Trent Grisham is the hidden superstar

Trent Grisham is almost never the first guy talked about on the San Diego Padres, which has allowed him to quietly develop into one of their most important pieces.

Here’s a fun fact for you: Not a single player in the San Diego Padres starting lineup was originally drafted or signed by the Padres. No, really! Take a look:

That’s both weird and funny and gives you a peek into A.J. Preller’s insight into roster construction. Either the Padres GM doesn’t believe in his own team’s ability to develop young talent at the minor league level or simply doesn’t have the patience for it.

One side effect of bringing in players that were already MLB players elsewhere is that fans lose sight of just how old or young that player is. They stop thinking of them in terms of being a prospect and just think about what their contributions are to the current team.

However, I am here to remind you of something. Trent Grisham is young. Like, really young. Like, so young that it needs some context.

I went through a list of the projected starting center fielders for every MLB team from 2021 Opening Day and compared ages. I found 4, out of 29 MLB teams (not including the Padres), that were younger than Trent Grisham. They are…

Leody Taveras, TEX
Christian Pache, ATL
Victor Robles, WSH
Luis Robert, CWS

Out of those four guys, only Luis Robert is having a good offensive season after a month, and his BABIP (.433) says that might not even last.

So, not only is Trent Grisham one of the youngest starting center fielders in baseball, and not only did he win a Gold Glove at the position in 2020, but compared to similarly-aged peers he might be the best hitter, as well.

Oh, and he’s getting better at the plate.

The Tony way

Credit to my Padres Hot Tub co-host Craig Elsten, who saw this with his eyes and led me down a path of looking up the actual numbers, but Trent Grisham is changing his profile as a hitter.

Take a quick look at Grisham’s hits in 2020 and you’ll notice a pattern. Even though he was shifted on by defenses 70% of the time, he still got the majority of his hits up the middle or to the right side of the field. For a left-handed hitter, he was pulling most of pitches he saw.

This chart should, at first, scream “SMALL SAMPLE SIZE” at you. Not only is the season a month long, but Grisham missed some time with a leg injury. Still, it’s hard not to notice the opposite pattern developing.

Defenses are still, for now, shifting on Grisham about 70% of the time, and the 24-year old has stopped fighting it. Craig said he noticed Grisham going the other way more often this season and this spray chart says that he’s all but given up on pulling the ball unless he’s trying to hit it over the wall for a home run.

The shift in approach is already paying off in improved offense.

The (early) numbers

Trent Grisham is currently leading the Padres hitters in WAR (Wins Above Replacement), and it’s not particularly close. In fact, his current WAR is double that of the next guys on the list (Jake Cronenworth, Wil Myers and Fernando Tatis Jr.).

Add in the fact that he’s played less games than all of those guys, and that he’s not getting a huge bump defensively because he’s made a couple of bonehead plays this year, and it becomes a bit more startling.

Here’s his slash line, before you ask: .309/.385/.506

The really cool thing here is that it’s easier to make the case that this is just who Trent Grisham is and will be than it is to make the case that this is some early season luck that will fade. As such a young player, what we’re witnessing with Grisham is best defined as development.

This is his third year at the MLB level, and if you look at his slash lines together it shows growth in almost every category every year.

2019: .231/.328/.410
2020: .251/.352/.456
2021: .309/.385/.506

If his 2021 numbers hold, he’s an annual All-Star. If they continue to get better, he could be even more special than that.

The Shadow

If not for all of the big-name and big-money talent on this roster, Trent Grisham would be talked about by Padres fans every day (the way we did with Chase Headley) as a potential superstar.

If not for A.J. Preller stealing Fernando Tatis Jr. from the Chicago White Sox, we’d be talking every day about how he stole Trent Grisham from the Milwaukee Brewers.

If we hadn’t been so concerned about the team signing Tatis to a long-term deal, we might’ve been braying about trying to sign Grisham to a long deal so that his continued development would eventually make his contract seem affordable.

Like it or not, and it’s not the worst place to be, Trent Grisham is a shadow in the San Diego Padres. Despite being the team’s regular leadoff hitter, he’ll almost never be thought of or talked about first. However, if you take the time to look a little deeper, you might find that he’s the most valuable player on the team with potential that’s almost as tantalizing as the other young superstar that gets all the attention.