Tuesday morning the Padres continued the rebuilding process by trading the resurgent Melvin Upton Jr. to the Blue Jays for 19-year-old pitching prospect Hansel Rodriguez. San Diego had to eat all but $5 million of the $22 million remaining on Upton's contract to facilitate the trade.
As always, the Padres had multiple goals for this trade. One, they wanted to add a prospect. That's obvious. And two, they wanted to free up some playing for younger players, in this case lefty swinging Alex Dickerson, who had been splitting left field time with Upton since being called up late last month.
Dickerson, 26, is not a tippy top prospect -- MLB.com ranked him as San Diego's No. 25 prospect coming into the season -- but he's produced all throughout the minors and it's time for the Padres to find out whether he can hack it as an MLB player. Here's some background info.
Dickerson was acquired in a minor trade
Dickerson was originally a third round pick by the Pirates back in 2011, and they traded him to the Padres two years later for righty Miles Mikolas and outfielder Jaff Decker. Like I said, this was a minor trade. Very minor. Decker has been bouncing around Triple-A with various teams the last few years. Mikolas is currently pitching in Japan. Dickerson has remained with the Padres ever since the trade.
He destroyed Triple-A this year
In 62 Triple-A games this year, Dickerson hit a whopping .382/.425/.622 with 16 doubles and 10 homers. That's crazy, though it's important to add some context here. The Pacific Coast League in general is hitter friendly, as is Southwest University Park, home of the El Paso Chihuahuas, the Padres' Triple-A affiliate. El Paso is hitting .310/.367/.492 as a team in 2016.
Now, that said, when you adjust his performance to reflect his hitter friendly environment, Dickerson was still 70 percent better than the league average hitter in the PCL this season. He also posted an excellent 11.3 percent strikeout rate with El Paso. The PCL average is a 20.1 percent strikeout rate. When you're a rebuilding team and a guy is putting up numbers like that in Triple-A, it's time to find out what he can do at the MLB level.
He has some serious pop
MLB.com's scouting report describes Dickerson as a line drive, gap-to-gap type of hitter, not a brute force slugger. "Dickerson employs a balanced left-handed swing and knows how to manipulate the barrel to hit line drives all over the ballpark," they wrote, while adding he might not have enough power to profile as a regular in a corner outfield spot. His career high is 17 home runs, set back in Double-A in 2013.
Well, earlier this week Dickerson showed he does indeed have some pop in his bat. He clubbed a home run into the fifth deck at Rogers Centre on Monday night. Check it out:
That's the 19th fifth deck homer in Rogers Centre history, and only the third by a left-handed batter. Carlos Delgado, Shawn Green, Alex Dickerson. That's the list of lefties to hit a ball into the fifth deck in Toronto.
500 Deck HRs Canseco3, McGwire, Carter, Delgado, Green, Manny, Mondesi, Phelps2, Sheffield, Vernon, Werth, Duncan, Edwin2, Napoli, Dickerson
— Mike Wilner (@Wilnerness590) July 26, 2016
That's not to say Dickerson is going to be mashing fifth deck taters on the regular going forward, but clearly the kid has some power in his bat. He's not a slap hitter. You can't hit a ball up there without some natural brute strength.
Dickerson went 2 for 5 with a home run Tuesday night, his third straight game with a dinger. He's hitting .288/.329/.550 (135 OPS+) with five homers in 30 games with the Padres this year, and having watched him the last few weeks, he seems to square up everything. This isn't a player who is getting by on bloops and grounders with eyes.
For what it's worth, ZiPS projected Dickerson as a true talent .243/.295/.386 (93 OPS+) hitter at the MLB level coming into the season, and that won't play in an outfield corner without high-end defense. Who knows if that really is his true talent level though? The Padres have to play Dickerson to find out, and with Upton now a Blue Jay, they're free to play him everyday and see what they have. It just might be a surprisingly productive hitter.
