Hello from Peoria!
The start of the 2025 season, a slew of new guys, Padres Connections and more!
Happy baseball! Pitchers, catchers, position players and even broadcasters have all reported to the desert and we are now just three days away from real, live exhibition baseball here in Peoria.
The Pads and Mariners will get together on Friday afternoon at 12:10 PT and Tony and I will have the game for you live on 97.3 The Fan. There will also be a free video webcast available through Padres.TV, which will carry a simulcast of our radio broadcast.
That’s the plan for a large number of Spring games this year, so be sure to try and stay on top of how to watch and listen to these games. You can bookmark this page for the most detailed version of the broadcast schedule.
Mark Grant always describes the start of Spring Training as being like the kids getting dropped off at sleep away camp and it definitely has that feel to it. Lots of smiles, laughs and hugs with familiar faces and introductions to new ones. Pretty soon, everyone will settle into their particular routine and as I like to say, before ya know it, it’ll be Memorial Day.
In the rest of today’s newsletter, we have a look at the recent free agent signings, our newest edition of Padres Connections, and a couple of must-reads.
Let’s Meet a Bunch of New Guys…
I love a good local guy story and we have a great one in 2025, as the Padres and free agent Connor Joe agreed to a 1-year deal two weekends ago.
Joe, who has played parts of five big league seasons mostly with Colorado and Pittsburgh is a Poway High and USD guy, who was originally drafted 39th overall by the Pirates back in 2014.
He is also a cancer survivor. As if the early parts of Spring Training 2020 weren’t scary enough, Joe received his diagnosis while in camp with the Dodgers that year. For more on his journey, here’s a wonderful story from July of 2023 that gives you a pretty good rundown of all that he went through.
Joe is now healthy and looking to contribute in LF and perhaps 1B with his hometown team.
And Speaking of LF…
The Padres announced another free agent signing last Tuesday, as veteran OF Jason Heyward has come aboard with a 1-year deal.
Heyward is of course a 15-year veteran who has played in the Majors with the Braves, Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers and Astros. He was an All-Star as a rookie with Atlanta in 2010, he’s a 5-time Gold Glove winner and was a critical member of the Cubs’ 2016 title team.
Famously, during the 17-minute rain delay prior to the 10th inning of Game 7 of that World Series in Cleveland, Heyward delivered a speech to his teammates that many people speak about as the turning point of that game. I’ve actually talked to a couple of different people who were down there during that time and both were absolutely mesmerized by the scene.
I’ve never met Heyward but have always heard extraordinarily great things about him and am really looking forward to getting to know him this season.
Can Never Have Too Much Pitching…
Yesterday, the Padres and free agent right-hander Nick Pivetta officially agreed to a multi-year deal. A Victoria, BC native, Pivetta was drafted by the Nats, traded to the Phillies in the Jonathan Papelbon deal, spent the last four-plus years with the Red Sox and really seemed to come into his own the last couple of years.
Adding him to the rotation really fortifies the mix and while there’s never any telling what the future may hold, at the moment the idea of Pivetta slotting into the top-four with Yu Darvish, Dylan Cease and Michael King sounds pretty sweet, as does the open competition for the fifth spot in the initial rotation.
I Mean Never…
Meanwhile, last Thursday, the Padres announced they had come to terms with lefty Kyle Hart, who is coming off a pristine 2024 campaign with the NC Dinos of the KBO.
Hart had a little bit of big league time with the Red Sox in 2020, but hasn’t pitched in the major since. After a couple of years in the high minors, he took his talents to Korea last year and went 13-3 with a 2.69 era and league-best 182 strikeouts en route to winning the KBO’s version of the Cy Young Award (the Choi Dong-won Award).
Hart presumably joins the competition and conversation for that empty spot in the rotation with the likes of Randy Vasquez, Matt Waldron, Stephen Kolek (who’s being stretched out) and Jhony Brito.
Should be a fun group to watch compete this Spring and as we all know, odds are most if not all of those guys will be called upon at some point this season. More the merrier, I say.
Connections #3!
These have been a big hit so far. If you missed the others…
Notes!
I often get asked how I like to organize all the information I have for the broadcast. It’s kind of a multi-pronged thing, but the bulk of my stuff is stored in OneNote and organized in a way that works for my brain.
Spring Training notes are a bit different than regular season notes, but every year I like to give a little peek behind the curtain, so enjoy this look at my start-of-season notes on Luis Arraez. More will be added as time goes on, of course:
Q&A
I received some excellent Q&A submissions last newsletter and want to grab a few more before posting, so feel free to send yours in:
Great Reads
Finally, some links to pass along today…
Up first, some San Diego flavor, as the indispensable SABR Bio Project checks in on Johnny Ritchey, a San Diego native who broke the PCL color barrier in 1948 with his hometown team. If you aren’t familiar with this project, it is a remarkable collection of bios that provide some tremendous detail and color on many of the most important and interesting figures in baseball history. A two-sport star at SDSU (catcher/quarterback), Ritchey is a critically important figure in San Diego sports history2 and even those of you who know his story will likely learn something from this wonderful entry by Eric Vickrey. Enjoy.
Totally different than the Ritchey story, but Eno Sarris of The Athletic has a lengthy and at times mathematical look at how teams evaluate pitching these days. It’s a bit dense and probably not for the casual fan3, but if you want to understand WHY you hear “sweeper” a thousand times a night all summer long, this is an absolute must-read. Eno further gets into the injury side of pitching as well as what hitters may be able to finally do to try and tilt things at least a bit back in their favor. There are also some really neat visuals in there, which are probably worth checking out even if you don’t get through the whole article.
Happy Baseball, everyone and we’ll speak to you on Friday afternoon!
Pretty sure this is the toughest one yet
And a legit war hero, having landed on Normandy, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and also served time in the Pacific.
Do any “casual” fans even read this newsletter?