They knew what they had and this trade was the culmination of a lot of bad baseball decisions by the Padres, the results bear that out. Though he was by no means bad, he disappointed over the next season and a half. Rizzo continually adjusted and readjusted his hitting mechanics and it drove scouts and coaches crazy. In , he always stood out to me because his stance was very upright and his hands were loaded very low. In , he changed that into something that made him the offensive threat that he is today.
Sahadev Sharma discussed it in detail here. What is especially impressive is just how consistent he has been. He is only 27 years old and is showing no signs of deteriorating any time soon.
Oh, and he is also an excellent fielder, with a 43 DRS since And of course, Rizzo hit. As if acquiring Rizzo was not already a great move, Epstein signed Rizzo to a team friendly extension early in the season.
He is locked up through with two team options for and In , the Padres had Cashner pitch mostly in relief since he was coming off major should surgery. Unfortunately, he was a replacement level player. San Diego moved him to the starting rotation in and was quite good for two seasons. During that time he had a 3. The drawback was that he was striking out barely 18 percent of batters faced. He had a 5. He started off no better with a 5. The Padres decided that Cashner was not going to be an effective part of their future as a replacement level starter about to enter free agency, so they traded him at the deadline for a very solid return.
Cashner was the worst he had ever been with the Marlins , so naturally they decided not to re-sign him. As I have mentioned multiple times in this series, you can never tell how a player would have developed in another organization. Even if National League teams have the DH as an extra lineup spot to work with in , Hosmer stands as the largest obstacle to Rizzo or any other first base addition, barring a trade.
Since Hosmer has provided barely more than replacement-level production 0. Rizzo hit. His hard-hit ball numbers have also been on the decline over the last two seasons, and his nine percent walk rate in was his lowest since If Rizzo did happen to wind up back in San Diego, it would represent something of a full circle move after he began his MLB career with the Padres back in Immediately after the trade was made public, this site posted a poll asking readers which team won the trade.
Both players started and ended the season as expected, with Cashner beginning in the Padres' bullpen before getting stretched out into a starter by year's end, and Rizzo starting out in AAA Iowa for more seasoning before eventually coming up and wresting the starting first base job from Bryan LaHair.
Cashner, who had pitched in just seven games for the Cubs in after coming out of the bullpen 53 times in his rookie season of , was adequate as he adapted, while Rizzo immediately put up impressive numbers in a little over half of a season. In trips to the plate over 87 games, Rizzo hit. It was little surprise that Rizzo blossomed as he did, since very few questioned whether he could become a successful major league hitter, only whether he could do so while playing half his games at then-cavernous Petco Park, which skewed much more in favor of pitchers than it does now.
In just eight seasons as the Padres' home field, Petco was already notorious for neutering power hitters, starting with Ryan Klesko and the more vocal Phil Nevin from Day One, and on through Ryan Ludwick, whose honesty I have always admired for the refreshingly non-macho move of publicly admitting that the park got in his head during the days he spent in navy and sand between the trade deadlines of and ' In addition to the evening marine layer acting in concert with the sheer vastness of the playing field to turn what would be no-doubt home runs elsewhere into routine fly balls, The Petco Effect took a toll on once-powerful Padres when they were on the road.
When a professional hitter isn't getting the results he desires, he makes adjustments and adapts as best he can; the instinct and ability to do so is a large part of what allowed them to get to the highest level.
In doing so, players occasionally abandon their strongest skillset in favor of the best approach for the field they're given. As this is not something that can be flipped on and off like a light switch, this would of course put a dent in road numbers as well. Some players were able to successfully retool their approach - Brian Giles hit over 35 home runs in each of the four seasons before the Padres traded for him, but hit just 23 in Petco's inaugural season, and progressively fewer each year through his swan song, all while doubling more than ever and continuing to rank among the league leaders in OBP even as he was pushing 40 - but such victories were by far the exception rather than the rule.
That said, it's understandable why one would have more faith in a singles-and-doubles line-drive-hitter's chances to flourish with the Padres in the days of Petco yore, and that was Josh Byrnes's reasoning in sticking with newly-acquired Yonder Alonso over Rizzo as San Diego's first baseman going forward.
Rizzo prospering with the Cubs was decidedly unshocking - although nobody could have predicted with certainty the level of success he has had - and we have no way of knowing whether Petco Park would have broken him down before he could break out, or whether his extremely poor numbers in 49 games for the Padres in were the product of a rookie outmatched by his opposition or his surroundings.
After proving himself worthy of the job by the end of , Rizzo took over as the Cubs' starting first baseman in , Cashner's first full year in the Padres' rotation.
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