Some questions have been slightly edited to be shorter and more direct. If you have a question for the next Padres Prospect Mailbag, shoot us an email: mailbag@padresprospects.com

Why is Jason Hagerty barely playing in the Arizona Fall League? Are the Padres in charge of his playing time or does the team’s manager decide it? – Kevin

Hagerty is in an odd position as a Taxi Player in the AFL. This simply means that he is only eligible to play on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mostly this is a roster spot filled with pitchers who are only in Arizona for light amounts of work and position players who are either under-developed for the competition level or just there as a warm body.

While he has definitely been struggling – .200/.273/.267 – Hagerty is at the end of a very long season that saw the first real level jump of his career.  His sparse playing time has been most evident on defense where Hagerty has three throwing errors in six games.

Outside of Taxi Squad players playing time is divided up fairly evenly with top performers like Jedd Gyorko getting the nod over struggling players to make the game more appealing to the few fans in attendance.  The Padres and other organizations give the players certain things to work on while in Arizona but don’t necessarily have a direct say in playing time unless they explicitly express their preferences to the coaching staff – likely taking place behind the scenes.  Things like pitch counts are heavily monitored by the player’s parent organization.

What are your thoughts on Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod skipping town? – Tim Continue reading “Padres Prospect Mailbag: October” »