This is a NO BRAINER for the Padres...

The Padres seemingly have a golden opportunity, a clear mandate, and something that they do not need to fumble the bag on this offseason. With all of the different questions about salary caps and starting rotations and existential dread and crisis surrounding the San Diego Padres, there is one singular clear thing that they need to do. And from the articles that I am coming across, really like I think I have a golden opportunity is to bring Ty France back. Give this guy a contract. Let him retire a San Diego Padre. He's already a San Diego legend. He has San Diego roots, according to our graphics department. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show that is going to understand that this is me screaming into the void. Need to bring him back to make the case both emotionally for like wanting him back, but also going to take a look on this episode at all of the other first base options and why I think that if some of these pundits are right, that he is an affordable first base option, given where he's at in his career, age wise, and that, you know, maybe last year wasn't a trend, but just a bounce. There's all sorts of arguments against why he's going to get top dollar So I think that if nothing else, we need to grab this guy. As always, if you want to like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTube-y buttons. Now, just in the process of talking about what has been going on with free agency, Ty France has made it clear that he loves home. This is home. He loves this place. He wants to be here. Here Everybody seems to also always end with the caveat of it's been like, Morihon did the same thing. This is my home. I want, you know. I've only ever played for the Padres. Obviously, Ty France hasn't only ever played for the Padres, but they have both said, we'd love to stay here. we We want to make it work, but we have to have those business conversations. Those two guys, though, however, come with a kind of different, go. looking for the financial, obviously, but they come with kind of a different projected price line. Now, Ty France, if you look at this, And that he was a Gold Glove finalist this year and was a Gold Glove winner last year. And I would say that this is a guy that's about to get the water absolutely chummed with really good offers from a bunch of teams. The praise has come in from everybody. Thank you, everybody. Craig Stammen has chimed in saying how good He is, Fernando Tatis has chimed in saying how good he is. He is an impactful hitter. Somebody who had a low key saved our offense last season with those production numbers. Like I said, he's defensively great. He's somebody who the, the question, like obviously we have a lot of questions going on every season, but the question we had. More than anything else going into last season was who's going to play first base slash is it going to be this weird platoon of Sheets and Castellanos and well, what about this, that, there was so much unknown and Ty France was kind of in here on a minor league. Well, what if he bounces back sort of he could be the, you know, the late inning, but he wasn't even really part of it. Then he surges and makes this great case. For it, Ty France, he delivered a career year. And I love these new graphics. As always, if you want to go over to DigestSports.com, our graphics and back-end people are working their butts off to make all sorts of cool stuff. You can dive even deeper into this. His numbers ended up just being, like I said, Is that, if, if this was off of... Uh, 40 starts playing platoon and a couple of pinch hits. And so he only played 82 games or something like that. You're like, okay, uh, you know, you got to adjust that with a grain of salt, but this was, he ended up being like our run, our everyday, you know, a first baseman batting fourth. Like that's a really good, so all of this to make the case that why would you not want him back? The market comparison that comes up here is that there are some other guys out there that are going to be in the discussion for like Goldschmidt, Bowers, Hoskins, other guys that you're like, okay, these are the other like first, I don't know why I think I'm off camera. I didn't need to put that in air quotes. These are the first basemen on the free agent market. So for me, there's nobody out there that I'm like, oh my gosh. We absolutely would just like, what do you need? You need five more home runs, 0.09 more percent on base percentage. It's just not that like there's nobody on there that I'm like, oh, my gosh, we need to really seriously have a conversation about how, you know, even though we love. Ty France, so-and-so would be a better, bigger bat because there are a chunk of you who are like, hey, Padres focus this offseason needs to be finding offensive improvement. We need to get a big bat. We need to get a big bat. I don't disagree with that. And I've actually done some videos that were like, let's go get a Jazz Chisholm. Let's go get a big outfield bat. If there was a guy here where it's like, yeah, that's a huge jump in cost, but we could go get somebody who's a 45 home run hitter at first base and be like, okay, seismic increase on that side. I would be all over that. Instead, it's Padres want Ty France to stay. He wants to stay. Okay. Um, The comparisons are that he is just as good as everybody else. The He wants to come back. In all of this, though, what to me was underlyingly interesting is that I have seen the numbers for him in all of the FanGraphs projections be startlingly low, given that I've now done six and a half minutes of singing his praise, talking about how he's one of the best free agent options available, both offensively and defensively. And it's people being like, he's going to get three years, 26 million. He's going to get four years. Like, it's very low. And so I, unless there is something that I am missing, what just because he's in his 30s, it seems that it's like, okay, there's a innate belief that he's just going to like, fall off the face of the earth. And so nobody's I get that nobody wants to hand him a 10 year 350 deal. But if you're talking about a first base being uber uber affordable, like that. And a guy that wants to be here. And all of this, as much as I get that we need starting pitching, and I get that Adrian Mori home now has a qualifying offer, so if he takes it, we're on the hook for that $20 million. I just, I cannot wrap my head around why Ty France would not be signing number one for the Padres this offseason. He wants to be here. They want him back. He's affordable. He's good at the position. I get that he wants to play the free agent game and probably just see if there's anybody willing to offer it. Not that $30 million isn't already generational wealth, but you get what I'm saying. But to me, it's kind of like Padres. There's labor questions and all that kind of stuff, but let's get this done right now, and let's just answer this question, let's lock in our infield, and let's move the hell on to focus on some other spots. Because sometimes I think that this is one of those ones where the dominoes start falling. If you lock in a position, you know some familiarity of your roster, and then you can move on to be like, okay, that's out of the way. We don't have to think about it. We don't have to have that hanging over our heads, and we can just focus on what's next. So that's what I got for you today. Let me know what you think on signing Ty France. If any of you disagree with you, I'll fight with you in the comments section. Hope to hear from you guys soon. Talk to you later. Have a great day. Go Padres.