NEWSLETTER
When the Cubs traded Yu Darvish to the Padres, everyone understood it to be two things: (1) saving some payroll in the wake of the pandemic, and (2) getting a volume-based return to stock up the farm system.
In other words, there wasn’t really a “headliner” in the return to the Cubs, just a collection of four very young, very-high-risk, very low-level prospects, with the hope that maybe one would break out and become a top-100 type and ultimately justify the deal. Owen Caissie has obviously checked that particular box, but at the time of the trade, I’m not so sure he was the biggest name in the deal.
That, instead, probably belonged to infielder Reginald Preciado.
As I said, there was no headliner in the deal, but at the time of the trade, Preciado was the highest-ranked of the prospects by most services. He was a very recent bonus baby IFA signing by the Padres, ranked among the top prospects in his class and the top prospect coming out of Panama. The risks with IFA prospects are enormous, so nobody was calling him a sure thing, but the upside was considerable.
The early returns were promising, too. As an 18-year-old in complex ball, Preciado hit .333/.383/.511/133 wRC+ in 2021, and hopes were high that he might really break out in 2022 and beyond. Unfortunately, he was bit hard by the injury and underperformance bug the next two years, and by this spring, he’d become almost an afterthought. It was time for a dramatic change, or that might be that.
So in late-August of last year, working in Arizona with the Cubs, Preciado gave up switch-hitting. Now, he bats only right-handed, which is a pretty dramatic change for a guy who’d been hitting lefty 70% of the time.
The early returns on the change are quite good. For one thing, Preciado did not stay back in Arizona for Extended Spring Training despite the change, and despite the fact that he’s still only 20 years old. It wouldn’t have been crazy for the Cubs to want him doing some more complex ball, so the mere fact of a full-season assignment showed some combination of confidence in his ability to improve now that he’s right-handed-only, and an understanding that he kinda needs to get moving if he’s going to stay on the prospect track.
For another thing, Preciado is really hitting so far at Myrtle Beach: .409/.458/.455/169 wRC+ through five games – at least one hit in each game – and it’s a nice steady looking swing righty-on-righty:
Preciado has also starting working in the outfield as he becomes more of a utility guy, bouncing among spots:
Maybe there’s a path here for him to stay on the prospect radar, and progress to High-A by the end of this season, when he’ll be 21. That’d keep him on a perfectly age-appropriate trajectory, even if it feels like he’s been “stuck” at Low-A for a long time.
Now, there are caveats, of course. You probably know them before I say them. Sample size? Yup, it’s tiny. You cannot draw CONCLUSIONS or make PROJECTIONS off of 24 plate appearances. Peripherals? Yup, they’re kinda dodgy. The entirety of Preciado’s production is based on his .692 BABIP, whicchhhhh I am going to say is not sustainable. The 37.5% K rate and .045 ISO would both be deeply alarming if we were trying to use this small sample to project out into the future, so it all cuts both ways. The good stuff will likely get a lot less good, and the bad stuff will hopefully get a lot less bad.
For now, I just think it’s nice to see Reggie Preciado have early success after the recent years of struggle and injury, and it’s nice to dream on two of the four Darvish trade prospects actually becoming bigger names, now that Yeison Santana is out of the organization, and things are not looking great for Ismael Mena.
