MOVES ALREADY UNDER WAY IN ORGANIZATION
Change is already afoot in the Padres organization.
Senior Farm Director Sam Geaney, whose contract was expiring after the season, has been let go. With most of the minor league season ending Sunday, the move was made ahead of the start of the fall instructional league on Thursday.
“Sam’s done a great job here for the last seven years, assembling one of the top farm systems in the game,” Padres General Manager A.J. Preller said Tuesday afternoon at Petco Park. “Part of his job was to develop players and in that role he developed players and coaches. We feel like we have a collection of player development staff members that are prepared to make sure this team is continuing to grow as a top-tier farm system.”
Geaney, who could not be reached for comment, was hired in October 2014 as Preller settled in as the head of the Padres’ baseball operations and was charged with overseeing the development of a number of blue-chip prospects as the team went all in on building from the ground up.
The organization spent more than $80 million, including overage taxes, on the 2016-17 international class, picked in the upper third of the draft from 2016 through 2020 and flipped a number of big-league assets for long-term development projects.
The biggest success story under Geaney was Fernando Tatis Jr., the chief return in the James Shields trade in 2016, developing into an MVP candidate.
Right-hander Chris Paddack, from the Fernando Rodney trade that same year, also has become a mainstay in the rotation and lefthander Ryan Weathers, the No. 7 overall pick from the 2018 draft, was a key contributor throughout the first half of 2021 before losing his effectiveness after the trade deadline.
Right-hander Dinelson Lamet was also a homegrown prospect who finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting in 2020 before a forearm/elbow injury derailed him that postseason and for much of the 2021 season.
The mounting injuries this year also include losing Mike Clevinger for the entire year to Tommy John surgery and Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Paddack and Weathers, among others, to various ailments throughout the season.
That there has been little additional help from a farm system once tabbed the deepest in baseball had a lot to do with Preller using dozens of prospects to bolster the big-league team, particularly a rotation for last year’s playoff run (Clevinger) and this year’s all-in push (Darvish, Snell and Joe Musgrove).
The aftermath in the minor league system saw all four full-season affiliates finish below .500 and Triple-A El Paso see its record plummet from 80-60 in 2019 to 45-74 through Monday.
El Paso’s season is continuing through the first weekend of October, as is the rookie-level Dominican Summer League Padres, the lone affiliate with a winning record at 32-18.
Perhaps the biggest concern is MacKenzie Gore’s 2021 season.
The No. 3 overall pick from the 2017 draft and once considered the top pitching prospect in the game, the 22-year-old Gore had a 5.85 ERA through his first six starts at El Paso before he was removed from competition to address both a blister and mechanics that went awry last year at the alternate site.
Gore spent roughly two months in extended spring training in Peoria, Ariz., before resuming his season in rookie ball. He made three starts there (1.65 ERA), one in High-A (5.40 ERA) and two for Double-A San Antonio (3.00 ERA), but had not been considered a legitimate option for a big-league rotation that was in dire need of innings throughout the season.
Though Gore is trending upward these days and a big-league promotion is not out of the question during these final two weeks, he is expected to continue to throw in the upcoming instructional league and continue to build innings in the Arizona Fall League.
Gore has dropped to No. 84 in Baseball America’s top-100 and No. 57 at MLB.com, lists populated by shortstop CJ Abrams, catcher Luis Campusano and outfielder Robert Hassell III.
As an organization, the Padres have slipped to No. 17 in both Baseball America’s and MLB.com’s rankings, due to both graduations (the best prospect in the game — Tatis — became one of the best players in the game) and a slew of trades that saw more than two dozen prospects shipped out of the system over the last two years. Many of those players might have been lost to the Rule-5 draft had Preller not chosen to consolidate talent in the form of big-league assets.
While it’s not a surprise the exodus impacted the win-loss records across all four full-season affiliates, Geaney in an interview last week pointed toward the strides of some of the organization’s youngest prospects, from Euribiel Angeles leading Low-A West with a .343 batting average to Hassell having a .393 onbase percentage in his first full year of pro ball. He also mentioned teenagers Victor Acosta (.937 OPS), Daniel Montesino (.976 OPS) and Samuel Zavala (.893 OPS) thriving for a Dominican rookie team with the league’s second-best record as accomplishments for his staff to rally around.
Shortstop Jackson Merrill and outfielder James Wood, this year’s first- and second-round picks, also started well in the rookie-level Arizona Complex League.
“I think there’s always space and room for guys to take opportunity and run with it,” Geaney said by phone last week. “Due to some of the offseason trades and some of the stuff that’s happened, there’s definitely a clear opening and it’s been cool to see some of the guys throughout the system take hold of it and improve their game.”
The expectation is the Geaney’s replacement will be named before the instructional league begins.
Ryley Westman, previously a catching coordinator in the system, had been promoted to player development director after the Braves hired away Ben Sestanovich as an assistant general manager in December 2019 and had been Geaney’s right-hand man on the player development staff.