Here’s why you want the San Diego Padres back, if you care even a jot about minor league baseball in this town: Jason Hagerty.
His locker is just inside the clubhouse door, first one on the right, and he’s been there for a while now. One-hundred sixteen games, the stat sheet says. That’s a lot of swings of the bat and ropes down the line and summer nights watching the setting sun light up downtown Fort Wayne.
If Jason Hagerty is in someone else’s system, he’s watching the sun set somewhere else long before now.
If he’s in a system starved for talent and looking for anyone with a discernible pulse, he’s gone long before now, because he’s batting .309 with 14 home runs and 72 RBI. And guys like that don’t usually stick around low-A long enough to memorize the area code.
Not in most systems. In the Padres’ system, however …
“It’s just loaded,” TinCaps President Mike Nutter says. “Back in the day, if you hit .250 in Fort Wayne with a few home runs, you were gone. That just isn’t the case now.”
Nope. Now, a Jason Hagerty sticks around. A Nate Freiman – .289 average, 14 homers, 73 RBI – plays 126 games here (and counting). An Edinson Rincon – .255, 11 bombs, 63 ribbies – plays 122 (and counting). Jonathan Galvez, Everett Williams, Jeudy Valdez stick around for the summer; the big club sends the likes of Jedd Gyorko and Daniel Meeley for extended stays.
This happens because all those guys who won 102 games last season and the Midwest League title are in high-A at Lake Elsinore now, tearing it up. And because the new GM in San Diego, Jed Hoyer, is aggressively dipping into the Latin talent pool and stocking the rungs below Fort Wayne with youngsters from the Dominican – such as Rymer Liriano, who was 18 when he started the season in Fort Wayne and now has returned.
So there’s lots of talent in the pipeline. And figures to be in the future.
And, sure, you say, it’s still the Padres, and who here cares about the Padres? Think about how great it would be to sign on with the Cubs. Or the Tigers. Or the Reds, even.
I say you need to think about something else: All those years with the Twins when the parent club would swoop in and call up half the lineup, making hash of any serious playoff run.
Everyone griped and moaned and complained, including the then-Wizards owner at the time, Eric Margenau. So Margenau dumped the Twins and went with the Padres. It seemed like a dumb move at the time, born out of spite. It sure doesn’t seem that way now.
And so now that the time to either re-up or go looking elsewhere for affiliation is upon us, consider it the gladdest of tidings when Nutter says that deal with the Padres could be characterized as “imminent.” The Padres love what they’ve got in Fort Wayne. And the TinCaps return the favor.
Jason Hagerty is one reason, of course. Another is Jaff Decker.
One of the heroes of the TinCaps’ 2009 title run, he’d been tearing it up for Lake Elsinore this summer until he broke his hand last week. Now he’s likely done for the year – which triggered two opposing trains of thought in the TinCaps’ offices.
“My first thought is I feel terrible for his dad and Jaff because we got to know them a little last year,” Nutter says. “My second thought was, ‘What does that do for our roster?’ Because there’s a lot of other organizations that if a guy got hurt, our best hitter would be on a plane.”
Not this one.
