The Cycle, Issue 6: The Platonic Ideal of a Baseball Uniform
Counting down my top 10 uniforms, reviewing how A.J. Preller built the Padres, appreciating Wayne Terwilliger, the return of the Boomstick, Arenado fallout, and more
In this issue of The Cycle . . .
My annual uniform rankings conclude with the top-10 countdown to MLB’s best overall uniform set, plus a comparison to last year’s rankings, some fun facts, and a request for your top five.
Also:
Wayne Terwilliger (1925–2021)
Personnel Department: How A.J. Preller built the Padres
Transaction Reactions: Bomba Squad reunited, Kolten Wong signs with a rival, St. Louis cancels Dexter, plus Colomé, Soria, and more
Reader Survey
Closing Credits
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Sharp-Dressed Men: Annual uniform rankings, top 10
Our weeklong journey through the uniforms of the 30 major-league teams reaches its dramatic conclusion today with the top 10 uniform sets in the majors. I’ll restate what I said on Monday: these rankings are completely subjective based on my own tastes and opinions. You won’t agree with every choice, and there is no right or wrong answer. More than anything, these rankings are an excuse to discuss, catalog, and appreciate the styles of today’s teams. Beyond that, I hope I have explained sufficiently why I ranked one team above another, but I have no expectation that you will agree with my reasoning. Such is the nature of any ranking that contains a subjective element.
Throughout the process of assembling this week’s uniform rankings, I have explicitly avoided looking at the rankings I published at The Athletic in 2019 and ’20. The idea was to come at these rankings fresh and not be beholden to any previous sequencing. However, after we get to number one, I will add a few notes about how this year’s list compares to those other two, along with a few other fun facts about what the 30 teams wore last year. With that, here’s my standard note on the visuals:
I assembled the graphics below from retail images, most of them from MLBshop.com. The caps are all photographs of actual caps (with the gold New Era sticker still on the bills), but the jerseys appear to have been created digitally on a template. In several cases, I did some additional photoshopping to increase the accuracy of a jersey (adding a missing patch or, quite often, the numbers). If the color of a cap doesn’t match the corresponding uniform, that’s due the difference in sources and does not reflect an actual difference in the uniforms. In every case, if you are reading on substack, you can click to enlarge. Also, I want to give a blanket credit to UniformLineup.com and Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.net, which were and are invaluable references for who wore what when, both within the 2020 season (UniformLineup) and over multiple seasons (SportsLogos).
Drumroll, please!
10. Toronto Blue Jays
From 2004 to 2011, the Blue Jays had the ugliest uniforms in baseball (give or take the ’04-’06 Diamondbacks’), but when they replaced them, in 2012, they crushed it so hard that other teams are still trying to replicate their success (see last year’s Padres and, especially, Brewers redesigns). In updating their classic 1977–96 design, the Blue Jays rocketed into the top five with an almost-perfect uniform that was both retro and modern, unique, sharp, clean, and utterly Blue Jays.
Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to leave well enough alone and have been slowly sinking in the standings as a result. In 2017, they brought back the white-front caps, pushing the set a bit further toward retro, but without any consistency as to when they would wear those caps other than “not on the road.” Last year, they reached back into the past again by adding a powder-blue alternate uniform. Unfortunately, they wear those powder blues both at home and on the road. Worse yet, along with that second alternate, they introduced a third cap, which is easily the worst part of their current uniform set.
The crown of the cap that Toronto wears with its powder-blue alternates isn’t the royal blue of the Jays’ other caps but navy, an odd, frustrating choice that undermines the potential of those powder-blue uniforms. I don’t much like the Jays bringing the powder blue up onto the bill and button of that cap (it reminds me of the short-lived 1990s trend of teams wearing grey-crowned caps on the road), but it might have worked if they had stuck with the royal blue.
The Jays also wore their alternates, both of them, way too often in 2020. In 2019, before they added the powder blue, they wore an alternate jersey in 35 percent of their games. Last year, they wore an alternate in nearly 62 percent of their games. When your basic white and grey uniforms are this handsome, that’s a crime against good taste (even if the royal-blue alternates are pretty spiffy in their own right). To make matters worse, there was no organizing principle behind when the Jays would wear the royal blue, the powder blue, or the white-front cap (though they only wore the last five times, all with the white jersey). That’s how you take a top-five uniform and push it down to number 10. The Jays need to simplify, organize, and learn to appreciate a good thing when they have it.
9. Los Angeles Angels
I’ve come to realize I like the Angels’ uniforms more than the average fan. I do have three criticisms of them. First, using the exact same wordmark in the same colors on all three jerseys, including a jersey that is the same color as those letters, is lazy and lowers the potential of the set. The Rays are the only other team that does this, and it’s one reason I put them in the bottom 10. Second, the Angels are the leading violators of my second rule of uniform clutter as they not only have a patch on their right sleeve that needlessly repeats the cap logo, but also another on the left sleeve of their team logo, which is really just the cap logo in a red circle. Third, if you zoom in, you can see there is shaded beveling on the cap logo. That’s unnecessary and feels increasingly dated (the Astros are the only other team to do it, and it looks bad on their cap, as well). Fortunately, from a distance, that detail disappears like the letters on a Marlins jersey.
Those complaints are all relatively small issues compared to the overall handsomeness of this set. It’s simple and clean, yet sharp and distinct. The red pops on the white and grey. The black outlines keep things crisp. The A with a halo, which they updated nicely when they adopted this look in 2002, is a classic logo too good for them to ever abandon it again. Now that they’ve resolved their naming issue (they dropped the “of Anaheim” in 2016), they should get “Los Angeles” on that away jersey, but the title they won in 2002 and Mike Trout’s dominance have made this the Angels uniform, and it’s a good one.
8. Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles are the rare team whose best individual uniform is their road grey. That is also true of the Twins and Diamondbacks, but those are both bottom-10 teams. The Orioles brought this set along slowly. They have actually worn that black alternate since 2000. The home whites date to 2004. The road grey and the outstanding Maryland flag patch were one-offs in 2009, the same year they introduced the orange alternate, and returned for good in 2011. They brought the cartoon bird back in 2012 to complete the look, which is when the road grey really popped.
Those caps bring the whole set together. The road greys, with the black-crowned cap, recall Baltimore’s 1966–71 heyday. The home whites, with the white-front caps, evoke Cal Ripken’s prime in the 1980s and the team’s last championship. Yet, those home and road uniforms work together as part of a cohesive whole. I don’t care all that much for the alternates, and I don’t see the point of the “O’s” cap, but I don’t actively dislike any of those elements, and the team largely keeps them in their place (black on Friday, orange on Saturday). Still, they wore the black a bit too much last year, including for their entire opening series and the three Jackie Robinson games at the end of August, which took four road games away from their best look. I also think that “Orioles” wordmark is too big, but, again, those are all small things compared to the overall beauty of this uniform set.
7. New York Mets
The Mets don’t need those alternates, and those alternates don’t need corresponding caps, but the Metropolitans keep the use of those options under control. The “Mets” alternate is home only; the “New York” alternate is road only, and the team wore the two of them combined in just 10 games last year. Over their final 32 games of the 2020 season, the Mets wore an alternate just once, and that was in the nightcap of a double-header.
The home whites and road greys are near matches for the team’s original 1962 uniforms, which they wore to the World Series in 1969 and 1973. It’s a classic look in a unique color scheme inspired by both the teams they replaced in New York (the Dodgers and Giants) and the flag of the City of New York. Unfortunately, new Mets owner Steve Cohen has threatened to add black back into the mix at the request of some of the Mets players who have nostalgia for the early 2000s. If he does it, his team will sink like a stone in these standings.
6. Chicago White Sox
This White Sox uniform set is, in its own way, miraculous. When Marc Okkonen published his landmark book Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century in 1991, Sports Illustrated highlighted it by running the White Sox’s uniforms, from 1901 to 1991, along the bottom of multiple pages of that year’s Baseball Preview. Why the White Sox? Because, to that point, no team had undergone more uniform changes than the Chicago White Sox. The last uniform in that line featured black pinstripes at home and an ornate white “Sox” on a black cap.* The Sox haven’t changed their basic since. It’s been 30 years.
In addition, this White Sox uniform arrived just in time for the members of N.W.A. to make black baseball caps with silver and/or white logos the dominant headwear of hip hop (replacing Kangols, which had quite a run). That trend started because N.W.A. was from Los Angeles and its members were Raiders fans, but the trend expanded to include hockey’s L.A. Kings and this sharp new White Sox cap (which even got a mention in “Dre Day,” the second single from Dr. Dre’s 1993 landmark album The Chronic).
So, this White Sox look was super trendy in the 1990s, but three decades later, it doesn’t seem dated (well, maybe the stripes on the away jersey do, but Dre wasn’t rapping about sleeve stripes). That’s the definition of a timeless uniform. That was intentional, of course. The logo dates to 1949, but the Sox still nailed it with a crisp home uniform, a solid road jersey, and a black alternate that really pops. That alternate has a cool sock patch on the sleeve. One of my only complaints about this set is that, rather than wear the same patch on the road jerseys (color-adjusted for contrast, of course), the team got lazy and violated clutter rule number two by just repeating the cap logo.
My other complaint is the throwback alternate, which the team wears in Sunday home games. I dig that 1982–86 beach-blanket look in moderation. I like that they kept the 1983 All-Star Game patch on the sleeve and the number on the pants (see Alex Colomé’s card below), and seeing Tony LaRussa back in that uniform might be the only thing I’m looking forward to about his return to the dugout. However, the blue (less so the red) violates the color scheme and visual consistency of the overall set, keeping the Pale Hose out of the top five.
*I seem to remember those White Sox uniforms being in the 1989 Baseball Preview, the one with Benito Santiago on the cover, so it’s possible that they pre-dated both the book’s publication and the White Sox’s switch to this uniform, making the Sox’s curly-C uniforms the last in the line. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I can’t check my usual sources. Since it’s ultimately unimportant here, and memory can be faulty, I’m telling the story based on the one hard fact I have: the publication date of Okkonen’s book.
5. San Diego Padres
The Padres were one of the most difficult teams to rank this year. I was cautiously enthusiastic about their return to brown and yellow heading into last year. Seeing it on the field, however, I was completely won over. It is everything I want from a uniform: unique, sharp, clean, consistent. The Padres initially announced that the brown jersey would be their primary road jersey, but they wound up wearing the sand-colored pinstriped look three times as often (21 games to seven), while still limited the brown to road games. I very much approve of that choice, but all three jerseys look great. The swinging friar patch is a great detail. I could roll with adding a yellow-bell cap to wear with the brown jersey, a combination which looked great as an alternate in 2019, but I respect the decision to have just one cap. I just flat love these uniforms. They actively cheered me up whenever I turned on a Padres game in 2020, a year that I, like everyone else, needed some cheering up.
Then there are the military dress-up alternates. The Padres and Pirates are the only teams who made military dress-up part of their regular uniform rotation in 2020. The Padres do it because San Diego is a major military hub. It is home to the largest naval feet in the world and has Navy and Marine bases and a Coast Guard station. The military is also a huge part of the city’s economy, as several major defense contractors have their headquarters there. So, as much as I loathe teams playing dress-up, I kind of get it in San Diego. Still, I’d rather the team find other ways to show its appreciation for and connection to that part of its community. Besides, just because they have a legitimate connection to the culture of the city doesn’t make those camouflage jerseys any less ugly.
The good news is that the Padres restrict those jerseys to Sunday home games and wore each just three times in 2020. So, while those jerseys keep the Padres from threatening the top three, it doesn’t keep them out of the top five, though I reserve the right to change my mind in future lists.
4. Chicago Cubs
The Cubs’ road greys always seem underwhelming. I don’t mean the one above, I mean all of them, at least since they got rid of the mid-50s roadie with the red underline under Chicago. This one has been around since 1997, and it does just fine. The Dodgers-style red number is a nice touch, and they echo it with a matching red number on the back. Still, I don’t mind that they wore the blue more often on the road last year (15 times to the grey’s 12). That blue alternate is a nice one, and using it exclusively on the road recalls the team’s 1982–89 blue roadies. I particularly like the National League patch on the right sleeve. It is the only league patch worn by any team, and it goes great on that blue-and-red jersey.
Of course, the Cubs are here because of the cap and the home uniform, which is so good that they wear no alternates at Wrigley. I could do without the red outline on the number and name on the back, but how do you argue with that look? The Cubs have had the C logo on their chest since 1937, added pinstripes in 1957, and thickened the blue circle in 1979, but that has been their basic look as long as just about anyone alive can remember. It’s a classic. In terms of iconic baseball uniforms, the only teams that can rival the Cubs’ in their home pinstripes are the three remaining in this countdown.
3. St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals home uniform, with the red cap, is perfect. Perfect. It has seen numerous tweaks over the years, but the birds on the bat will celebrate their 100th anniversary next year, and there’s a reason they have endured for so long. The only reason the Cardinals don’t top this list is because, like the Blue Jays, they’ve fussed with their overall uniform set too much, introducing too many variations that clutter up arguably the league’s cleanest look.
The Cardinals’ home and road jerseys have had matching wordmarks since 1933, so, in 2013, they added the “St. Louis” cream alternates, the first alternate uniform in team history, using a version of the “St. Louis” script last worn in 1932. They nailed it. That’s a gorgeous uniform. They wear it at home on Saturdays with the red cap. Perfect. No notes.
From 1976 to 1984, the Cardinals road uniforms were powder blue. With that tint staging a comeback of late, the Cardinals got out in front of the trend by adding a powder-blue version of the cream uniform as a road alternate. Kudos for making it a road uniform, but powder blue, a very 1970s and ’80s look, on a uniform inspired by one from 1932 doesn’t work. St. Louis’s “victory blues” are a hard strike against this set, keeping it from contending for the top spot.
Then there’s the cap situation. The Cardinals are the only team in this countdown with floating caps in the graphic. That’s because they do wear the red cap the majority of the time with all four of their jerseys, but they have two other caps that remain in circulation. They wear the bird-on-bat cap on Sundays at home (just four games in 2020), and the navy road cap only when playing opponents who have red caps (in 2020, that meant three games in Cincinnati, total). I wasn’t going to put one of those caps over a jersey for three or four games, but I had to include them.
I have very different opinions about those two navy caps. I could live without the bird-on-bat cap entirely. If they do want to keep it, why not pair it with the cream alternate? It seems to me that would be the best combination for that cap. As for the navy road cap, I love that cap. I own one and wear it all the time. (I own the red one too; I own many caps.) I much prefer the navy as the Cardinals’ standard road cap, a scheme from their championship season of 1964 that returned from 1992–2012 (a period that included two more titles). If they’re going to keep such a great cap as part of their set, why limit it to games against the Reds, Phillies, Nationals, Angels and, in extremely rare circumstances, Rangers and Twins?
So, as great as the home white and cream alternate are, and as much as I like the logo and love the navy road cap, this set is just far too complicated as a whole for the Cardinals to top the list. Still, if there was a Hall of Fame just for baseball uniforms, the birds on the bat would be part of the inaugural class.
2. New York Yankees
Boring? Yeah, sort of. The road uniform, in particular, is not great. The white outlines and sleeve stripes are relics of the initial wave of double-knit uniforms, and, as the stripes have gotten smaller over the years, they have looked more and more superfluous. Still, that “New York” wordmark dates back to 1911 and has been in nearly continuous use since 1916. As for the cap and the home pinstripes . . . what can you say? It’s the white tie and tails of sports uniforms. Simple elegance. Every player looks better in Yankee pinstripes with that Tiffany-designed interlocking NY on the left breast. This is also the simplest uniform set in baseball: two jerseys, one cap, no player names on the back, no secondary color. No need. It’s like the New York Times masthead: timeless, instantly recognizable, and legendary. But, yeah, okay, maybe a little dull. That last clears the top spot for the . . .
1. Los Angeles Dodgers
Like the Yankees’, but with a splash of color thanks to that red number on the front and the lighter shade of blue. One home jersey. One cap. The “Los Angeles” roadie is only worn to troll the Angels (seriously, they wore it five times last year, three of those games were in Anaheim). That white uniform with the Dodger blue and the bright red number on a sunny day in Dodger Stadium is one of the most beautiful sites in baseball.
They Dodgers do have a rule-two sleeve-patch violation, a pretty egregious one at that, but nothing is every truly perfect. Rather, the Dodgers’ uniform is iconic; the Platonic ideal of a baseball uniform. If an illustrator or a costume designer wants to put a player in a uniform that is obviously a baseball uniform outside of the context of the field and equipment, they come up with something that looks like the Dodgers’ uniform. It’s sharp, fresh, clean, and, in my opinion, the best uniform set in the major leagues.
Disagree? Reply to this issue with your top five (try to be impartial with regard to your favorite team). If I get enough responses by dinner time on Sunday, I’ll compile the results for Monday’s newsletter.
So how does this list compare to last year’s? Before I got to see the Padres, Brewers, Diamondbacks, and Rangers’ new sets on the field, I had the Padres way down at 21 (which was a big improvement from 29th the year before). This year, they are the only new entry in the top 10, bumping the Giants, who were number 10 last year and, surprisingly, fell all the way to 23 this year. That’s an indication of how tight these rankings are, I suppose.
Still, I had the same bottom six both years, with none of those teams moving up or down more than one spot this year (I had the Rangers 30th last year, but after seeing them on the field, I dropped the Twins below them). My top two remain the same, but I was more forgiving of the Cardinals’ alternates this year, bumping the Cubs from third to fourth. In the middle, the Pirates (22), A’s (17), and Red Sox (15) stayed put, while everyone else shuffled around them. The Padres and Giants were the big movers (+16 and -13 spots, respectively). After them, it was the Brewers up seven spots thanks to getting to see their new look in action, and the Braves down the same number, due at least in part to the disappearance of their tomahawk-free cream alternate.
Next year, we’ll get new uniforms from Cleveland and Colorado, at the very least, and there may yet be some surprises in store for this year. In the meantime, here are some key uniform stats that I compiled as I went through this process:
Rule 2 (cap logo on sleeve) violations: Dodgers, Angels, White Sox (road grey only)
Powder-blue violations (full uniform, at home): Twins, Phillies, Rangers, Blue Jays
Military Dress-up violations: Padres, Pirates
Color-scheme violations: Mariners, Phillies, White Sox, Diamondbacks, A’s, Blue Jays (road cap)
Most Jerseys: Twins (6)
Fewest Jerseys: Yankees, Tigers (2)
No home alternate: Yankees, Tigers, Dodgers, Cubs, Padres
Most Caps: Rangers, Pirates (4)
One Hat Club: Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, Angels, Marlins
Wayne Terwilliger (1925–2021)
Wayne Terwilliger died Wednesday morning at the age of 95. Check his Baseball-Reference page, and you’ll see that he played for five major-league teams over parts of nine seasons from 1949 to 1960 and was a good-field/no-hit second baseman. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg of a lifetime in baseball that included coaching first base for both of the Twins’ world championships and spanned 62 years as a professional player, coach, and minor league manager.
I’ll admit that I’m not as familiar with Terwilliger’s long tenure in the game as I should be. His 2006 autobiography, Terwilliger Bunts One—the title taken from this anecdote from Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood (just read the first half of that first page)—has sat on my shelf for years, largely unread, but one need only crack that book to understand that the skinny, energetic “Twig” was one of the game’s great characters and devotees. Terwilliger opens each chapter in his book with a five-line poem about its contents and concludes the book with a list of every team he played, coached, or managed for or against. The list is four single-spaced pages long. Prior to that, he lists his own teams, year by year, starting with his Charlotte, Michigan high school in 1939. From then until 2010, he would spend only two years out of baseball: 1974, a gap year between minor-league managing gigs during which he ran his father’s bar, “Twigs Saloon,” and got remarried; and 1943, when he lost his collegiate eligibility due to flunking a Western Civilization course and decided to join the Marines at the age of 17. For 1944 and 1945, he lists his position on his Marine Corps team (shortstop). Twig served in an amphibious tank unit in the Pacific Theater in World War II and was part of the taking of Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima.
After the war, Terwilliger returned to college, played for a local House of David team and against barnstorming Negro League teams, caught the eye of some scouts, and was signed by the Cubs. Twig’s best major-league season was 1953, when he hit just .252/.343/.347 (89 OSP+) as the Senators’ starting second baseman, but was dazzling in the field and hit well enough relative to his keystone peers to be worth more than four wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference’s calculations.
After the 1960 season, the Yankees offered Twig a minor league managing job, and thus began his second career in baseball. He returned to the majors to serve as Ted Williams’s third-base coach with the expansion Senators-cum-Rangers from 1969 to ’72. Then, after another stretch of minor-league managing, returned to the Rangers’ third-base coaching box from 1981 to ’85 under managers Don Zimmer and Doug Rader. In 1986, he moved over to the Twins, for whom he coached infielders and first base four nine years under Tom Kelly, picking up World Series rings in 1987 and ’91.
Forcibly retired by the Twins when the strike hit in 1994, he was hired by the independent St. Paul Saints on the other side of the Mississippi (Twig had played for the original Saints in 1952) and spent another eight years as the first-base coach of a team co-owned by Bill Murray and Bill Veeck’s son, Mike. In 2003, Twig returned to Texas to manage the independent Ft. Worth Cats. After his third season in Ft. Worth, he retired at the age of 80, but the Cats convinced him to return to coach first base. He spent another five years coaching first for the Cats before retiring for the third and final time. Three years later, at the age of 88, he got bored and took a job bagging groceries at a local supermarket.
Twig broke his hip at 91, which ended his ability to be active, and his health deteriorated over the four years since, but it seems fair to say that Wayne Terwilliger got everything he could out of his life, which was too long and eventful for me to do any more justice to it in this limited space. That autobiography looks like a good read, full of enthusiasm and anecdotes, like the man himself. For something in between this quick summary and that book-length one, check out his SABR biography, which helped inform this outline.
Personnel Department
Padres extend general manager A.J. Preller
The Padres added four years to general manager A.J. Preller’s contract on Tuesday, extending him to 2026 and inflating his title to general manager and president of baseball operations. I didn’t have time to weigh in on this in Wednesday’s newsletter, but with the Padres having assembled what could prove to be the best team in franchise history under Preller, I thought it would be worth doubling back to take a look back at his tenure in San Diego to this point.
Preller was a fraternity brother of Rangers general manager Jon Daniels at Cornell in the mid-to-late 1990s and worked under Daniels in the Rangers’ front office prior to the Padres hiring him in August 2014. I mention that not because Preller unfairly exploited that connection—he had many other jobs in baseball prior to joining the Rangers—but because Daniels and Preller had similarly rocky starts to their ultimately very successful tenures as general manager. Daniels just did it all a decade earlier.
The Rangers promoted Daniels to general manager in October 2005, less than two months after his 28th birthday, making him (still) the youngest GM in major-league history. That December, Daniels traded a 23-year-old Adrían González, 26-year-old right-hander Chris Young, and outfielder Terrmel Sledge to, coincidentally, the Padres for pitchers Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka and minor league catcher Billy Killian. Young proved to be the best pitcher in the deal, and González matured into one of the best hitters in baseball at the turn of the decade, ultimately compiling more than 44 wins above replacement after Daniels dealt him away.
Daniels recovered from that disaster of a trade in part by pulling off a trade that was almost as good as the González trade was bad. At the 2007 deadline, Daniels sent the Braves soon-to-be-free-agent Mark Teixeira for prospects Elvis Andrus, Neftalí Feliz, Matt Harrison, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. The first three of those youngsters would be significant contributors to the Rangers’ consecutive pennants in 2010 and 2011.
Preller’s early failure was even more spectacular. In his first offseason, 2014–15, Preller went off like someone who overindulged at their fantasy draft. He inherited a team that went 77-85 in 2014 and tried to transform it into a contender in a single offseason. On December 18, he traded for Matt Kemp’s bat and massive contract, sending the Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal (oops) and two others. The next day, he pulled off the three-team, 11-player Wil Myers trade, promising to send the Padres’ top draft pick from just six months earlier, shortstop Trea Turner, to the Nationals as a player to be named (oops). That same day, he traded Max Fried (oops), Mallex Smith, and two others to the Braves for Justin Upton and a minor leaguer. He signed James Shields to a four-year, $75 million contract (oops) in February. Then, on the eve of Opening Day, he traded Cameron Maybin, Carlos Quentin, and Matt Wisler to the Braves for ace closer Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr.
After all that, the 2015 Padres were three games worse than the 2014 team, but Preller, holding out hope for a late rally, failed to cash in pending free agent Justin Upton at the trading deadline.
Preller did tear down after the season, however, letting Upton walk and sending Kimbrel to the Red Sox for Manuel Margot and three others in mid-November. In December, he sent Yonder Alonso to the A’s for lefty Drew Pomeranz as part of a five-player trade.
The Padres sank even lower in 2016, shedding another six wins and dropping to last place, but, his opening gambit having failed, Preller kept his head down and committed to a rebuild. In June and July he had a tremendous sequence of transactions that, we can see now, is where things started to turn for both Preller and the Padres. (Incidentally, when I write “he” with regard to these transactions, I mean the Padres’ front office under Preller. He surely shares credit, good and bad, with his scouts and statisticians and, when it comes to a willingness to spend money, ownership.)
In early June 2016, Preller traded Shields to the White Sox, eating $31 million of Shields’ remaining salary, for two players, including a Dominican teenager who had yet to play his first professional game. A few days later, he drafted pitchers Cal Quantrill and Joey Lucchesi. At the end of the month, he traded superannuated closer Fernando Rodney to the Marlins for a 20-year-old righty who had been an eighth-round pick the year before and would need Tommy John surgery that August. Two day’s later, he signed amateur Colombian righty Luis Patiño, and less than a week after that, Cuban lefty Adrián Morejón. The 20-year-old Preller got for Rodney was Chris Paddack. The teenager he got for Shields was Fernando Tatis Jr.
As impressive as that sequence was, Preller’s spectacular failures weren’t over just yet. In mid-July, he traded Pomeranz to the Red Sox for highly-regarded pitching prospect Anderson Espinoza, but he didn’t give Boston complete medical information on Pomeranz. That September, Major League Baseball fined the Padres and suspended Preller for 30-days without pay for the transgression. Ironically, Espinoza has had Tommy John surgery twice since joining the Padres organization and hasn’t thrown a competitive pitch since 2016. Two weeks after the Pomeranz deal, Preller worked out a seven-player trade with the Marlins that sent starters Andrew Cashner and Colin Rea plus a third pitcher to Miami for a quartet of players including outfielder Josh Naylor and pitchers Jarred Cosart and Luis Castillo. That’s the same Luis Castillo who has since emerged as an ace with the Reds. In that deal, Preller didn’t make a full disclosure on Rea, who went down with an elbow injury in his first start for Miami. So, two days later, part of the trade was undone. The Marlins sent back Rea; the Padres sent back Castillo (ouch).
Seemingly chastened, Preller hasn’t run afoul of the league’s medical-disclosure rules since then, but he has continued the work of building both the Padres’ major-league roster and farm team.
Early in the 2017 season, he selected Kirby Yates off waivers from the Angels then watched as he blossomed into a dominant closer over the next two seasons. That June, he drafted lefty MacKenzie Gore third overall and catcher Luis Campusano in the second round. In February 2018, he signed free agent first baseman Eric Hosmer for $144 million over eight years, the richest contract in Padres history to that point. In June 2018, he drafted lefty Ryan Weathers with the seventh overall pick. The next month, he traded relievers Brad Hand and Adam Cimber to Cleveland for catching prospect Francisco Mejia. In February 2019, he made Hosmer’s contract look small with a $300 million, 10-year deal for third baseman Manny Machado, the second-richest contract in baseball history to that point. That June, he drafted shortstop CJ Abrams sixth overall. At that year’s deadline, he inserted himself into the deal that sent Trevor Bauer to the Reds, extracting outfield prospect Taylor Trammell. That November, he re-signed Pomeranz to a seemingly above-market $34 million, four-year contract as a lefty reliever. That same day, he traded Eric Lauer and Luis Urias to the Brewrs for righty Zach Davies and centerfielder Trent Grisham. In December he sent two players to the A’s for former top prospect Jurickson Profar. Four days later, he traded slugger Hunter Renfroe and two others to the Rays for outfielder Tommy Pham and a two-way minor leaguer named Jake Cronenworth. In February, he traded Margot plus one to the Rays for reliever Emilio Pagan, and, in last year’s draft, he took outfielder Robert Hassell eighth overall.
With his team finally playing winning baseball last year, the aggressive Preller returned at the trading deadline. As the deadline bore down, he acquired reliever Trevor Rosenthal, first baseman Mitch Moreland, and catcher Jason Castro (all of whom hit free agency in November), packaged Trammell and three others to the Mariners for catcher Austin Nola and a pair of relievers, and sent six players, including Quantrill, Naylor, and catcher Austin Hedges, to Cleveland for three players including front-of-the-rotation righty Mike Clevinger.
It was only a 60-game season, but the 2020 Padres posted the best winning percentage in their history (.617) and snapped a 13-year playoff drought. Early this offseason, Preller lost Clevinger to Tommy John surgery and responded by trading Mejia, Patiño, and two others to the Rays for ace Blake Snell, trading Davies and four others to the Cubs for ace Yu Darvish and catcher Victor Caritini, and sending Lucchesi to the Mets in a three-team trade that brought righty Joe Musgrove from the Pirates. He also signed Korean star Ha-Seong Kim to a four-year, $28 million deal to play second base and re-signed the free-agent Profar for $21 million over three years.
Meanwhile, when I tallied up the top-100-prospects lists last week, the Padres ranked fourth among the 30 teams in elite minor league talent. Gore and Abrams both ranked among the top 10 prospects in the game (fourth and sixth in the aggregate), Campusano and Hassell were both unanimous top-100 prospects (making all four major lists), and Weathers, Morejon, and Kim all drew mentions.
Pouring over the Padres’ 40-man roster, the only player who pre-dates Preller’s arrival is righty Dinelson Lamet, who signed as an amateur out of the Dominican Republic in June 2014, two months before Preller was hired. This is Preller’s team and organization through and through, and, as chaotic as his methods have been at times, he has assembled an impressive collection of talent at every level. The big test for Preller, of course, is if he can bring the Padres their third pennant and first World Series championship. They have a real chance at both this season, and now Preller has five more years beyond this one to make it happen.
Transaction Reactions
Twins re-sign DH Nelson Cruz ($13M/1yr)
The Twins played chicken with the Boomstick and won, getting Cruz on this no-brainer one-year contract, rather than the two-year deal the 40-year-old designated hitter had requested. Cruz played exactly 162 games with the Twins over the last two seasons and hit .308/.394/.626 (168 OPS+) with 54 home runs and 132 RBI, and here’s what his OPS+ has been doing in consecutive two-year spans since he turned 30:
His wings are going to melt at some point (Cruz will be 41 on July 1), but this singing was a layup for Minnesota.
Brewers sign 2B Kolten Wong ($18M/2yrs + club option)
The Cardinals effectively replaced Wong with Nolan Arenado by pushing Tommy Edman to second base. Fair enough. Wong is taking his golden glove to the division-rival Brewers, which will push the defensively challenged Keston Hiura off the position. Depending on whether or not the National League has a designated hitter this year (it is absurd that, less than two weeks from the start of Spring Training, we don’t know if they will), Hiura may have to learn to play first base and battle Dan Vogelbach for playing time there. Still, the right-handed Hiura should get plenty of playing time spelling either Wong or Vogelbach against lefties.
Now 30, Wong is what he is: a slightly below-average bat with some pop and an elite fielder at second with some speed. Still, he has held his own against lefties the last two seasons, and if groundballer Adrian Houser has a big year in the Brewers’ rotation, you know whom to thank.
Angels acquire OF Dexter Fowler and cash from the Cardinals for a player to be named later or cash
This is a curious one. Fowler is owed $14.5 million for 2021, the last year on his contract, and the Cardinals are sending $12.75 million with him to Anaheim, meaning they’re only saving $1.75 million in this alleged salary dump. I suppose whatever player to be named or cash they receive plus $1.75 million is better than eating the entire $14.5 million by releasing Fowler and getting nothing, but this tells you a lot about what the Cardinals think of the veteran switch-hitter heading into his age-35 season. After all, that $1.75 million isn’t going to pay for much of Nolan Arenado’s contract, and they Rockies are paying Arenado’s contract this year, anyway.
It also tells you what the Angels think of Jo Adell’s readiness. One of the top prospects in the game, Adell debuted last year and almost literally face-planted, hitting just .161/.212/.266, striking out in 42 percent of his plate appearances, and making some embarrassing plays in the outfield. Adell won’t turn 22 until April, played just 27 games at Triple-A before his promotion, and didn’t hit much at that level, either. So, a little extra seasoning (and, perhaps, confidence-building after his 2020 performance) likely won’t hurt. Mike Trout started 2011 back to the minors after struggling in his first major-league opportunity, and he forced his way back up quickly. Many Hall of Famers have a sent-back-down story (Mickey Mantle leaps to mind, it happened to Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera on the same day).
So, while Adell cooks, Fowler will play right field for his former Cubs skipper, Joe Maddon. It’s not clear that Fowler does have all that much left. He might be a league-average bat tied to a sub-par glove at this point, maybe at best, and he missed three weeks last year due to ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition. Still, I’ve always found him an easy player to root for, so here’s hoping he, like Wong, can make the Cardinals eat a little crow.
Twins sign RHP Alex Colomé ($6.25M/1yr + $5.5M mutual option)
A closer more by habit and reputation than skill, Colomé has a 163 ERA+ and 138 saves over the last five seasons, but his strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio have been declining steadily over that span. The last two years, his velocity started to inch downward, as well. The Twins have most likely signed the 32-year-old to close, but he could be a better fit as back-end bullpen depth sharing end-game duties with lefty Taylor Rogers and fellow righty Tyler Duffey. Who knows, maybe the Twins will take a little from column B and a little from Colomé. (Sorry, I had to.)
Phillies sign RHP Chase Anderson ($4M/1yr)
In his six years in Milwaukee, Anderson was usually good for about 25 league-average starts per season. With the Blue Jays last year, he was effective in short starts in August, then got torched in September, at one point giving up a record five home runs in one inning at Yankee Stadium. He finished the year in the bullpen and will battle for the last spot in the Phillies’ rotation this spring.
Diamondbacks sign RHP Joakim Soria ($3.5M/1yr)
Soria is one of a quartet of seemingly ageless veteran right-handed relievers who lead all active pitchers in games pitched. Three of them were free agents this offseason. Soria is the first of that trio to sign, but the rumor mill is heating up on the other two, who should land soon. Here’s the group, along with their playing ages for the 2021 season, rookie year, career ERA+, and the number of teams they have played for (including Arizona for Soria):
Soria, who was the Royals’ closer for most of five years before Tommy John surgery cost him the 2012 season, leads that quartet in career ERA+ and saves. He spent the last two years with the A’s and had one year with good peripherals and a higher ERA and another with weaker peripherals and a lower ERA. It all comes out in the wash of those 700-plus games. Soria, the rare reliever with five pitches and mid-90s velocity, will keep keeping on. He might even get to close some games out of what is shaping up as a weak Arizona bullpen. He also seems likely to move on to team number nine at the trading deadline.
Twins acquire RHP Shaun Anderson from the Giants for OF LaMonte Wade Jr.
This is an end-of-the-roster swap with the Twins needing pitching more than another outfielder, and vice versa for the Giants. Wade is a 27-year-old with some on-base skills who can play both center and first base. Anderson is a big, 26-year-old righty with a good slider and an average fastball who moved to the bullpen last year, and whose potential in that role remains to be seen. They’ll each provide a modicum of depth in those respective areas, as they had with their previous teams.
Angels claim UT Robel García off waivers from Mets
García had a moment with the 2019 Cubs. A former minor leaguer in the Cleveland system, the Dominican switch-hitter had gone as far afield as the Italian Baseball League before making his major-league debut at the age of 26 in 2019. Called up in July of that year, he slugged .800 over his first 35 at-bats, which was a lot of fun, but that was about all the fun there was. He spent last year at the Mets’ alternate training site, and is now that itinerant last man on the roster. García can play second, third, first, the outfield corners, and shortstop in a pinch. He has real power, but not much discipline, and he’ll be 28 in March.
Reader Survey
In order to serve you better, I would like to know a little more about you. This is optional, of course, but, if you don’t mind, please reply to this issue with:
your favorite team (or teams, or if you are a general-interest baseball fan)
your general location (as many of the following as you feel comfortable sharing: city, state, province, country for those outside the U.S. and Canada)
your birth year (because it doesn’t change, unlike your age)
The idea here is to know whom I’m writing for, what teams you want to read about, and when and where you’ll receive the newsletter. I can’t promise I’ll write more about the Rockies if you tell me you’re a Rockies fan, but if there’s a large Rockies contingent among the readership, I will likely lower my threshold for including Rockies items and dive deeper into the ones I include.
Also, this weekend, include your top five MLB uniform sets!
Closing Credits
I hinted at today’s closing-credits song a few times in my uniform reviews. If you came away from that top 10 without OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” in your head, I’ll have to assume you’ve never heard it. Part of an absolutely killer one-two punch near the start of the Atlanta hip hop duo’s fourth album, Stankonia, “So Fresh, So Clean” precedes the big hit, “Ms. Jackson,” on the album, but followed it as Stankonia’s third single. “So Fresh, So Clean” reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2001; “Ms. Jackson” went to number one.
Producers Organized Noize built the chorus melody of “So Fresh, So Clean” off a secondary hook from “Before The Night Is Over,” an album track from soul singer Joe Simon’s 1977 release Easy to Love. “Before the Night is Over” was written by country songwriter Ben Peters and initially recorded as a soulful blues romp by Jerry Lee Lewis that same year. The “So Fresh, So Clean” hook wasn’t in Lewis’s version, however. It was invented by some combination of Simon, his producer, Nashville disc jockey John Richbourg, and the Muscle Shoals Swampers, the legendary session musicians who played on Easy to Love.
“So Fresh, So Clean” is a classic boaster, with Big Boi and André 3000 bragging about being “the coolest motherfunkers on the planet,” which they more or less were at the time. They were also throwback jersey enthusiasts. On the back cover of Stankonia, Big Boi is wearing a 1978–81 Bill Buckner Cubs roadie (the powder blue with white pinstripes). In the liner notes for their previous album, 1998’s Aquemini, André is rocking a big, yellow, 1972–73 Padres home jersey, while Big Boi dons three different throwbacks: a bumble-bee-pinstriped Willie Stargell, a red-white-and-blue 1980–86 Dale Murphy home jersey, and an anachronistic brown 1978 Padres jersey with Tony Gwynn’s 19 on it. Aquemini was the first OutKast album I picked up, and I won’t try to pretend that those jerseys didn’t increase my interest in the group.
There are no baseball jerseys in the video for “So Fresh, So Clean,” but, along with a raft of cameos from fellow Atlanta-based artists in the final scene, there are a couple of football throwbacks. Big Boi wears a navy Gale Sayers in one scene set at a barber shop, and André rocks a red Jerry Rice in multiple scenes. That 49ers jersey speaks directly to the aesthetic that the song and my uniform rankings espouse. A red jersey with a white “80” and three thin white stripes on each sleeve, it is incredibly simple, but still recognizable and iconic. As the chorus goes:
Ain’t nobody dope as me,
I’m just so fresh, so clean (so fresh and so clean clean!)
Next week in The Cycle: offseason grades for all 30 teams, Trevor Bauer’s new contract (if the rumor mill is to be believed), your top five uniforms (email ‘em to me!), and much, much more!
In the meantime, please let everyone know how much you’re enjoying The Cycle!