STILL NEEDED HERE
Unorthodox way for Padres to break in Abrams, a youngster who needs regular at-bats
He just needs at-bats.
That was a constant refrain this offseason as evaluators, in and outside the organization, sized up what lies ahead for CJ Abrams after the Padres’ top prospect lost a year of official plate appearances during the pandemic, half a year at Double-A San Antonio to a torn MCL and even make-up time in the Arizona Fall League to a shoulder injury.
The Padres, though, needed an infielder on opening day after losing Fernando Tatis Jr. to a fractured wrist.
They still need one, even if it means their 21-year-old prospect has become more of a bench piece while trying to acclimate to big-league pitching on the fly. Abrams was in the lineup at second base on Friday, just his seventh start in the team’s last 16 games as the team gives more and more playing time to Ha-seong Kim.
“It’s the big leagues,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said matter-of-factly Friday afternoon. “Development is more about getting at-bats. Once you get to the big leagues, you have to earn them and you have different guys (playing) if somebody’s hot. … You get to the big leagues and you don’t just run a guy out there because he needs at-bats. You run him out there because you feel it’s the right time to run him out there.”
He added: “One of the reasons he’s here is we think mentally he’s able to handle it.”
It makes all the sense in the world as the Padres try to keep up in the competitive NL West and yet runs
counter to how teams traditionally break in their best prospects.
Tatis, for instance, played every day when he won the shortstop job on a 2019 team that was several arms shy of true contention. Among the comparable prospects who’ve made their big-league debuts this season like Abrams is Bobby Witt Jr. collecting 87 appearances as the Royals’ everyday third baseman and Spencer Torkelson collecting 84 plate appearances for a Tigers team looking to avoid a third last-place finish in the last four years.
Abrams, in contrast, entered the weekend with just 57 plate appearances while providing spot duty at shortstop, second base and right field, albeit for a team with much, much higher aspirations.
While hitting .170/.273/.277 suggests Abrams could use more minor league seasoning, the fact remains that he is the lone viable infielder on a 40-man roster not already in the majors or on the injured list. Sure, Eguy Rosario filled in admirably at shortstop in San Antonio after Abrams’ season-ending injuries last summer, but he has limited range, isn’t hitting at Triple-A El Paso (.601 OPS) and quite frankly doesn’t have Abrams’ ceiling.
The latter point might be an argument to use Rosario in a utility role to allow the Padres’ top prospect the opportunity to fully develop, but the contending Padres need the better player on their roster now.
“When I came up in Kansas City, obviously your goal is to win a championship every year but that wasn’t
really expected out of us that first year,” Hosmer said. “I think it’s a definitely expected here and he’s coming onto a team that’s really allin to win a championship, so it’s definitely different as far as development wise.
“But he’s been doing everything the right way. He’s been helping us win a lot of games, whether it’s on the bases or defensively and timely hitting and stuff.”
Toward that end, Abrams collected his first big-league homer in
his first at-bat at Petco Park, he went 2-for-3 with a double and an RBI in a 5-2 win in Pittsburgh on Sunday and walked to push in an insurance run in Game 2 of a doubleheader in Cleveland on Wednesday, a game the Padres lost in extra innings.
Yes, not nearly a splash like Tatis — a prospect of a different caliber than even Abrams, No. 9 in Baseball America’s top-100 — but helpful for a contending team, nonetheless.
Even when he committed his first two errors of the season on April 28 in Cincinnati, Abrams picked himself up with plays made with runners on base to help the Padres secure a 7-5 win.
It’s all been part of what the Padres deem a useful education in the majors.
“That was very mature of him,” left fielder Jurickson Profar said. “I was proud of him. That’s the little things you learn here.”
The bigger things must be learned here, too, like hitting the kind of off-speed pitches that Abrams wouldn’t see all that much of in the Pacific Coast League. To date, Abrams is 7-for-19 (.368) in atbats ending with fastballs and 1for-28 (.037) against anything with wrinkles.
“You don’t see breaking balls like this until you get to this level,” Hosmer said. “You don’t see two-seamers and cutters or anything like that. Once you kind of learn and go through that experience up here, that’s really the only way to get your eyes trained to what the ball can do.”
Which is why Abrams immerses himself in early work in the cage, in the video room and out in the field, whether he’s in the lineup or not.
Experience is the best teacher, they say, and he aims to get all that he can from this first experience in the majors, however unorthodox it is for a prospect of his caliber.
“Every day I’m looking to get better anyway I can,” Abrams said. “I use the day, stay present and just improve every single day, whether I’m playing or not. The at-bats are going to come.
“I just want to use every day to get better.”