Padres acquire Jorge Mateo

According to Jeff Passan, the San Diego Padres have acquired middle infielder Jorge Mateo from the Oakland Athletics in exchange for a player to be named later.

Here’s how you know baseball is back: We’ve got a trade — and a player to be named later!

The San Diego Padres are acquiring middle infielder Jorge Mateo from the Oakland A’s for a PTBNL, sources tell me and @kileymcd.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 30, 2020

Jorge Mateo, who turned 25 years old one week ago today, was ranked as the 15th best prospect in the A’s organization.

He had played in the Yankees’ system for five full seasons before being traded to Oakland as part of the deal that sent Sonny Gray to New York.

Mateo has spent the last two seasons in triple-A.

Here are his stats from 2019…

• 566 PA
• 19 HR
• 24 SB (4.96 G/SB)
• 5.1 BB%
• 25.6 K%
• .289 AVG
• .330 OBP
• .504 SLG
• 96 wRC+

His 2019 campaign was an improvement upon the previous year offensively speaking (62 wRC+ in 510 plate appearances in 2018).

Here are the most similar triple-A single-seasons since 2007 (min. 200 PA) to Mateo’s 2019 in terms of age, BB%, K%, GB%, Spd, and wRC+…

Name	Season	Age	BB%	K%	GB%	Spd	wRC+	Similarity Score
Jorge Mateo	2019	24	5.1	25.6	40.9	7.9	96	0.00
Jason Pridie	2008	24	5.0	25.2	41.9	7.7	96	0.04
Jeremy Moore	2011	24	4.6	24.8	45.7	8.0	108	0.68
Narciso Crook	2019	23	6.4	28.2	41.3	7.1	104	0.84
Arismendy Alcantara	2016	24	6.4	26.0	38.6	7.1	114	0.89
Wilkin Ramirez	2011	25	5.4	22.4	42.7	7.1	106	0.89

Mateo, whose speed is graded as an 80 (on the 20-80 scale) by FanGraphs, led all triple-A batters with 14 triples last season and was one of 15 triple-A players to accumulate at least 60 extra-base hits.

Given that Mateo has electric speed and decent power (55/55 raw power on FG and 19 homers in 2019), I would be shocked if the Padres didn’t put him on their roster to begin the 2020 season (if there is one).