Adrian Gonzalez, Then And Now

For those of you that lived under a rock or only watched ESPN from 2006 to 2010, Adrian Gonzalez was a San Diego Padre during that time. The team made the playoffs in 2006 and won their only playoff game that didn't occur in 1984 or 1998. In 2007 and 2010, the team won 89 and 90 games respectively. There were some leaner years in between, but Adrian didn't waver and garnered NL MVP votes, All Star selections and Gold Glove Awards in each of them. He was a star in his prime.

If you're into advanced stats like WAR, in his five seasons he accumulated the 3rd highest WAR total* in franchise history behind only Tony Gwynn (who played 20 seasons) and Dave Winfield (who played 8 seasons). He also had the 4th highest single season WAR in 2009 behind Tony Gwynn's 1997, Dave Winfield's 1979 and, of course, Ken Caminiti's NL MVP winning 1996. He had the 7th highest batting average as a Padre at .288, the 9th highest on base percentage at .374 and the 3rd highest slugging percentage at .514. He's 5th in runs scored, 6th in hits, 5th in doubles, 2nd in home runs, 4th in RBI and 6th in walks. His named is stamped all over the offensive team leaderboards.

In a typical season with the Padres Adrian would play in almost every game, averaging 159.8 games played. However, he played at least 160 in all but his first season in San Diego. If you average out his total numbers for those 5 years, here's what an Adrian type season would look like.

The Padres traded Adrian Gonzalez after the 2010 season to the Boston Red Sox. He was supposed to help the Red Sox return to the playoffs. Without him they won 89 games and with him they 90. The next season the team crumbled farther and were 60-66 before deciding to trade him along with some other big contracts to the Dodgers. The Dodgers have gone 11-16 since the trade and Adrian is likely going to miss the playoffs for 7th time in his 8 full seasons in the majors. In 5 of those seasons the team was a contender until late in the season before fading down the stretch.

Here's a similar statistical extrapolation of Adrian since he left San Diego:

And here are the splits for Adrian over the last two years:

I'm really not trying to say anything in particular about Adrian Gonzalez here. You can tell though that I've painted a narrative and given you some stats. It's up to you to decide what to think of Padres' former slugger. My only thoughts for this series will be "BOOOOOOOO!" as I see just another player in a Dodger uniform.

*Using rWAR not fWAR. For some explanation of the different you can reference this page.