San Diego Padres: Expect a breakout season from Jurickson Profar
After years of toiling with the Rangers and A’s, Jurickson Profar is primed for a breakout campaign with the San Diego Padres.
San Diego Padres infielder Jurickson Profar emerged in 2012 as a 19-year old from Willemstad, Curacao. 2012 was the year another star from Willemstad, Curacao was putting the final touches on a stellar career.
Andruw Jones also broke onto the scene at age 19 and went on to hit 434 big league home runs. When Profar hit a home run in his Major League debut the Texas Rangers thought they had the second coming of The Curacao Kid.
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Baseball life didn’t go very smoothly however and Profar didn’t follow the same path as Jones. A subpar 2013 performance was followed by a shoulder injury which kept him out all of 2014 and some of 2015.
When Profar did return he spent the rest of the season in the minor leagues. The following years he bounced back and forth between the majors and minor and playing time at the major league level became hard to secure. The once can’t miss kid soon was traded to the Oakland A’s, where he played last season, before being traded once more, this time to the Padres.
Profar has shown flashes with the bat the past two years, especially in his last season with the Rangers. He hit twenty home runs and thirty-five doubles. The value he showed was enough to get him shipped to Oakland and saw him hit twenty more homers.
His .218 batting average and .711 on-base percentage gave him a one-way ticket out of town. A ticket that will prove to be a winning lottery ticket for the Padres.
Profar will enter his walk-year surrounded by the most offensive talent he has ever played with. He would slide nicely into a lineup after Tommy Pham giving him ample opportunities to drive in runs.
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Hitting in front of Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Eric Hosme will mean better pitches to hit and more chance to score runs. Profar is still a youthful 26 and though no longer projects to hit like Andruw Jones, still seems destined to put up quality numbers for the San Diego Padres this year.