Trade Reaction: Matt Beaty
The San Diego Padres, who were in desperate need of another outfielder before the start of the season (which is about a week away), traded with the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier today to address that need:
In three MLB seasons, Matt Beaty has shown himself to be a league-average hitter and a slightly-below-average corner outfielder. He immediately becomes a potential starting LF for the Padres, or (at the very least) the top backup for Wil Myers and Jurickson Profar.
As Dennis Lin implies above, Beaty (a lefty) feasts on right-handed pitching. Also, since he played for the talent-rich Dodgers, they never really gave him an opportunity to face left-handed pitching because they didn’t need to. Check out these splits…
vs. RHP (493 PA): .267/.339/..440
vs. LHP (63 PA): .224/.286/.310
Striking, huh?
The bad news here is that Profar is also a better hitter vs. RHP (.717 OPS) than LHP (671). Myers goes the other way, though, mashing LHP (.803 OPS) and being just okay against righties (.765 OPS).
It’ll be interesting to see how Bob Melvin factors those splits into his lineup decisions, but at the very least this means that the San Diego Padres won’t be completely screwed if one of those guys gets injured during the season or goes into a prolonged slump.
As for what the Padres gave up, River Ryan has played one okay season of rookie ball and is already nearing 23 years old. In terms of prospects, that’s about as low as one can get without having zero trade value.
Supposedly, Beaty caused some issues in the Dodgers clubhouse last year (you can find the reports from unverified rumor-mongering twitter accounts if you want to go looking for them), so this appears to be a dump by a team that values their clubhouse chemistry more than the last guy on the bench of an incredibly-deep team.
Hopefully, Beaty has learned from his mistakes in Los Angeles and carves out a role for himself with the Padres, a team that actually needs him and has a starting position that he could potentially (eventually) win. If he causes issues or doesn’t perform, the Padres have given up almost nothing to get him and could simply release him without regret.
This is a win-win for both the Dodgers and Padres, two teams in very different situations with their rosters, which makes it nearly impossible to grade this trade as anything less than an A for A.J. Preller.
Bonus: Matt Beaty has played as much 1B for the Dodgers as he has OF. The addition of LH 1B Freddie Freeman definitely made it easier for them to move him, and it would make it easier for the Padres to fill an Eric Hosmer-sized void in their lineups vs. RHP should an opportunity to trade Hosmer arise.