Padres notes: Getting to know Jay Groome; Nelson Cruz arrives; Drew Pomeranz on the side

Austin Nola called out “nice job” as he hopped out of his crouch on Field 4 to greet Jay Groome after the 24-year-old’s first live batting practice session in his first spring training with his new organization. The veteran catcher had already praised the 6-foot-6 left-hander for a handful of in-at-bat adjustments. Afterward, Nola huddled with Groome along the third-base line to run through his repertoire.

Nola liked the change-up that had been a point of emphasis for Groome this offseason. He learned about the cutter that can be manipulated into a slider, how Groome’s curveball once upon a time had been his bread-and-butter “out” pitch, how he uses his two- and four-seamer to attack both sides of the zone.

It was the beginning of a crash course on Groome, a former first-rounder acquired last August in a swap of two players in need of a change of scenery. The upside is San Diego is especially noteworthy as any value returned by Groome ought to make the Padres feel that much better about eating nearly $39 million owed to Eric Hosmer over the next three years. The Padres landed Groome at the trade deadline in exchange for Hosmer.

“When I got traded, I was talking to my father a lot and we just said, ‘This is your clean slate,’” Groome said Friday morning. “So just go out there and show these guys that you can compete.”

Groome did just that, parlaying the momentum he’d built in the higher levels in the Red Sox system in 2022 into a solid introduction to the Padres at Triple-A El Paso.

A hard-throwing lefty once hell-bent on piling up punchouts, Groome reinvented himself as a pitch-to-contact hurler in his post-Tommy John surgery life.
In a 10-start audition, Groome posted a 3.16 ERA, allowed just four home runs in 51 1/3 innings in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. He topped 100 innings — 144 to be exact — in a season for the first time in his career despite his strikeout rate dipping from 12.4 per nine innings in 2021 to 8.8 last year.

“Toward the end of 2021, going into 2022, I really felt like I had a good feel of what all my pitches do and how to get guys out with all my pitches in the zone,” Groome said. “I kind of put the old me of trying to just blow everyone’s doors off, because I started lasting longer in games. Pitching to contact, I’d never really understood the importance of first-pitch outs and getting guys out on three pitches or less, but that’s what keeps in you the game, six and seven innings.”

Groome’s El Paso performance put him squarely in the mix as the Padres lined up their organizational rotation depth. That vault already includes Adrián Morejón, Ryan Weathers, Reiss Knehr and Pedro Avila. Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha have since been signed to big-league deals as the favorites to win jobs as the fifth and sixth starters. Former World Series MVP Cole Hamels this week joined a contingent of minor-league signees that already included Julio Teheran.

Good. The more the merrier. Besides, none of that’s on Groome’s radar just yet.

“My goal is to just come into camp,” Groome said, “ … and hopefully I can turn some heads and hopefully be up there this year to compete for something great.”

Reporting for duty

Nelson Cruz arrived in camp on Friday to begin to get acquainted with the latest stop in an 18-year career that has seen him bounce from Texas to Baltimore to Seattle to Minnesota to Tampa Bay to Washington all in the last decade.

At 42 years old, his days of playing the field are likely long gone. Asked about his fit in San Diego, Padres manager Bob Melvin wasn’t about to pigeonhole Cruz as solely a right-handed platoon DH bat — not with his 459 career homers even after a down 2022 (.651 OPS).

No, it’s more of a wait-and-see approach.

“I think we have to see how he does here,” Melvin said. “I think he’s open for anything. I don’t think he was promised anything as far as a certain amount of at-bats. He just wanted to come here and help the team win, and my conversations with him have been just that. So I haven’t really figured that out. The days that he doesn’t (start) and you have that bat off the bench, that’s a serious weapon to be able to pull.”

Pomeranz on the side

Drew Pomeranz remains a bit behind the rest of the pitchers after missing all of 2022, but Friday’s bullpen session was a step in the right direction.

“He’s still a little behind everybody else,”Melvin said, “but we feel like by mid to late spring, hopefully he catches up.”

Pomeranz, 34, last pitched for the Padres in August 2021. Various injuries have limited him to 44 1/3 innings since signing a four-year, $34 million deal before the COVID-shortened 2020 season. Still, he has posted a 1.62 ERA and has averaged 12 strikeouts per nine innings while working out of the Padres’ bullpen.

“It’s been a little while since he’s pitched and obviously, surgery, you never really know what it’s going to look like,” Melvin said. “But he’s hell-bent on pitching for us this year and if he’s anywhere near the form he was before, it’s another lefty in the bullpen. It’s another guy that’s pitched late in games, that’s closed at times, a power arm that gets righties out. So hopefully we get him back.”