San Diego Padres add bullpen depth with Adam Warren

The San Diego Padres have added some bullpen depth with Adam Warren.

As has been the trend over the past several years, the 2018-19 MLB offseason has seen players and front offices alike playing the long game, staring each other down with menacing scowls reminiscent of the way great, ferocious pitchers like Bob Gibson and Randy Johnson would glare into the batter’s box.

Thankfully though, the freeze that this year’s free agency saga has put on Major League Baseball appears to be melting. Now that we’ve entered March and the game’s most prominent holdouts, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, have signed on the dotted line, it should only be a matter of time until everyone negotiating for better contracts finally agrees to terms with a club and reports to spring training.

One of the latest dominoes to fall is Adam Warren. On Friday, the 31 year-old reliever signed a one-year contract with the San Diego Padres with a club option for 2020, worth a total of $2.5 million guaranteed. This marks the fourth team for which Warren has played in his career but only the second National League team, with the other coming in the form of a brief pit stop with the Cubs in early 2016.

Warren is most known for his two stints with the Yankees; he’s donned the pinstripes in parts of every season he’s played since breaking into the league in 2012. Primarily a career quality bullpen arm, Warren’s lone affiliation with starting in the Bigs came in 2015, when he started 17 games for a New York squad that made the playoffs as an AL wild card team that season.

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

Most recently, Warren found himself in Seattle, after the Yankees traded his expiring contract to the Mariners at the deadline. And while Seattle was surely excited by the move at the time, Warren’s statistics show that he may not have shared in the sentiment. In 2018, Adam Warren appeared in 24 games with the Yankees and 23 games with the Mariners.

However, his ERA in the Pacific Northwest was over a full run higher than it was in the Big Apple, coming in at 3.74 as opposed to 2.70. His hit, run and walk totals didn’t vary greatly from New York to Seattle, but what did drop were his strikeout totals. Warren struck out 37 batters with the Yankees last year, but in almost exactly as many games with the Mariners, he only struck out 15.

At a position that’s becoming increasingly dependent on the strikeout for success, any pitcher who can’t consistently punch out batters stands on shaky ground. In Warren’s case though, the Padres shouldn’t have to worry about strikeouts. Although Warren’s totals fell by over 50 percent when he was traded to Seattle, the 52 strikeouts he registered on the season were right in line with his 2017 total of 54.

In fact, San Diego should be encouraged by that amount, primarily because it shows Warren’s successful transition into the second stage of his baseball life. As is the case with virtually every pitcher, as a player’s body begins to decline, his mental prowess fills in the cracks. Younger pitchers tend to attempt to overpower hitters more than their veteran counterparts, whose deteriorating elbow ligaments and shoulder tendons have forced them to learn how to outsmart batters with the tools available to them.

If Warren’s strikeouts are down in 2019, it won’t necessarily be something about which to be alarmed. Granted, moving to the DH-free National League should allow Warren to notch more K’s than he would in the AL. But unless his totals drastically plummet and those two months with the Mariners turn out to have been less an aberration and more a sign of things to come, the Padres should be able to count on Warren to do his job on the majority of the nights he takes to the mound.

For as much attention as San Diego’s acquisition of Machado garnered, the team’s pitching is what truly needed an upgrade. In 2018, the Padres staff (starters and bullpen) combined to log the third-worst overall National League pitching performance. Its 4.40 ERA, 71 quality starts and 767 runs only topped the Reds and Marlins, contributing to a dismal final record of 66-96, last in the NL West.

This year though, thanks in part to the signings of Manny Machado and Adam Warren, baseball in San Diego is looking more promising than it has in years. And if the San Diego Padres do make the most of this new talent and find a way to sneak into contention in 2019, you can all but guarantee that Warren, the veteran bullpen arm brought in as an under-the-radar signing in early March, likely had something to do with it.