The Padres have signed first baseman Trenton Brooks to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He will presumably also receive an invite to major league spring training.
Brooks, 29, has a long minor league track record showing his strong plate discipline. Over the past four years, he took 1,691 plate appearances on the farm with a 13.8% walk rate and 16.4% strikeout rate, both of those being much stronger than average. However, he only hit 55 home runs in that stretch, a fairly light tally for a first baseman. Still, that led to a combined .279/.383/.470 batting line and 119 wRC+ for that stretch.
He was finally able to parlay that into a major league debut in 2024, though he ultimately got a very limited look from the Giants. He was on the 40-man for less than a month, getting into 12 games and slashing just .120/.241/.120 in his 29 plate appearances. He was sent through waivers unclaimed and outrighted off the roster, eventually electing free agency at season’s end.
The Padres have Luis Arráez and Jake Cronenworth as first base options, but Cronenworth might be covering second base if Xander Bogaerts is going to move back to shortstop with Ha-Seong Kim now a free agent. The club doesn’t have an obvious designated hitter at the moment, so there’s room for another bat in the lineup. Arráez is also a speculative trade candidate since he’s entering his final year of club control with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a hefty $14.6MM salary next year, a notable expense for a club with known budgetary limitations.
Brooks can provide the club with some upper level depth at the position and try to force his way back to the majors. If he manages to do so and finds more success this time, he still has a full slate of options and just a handful of service days. That means he can be cheaply retained into the future, which would be appealing for any club but perhaps more so for the Friars as they have had to scale back payroll recently.
