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Fantasy Baseball: Why Matt Kemp will suffer in San Diego

By Robert Moodispaugh

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The Los Angeles Dodgers have been extremely busy for the last couple days, culminating in a trade that will send outfielder Matt Kemp to the San Diego Padres for Yasmani Grandal and Joe Wieland. On Wednesday, the Dodgers traded away Dee Gordon and Dan Haren, but acquired Howie Kendrick and signed Brandon McCarthy and Jimmy Rollins.

Following a 2011 runner-up finish in the MVP race, Kemp has been extremely prone to injury, missing a total of 145 games between the 2012 and 2013 seasons. He began to show signs of his old self in 2014 batting .287 with 25 homeruns and 89 RBI’s.

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    • However, he now goes to the Padres, who have one winning season since 2008. Kemp’s batting average, home runs, and RBI’s would all have been season-highs for any Padres player in 2014. In fact, Jedd Gyorko led the team in RBI’s with 51. The Padres scored the least runs in MLB, and were 38 runs behind the 29th place team. This is not an offensive team.

    When you look at PETCO Park, it makes sense. Well-known as a pitcher’s park, PETCO has huge dimensions, especially in left and right center field. In his last three years, Kemp has actually played pretty respectably at PETCO batting .325, but with only 3 home runs.

    But let’s be honest, the Padres pitchers are not really anything to write home about. What is going to happen when Clayton Kershaw or Madison Bumgarner come to town?

    So where does this leave Kemp in terms of fantasy? As usual, it will come down to health. If he can stay healthy, he has amazing talent that will highly benefit the Padres. However, with nothing around him in that lineup, how productive can he really be? When Seth Smith is the second biggest threat in a lineup, you are not going to be very successful. I would expect a drop-off for Kemp. One that does not necessarily take him off the radar, but one that takes him out of elite status.

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