Ex-Rangers all-world can’t-miss number-one superstar-in-waiting prospect Jurickson Profar is now a Padre. It will be his third team in three seasons.
He will fight for playing time at second with another former Rangers, Ian Kinsler, who is on the second of a two-year deal he signed with San Diego last offseason.
Every team has misses. Big misses. Profar is one of the Rangers’. Maybe it was injury. Maybe it was overhype. Maybe it was a lot of things. But after hitting a home in his first major league at-bat, in an early-September game in Cleveland in 2012, Profar has never found his footing.
Profar is the poster boy for not overvaluing prospects. And for trading them when you have the chance.
After being rated the number-one prospect in all of baseball two years in a row, and after being the subject of countless trade rumors that were rebuffed, when finally given that chance in 2012, he hit .176 with a very tepid .647 OPS. He followed that up a .234/.644, not happy with his playing time but not earning it either.
A crippling muscle tear kept him out two years and may have kept his career from every reaching the heights it was supposed to. Or, maybe it just delayed the inevitable.
But when he did come back, he spent the next three seasons being shuffled around between first, second, short, third, and left. It’s enough to make anyone dizzy. He offense seemed to suffer from it. Or, maybe that was his offensive production all along.
He did, however, seem to make a breakthrough in 2018, hitting 35 doubles and posting a respectable .793 OPS. Or, maybe it was a fluke.
Last year, he fell backward. Or, maybe that’s the real place in line he belongs.
Only two players in all of baseball, in fact, had a worse offensive season than the Athletics second baseman did in 2019. One was the Rangers second baseman.
So, he will be given new life in San Diego, perhaps his last chance to prove he is major-league worthy.
Good luck to him. And good luck to the Rangers in the future when it comes to keeping or trading prospects.