These Padres could join rare Gold company

This story was excerpted from the Padres Beat newsletter, with Mike Petriello filling in for AJ Cassavell. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

In what’s been a generally disappointing season for the fourth-place Padres, allow us to shine a light on an area of the team that’s actually been quite productive – and might, if things work out properly, end up being something that’s just about never been done before. That’s the defense, which has been tremendous.

San Diego’s fielders rate first in Statcast’s Outs Above Average at +23, as the “let’s just put a shortstop everywhere” strategy has more or less worked out via a series of moving parts. Returning regulars Manny Machado (+6 OAA) and Trent Grisham (+5) have been reliably solid with the glove, as they usually are, and new shortstop Xander Bogaerts (+3) has brought his surprisingly improved defense over from Boston with him, alleviating concerns that his arrival would weaken the infield defense.

Aside from the legendary Machado, the real standouts have been at second base and right field, where Ha-Seong Kim (+9) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (+6) have each been fantastic. For Kim, who rates as baseball’s second-best second baseman via Statcast (and first via Defensive Runs Saved), this might not be so surprising, given that he was an excellent shortstop last year (+8) who only moved over to second base to accommodate the arrival of Bogaerts’s bat into the lineup.

But Tatis, in his first season as a full-time outfielder after missing all of 2022 due to suspension and injury, has stood out as one of baseball’s best defensive outfielders right away. Consider how well all of his physical gifts are showing up on the Statcast scales:

• His speed is 96th percentile; he is faster than almost all of baseball
• His arm strength is 99th percentile; his 95.9 MPH average is 4th-best
• His reactions, measured in "getting good jumps," are in the 85th percentile

It’s that last part – the reactions – that stand out, because we’ve long known he was fast and had a great arm. What wasn’t quite so clear was how an inexperienced outfielder would transition to the grass, at least right away, in terms of reading the ball off the bat. As it turns out, that hasn’t been a problem at all; it has, in fact, been a strength, one that was clearly visible on May 7 when he robbed Max Muncy with a sliding catch on a play that was judged to have a mere 35% Catch Probability.

What, then, might this all mean?

While it’s too early to seriously get into Gold Glove arguments, it’s safe to say that both Tatis and Kim will be squarely in the conversations at their respective positions. They might even win, and if they do, in their first season as regulars at new positions, they’d be achieving something that’s rarely ever been done.

Since Gold Gloves were first handed out in 1957, only four (non-rookie) players have won the award in their first season at a new position, defined here as “the first season where they played that position more than any other one.” (For these purposes, the four infield positions are considered separate, but the outfield spots are combined into one, as that was for decades how these awards were handed out.) They are:

• 2022 Ramon Urias 3B
• 2021 Marcus Semien 2B
• 1999 Pokey Reese 2B
• 1983 Ryne Sandberg 2B

That’s it. Those are the only times we’ve seen it.

If Kim wins, as a shortstop moving over to second, that would be rare but not unheard-of, as Semien and Reese had each done the exact same thing before. (Sandberg had been a third baseman as a rookie in 1982.) But if Tatis wins, in his first season as a full-time outfielder? That would be something special. That would be something unprecedented. It’s one thing in this up-and-down San Diego season that has unquestionably gone right.