not become a free agent until after the 2025 season, at the earliest. This tactic has been widely employed — notably by the Chicago Cubs with Kris Bryant in 2015 — and it is easy to understand the strategy of sacrificing a few weeks of one season for an extra year of control over a potential superstar.
Then again, the Mets and the Padres are happy with their choices. Both teams hope to contend and have started well, and they will be grateful in September for the games they won in April.
“At the end of the year, you just don’t know what it’s going to come down to,” Alonso said. “This division’s cutthroat. Anything can happen, and you can’t save any bullets. You’ve got to let it all fly.”
Philadelphia Phillies infielder Scott Kingery, one of baseball’s top prospects before last season, made the team out of spring training last March, after signing a six-year, $24 million contract. He said the recent trend of players signing long-term deals before reaching free agency might motivate teams to promote their best players without considering service time.
“Maybe they’re thinking, ‘If we’re going to sign them to a contract anyways, we might as well get ’em up here to help the team,’ ” Kingery, 24, said, adding that every team weighed different factors. “It seems like every team should do that, right? It should be that every team is trying to win as many games as possible, and to do that, you want to have your best 25 guys.
