San Diego Padres: Hunter Renfroe sent down to work on plate discipline
By Jason Burke
The San Diego Padres have been letting their young guys play for much of the 2017 season, but that came to an end when they optioned Hunter Renfroe to the minors a couple of days ago.
According to Daniel Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Padres had internally been talking about demoting Renfroe for some time, even mentioning the end of July as a possibility. Per Lin, “the right fielder simply hasn’t made the adjustments that the Padres had been asking him to make.” He also notes that after Renfroe walked 15 times in May, he had only accumulated nine walks since and his .230 batting average on the season and power numbers weren’t enough to compensate.
Lin says, “this move was largely about sending a message to the rookie,” then tells of how Cory Spangenberg was optioned to the minors, worked on his game and has found himself in the middle of a big-league lineup since.
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With a .230 batting average and a .285 OBP, Renfroe certainly has some work to accomplish before reaching his potential at the big league level, even with his 20 home runs this season. FanGraphs lists him as a zero win player, or exactly replacement level through 111 games this year, while his wRC+ sits at eleven percent below average. His defense has been roughly average, though his DRS of -2 puts him a little below the median, while his UZR/150 sits at -10, which is well below average.
In essence, he wasn’t contributing with the bat, his strong suit, and was a detriment on defense. This move hopefully provides one of their top prospects heading into the season with the tough love he needs to get back on the right track.
Last season in 133 Triple-A games, Renfroe hit .306 with a .336 OBP, so he was actually walking less last season (3.9%) than he had been this year (6.0%), but neither rate is necessarily good. The big league average is 8.0% this season, so he’s not too far off in that department. What the Padres are hoping for however is some plate discipline that counterbalances some of his other shortcomings.
They say that the hardest jump outside of Triple-A to The Show is the one from A Ball to Double-A. When Renfroe made his Double-A debut in 2014, he hit .232 with a .307 OBP in 60 games and held a wRC+ of 90. His walk rate was a little higher than it was this season (6.0 to 10.0) and his strikeout rate a bit lower (21.1 to 28.7), but the main stats are pretty similar.
The following season in Double-A he hit .259 with a .313 OBP and had a wRC+ of 103.
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With September right around the corner rosters are going to expand, and for a team like the Padres that means getting a look at some of the farmhands that could be looking at legit big league time in the near future. There isn’t much time left in the Pacific Coast League’s regular season, so the actual time he’ll get down there to work on things likely wasn’t the real point. They want him to return to the Padres on September 1 with a new mindset and start laying the groundwork for what they’re hoping is a breakout 2018 campaign and beyond.