Jake Cronenworth is the real deal
It's still early, but no longer too early, to say that Jake Cronenworth has a long and bright future at the MLB level.
This is a mea culpa of sorts. I spent most of this last offseason saying that I didn’t really believe in Jake Cronenworth.
That’s not to say I don’t like Jake Cronenworth. I do! He plays great defense anywhere on the infield, he hustles, he works the count, and he seems to be a great teammate. I just didn’t believe in his offense, and I’m mostly going to blame that on a strange pandemic-shortened season and an odd track record.
Actually, you know what, before we go forward let’s go backwards.
Where did Cronenworth come from
I’d wager about 80% of San Diego Padres fans have no idea how Jake Cronenworth ended up on this team. They probably assume he was working his way through the Padres minor league system for years before finally getting a chance last year, and that’s not true at all.
The truth is that A.J. Preller is really great at his job, specifically when it comes to trades, and he occasionally gets guys thrown into deals that end up being much better than anyone expected.
Jake Cronenworth, along with Tommy Pham, came to the Padres from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for Hunter Renfroe and Xavier Edwards. (Before you ask, Xavier Edwards is supposed to be a really great 2B prospect but is years away from the majors and was though to be not as good as C.J. Abrams.)
Obviously, Padres fans celebrated getting Tommy Pham, a former MVP candidate with the St. Louis Cardinals who had been a borderline All-Star for much of his career.
Cronenworth was more of a circus act, a two-way player who was trying to make it as a pitcher or an infielder. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t good enough at either to ever get his cup of coffee with Tampa Bay. Fortunately for him, he had a breakout season at Triple A that caught the eye of Preller.
Cronenworth’s breakout season
Prospects don’t often have breakout seasons at 25 years old, but it has happened before. However, most of the time that a guy with a long track record of mediocrity suddenly puts up a season of great stats, it’s just a weird hot streak that never lasts. That’s likely what the Rays were counting on when they agreed to send Cronenworth to the Padres.
Just look at those AVG/OBP/SLG (that’s what is referred to as a “slash line”, in case you didn’t know) columns. Once Jake got above the Single A level, his numbers were pedestrian as best until the 2019 season in Triple A.
What’s more interesting is Jake’s history as a pitcher and how it aligns with his hitting numbers. He hadn’t thrown a pitch since college, in 2015, before asking the Rays for a chance to pitch in 2019.
Jake was a good hitter and a good pitcher in college, where playing two-ways is less rare. Like most prospects, he was drafted and told which way to focus on. The Rays wanted him to hit and forget about pitching, but I imagine he saw time running out as a 25 year old that was struggling to post a 100 wRC+ in Triple A. He knew the team would give up on him soon, so he wanted to see if he could have more success as a pitcher. Maybe they just made a mistake trying to turn him into a hitter?
Cronenworth only threw 7.1 innings out of the bullpen in 2019, partially because whatever clicked for him that season made him a much better hitter and kept him busy in the starting lineup most nights. Still, it was enough to tantalize a GM who was looking for ways to find bullpen arms and bench depth at the MLB level and saw an opportunity to get both in one player.
Year 1: Should’ve been ROY
Rookie of the Year votes are so convoluted because you’re trying to evaluate so many players in so many different situations, pitchers and position players, that play different amounts of games and are used in different ways. It was even weirder when trying to figure out who should be ROY when only 60 games were played and the minors didn’t exist. That being said, I would’ve voted for Jake Cronenworth to be the NL Rookie of the Year last year, if I had a vote.
His slash line of .285/.354/.477 is that of a very good baseball player. Not quite an All-Star, but not far off. His wRC+ of 125 was more in line with his breakout 2019 season than the three seasons previous that made him look like he might not be good enough to be an MLB hitter.
And he did it all while continuing to shatter expectations. If Jake Cronenworth was going to make the team, he was going to need a strong spring training. He accomplished that and was probably the last guy to make the team. He was going to be the last guy off the bench and the last guy out of the bullpen, and was probably going to spend the year bouncing back and forth to the alternate training site.
Then Eric Hosmer went down with a weird stomach issue. The Padres hadn’t really planned on needing a backup first baseman, thinking Hosmer would play nearly every day and Wil Myers would move there occasionally to give him a rest, but suddenly they were putting the last guy on the roster into the starting lineup.
After two weeks of great defense and solid hitting, Cronenworth had cemented himself as a starter and the team couldn’t put him back on the bench when Hosmer returned. That’s how Jurickson Profar ended up with the super utility role and Cronenworth was given a chance to start at 2B.
Reasons for doubt
Here’s what I kept coming back to during the offseason. Things like this don’t happen. Players don’t break out at 25 years old. Guys don’t go from the last guy on the bench to starter. You don’t come up and suddenly know how to hit.
And, after a blistering start to the season, Cronenworth kind of fell apart as a hitter.
A .183 average in September/October scared me and probably the Padres, too. The .237 average in the second half of a short season was a big, flashing neon sign that said that July and August had been a fluke.
The only real argument against that was how well Cronenworth hit against the Cardinals in the playoffs, posting a ridiculous .625/.750/1.250 slash line. Maybe he had figured it out and adjusted?
But things went right back to putrid against the Dodgers, and suddenly the Padres needed backup plans for 2021 in case Cronenworth was a flash in the pan.
Here to stay
Heading into this season, A.J. Preller made sure that the season wasn’t going to be derailed by Cronenworth. The team went out and signed KBO star Ha-Seong Kim, a Gold Glove SS that was promised playing time at the MLB level by the Padres, to take at least some of the at-bats away from Cronenworth. Crone had hit particularly poorly against left-handed pitchers in 2020, so you could see how the team assumed the right-handed Kim could take those at-bats from him and make the offense better as a whole.
After letting him test the market, the team also signed back Jurickson Profar, to act as both outfield depth and an emergency 2B if he needed to take the spot back that Cronenworth had taken from him a year prior.
What “Jake the Rake” has done in the early part of the season is basically replicate what he was doing in the early part of last season, with a slight dip that can almost assuredly be attributed to the cold weather or the new baseball:
2020: .285/.354/.477
2021: .263/.338/.381
In a league that has a batting average of .232, being able to hit .263 means a lot.
I know we’re only about 1/5 of the way through this regular season, and 27-year old Jake Cronenworth has only played 86 games at the MLB level, but the way in which he has bounced back from the end of last season has proven to me that he was not just a lucky hitter these last two seasons. This is real. This is who he is. And he’s going to be in the starting lineup for the San Diego Padres for years to come.