Xander Bogaerts has been cleared for baseball activity and started according to his rehabilitation process, according to Jeff Sanders from the San Diego Union Tribune. Bogaerts has been sidelined since August 29 after he had suffered a broken foot after polluting a ball of his foot a few days earlier.
Bogaerts, 33 in October, was in the middle of one up and down season with the Padres prior to his injury. After a season last year, Bogaerts struggled for the first two-plus months of the year and on 17 June saw his oblique line to a meager .227/.304/.311 to 286 plate performances. Between that and his raw campaign 2024, many started to worry about the power of the Padres to get a lot of everything from the 11-year contract for which they signed him prior to the 2023 campaign. Fortunately, he has since looked more like his old self and has hit .304/.360/.473 with his last 248.1.1
That is slightly better than his career -slash line of .288/.350/.446, and offered a lot of optimism with regard to Bogaerts’s ability to play his career positions. He even made real steps defensively on Shortstop and placed a +7 outs above the average, despite being historically considered a matte defender behind the record. The revival of Bogaerts caused a lot of optimism for the power of the Padres to compete with the Dodgers in the play and in the late season this year, but last month’s foot injury all seemed to stop.
From the start of the veteran’s recovery process, Padres Brass has indicated that they expected Bogaerts to contribute this year in the late season. The implication there was of course that the remaining regular season was more or less off the table for the veteran. To resume Bogaerts that resume baseball activities, this quickly suggests a reason for optimism that he will be able to return, if not through the last match of the regular season, then on time for the Wild Card series, where the Padres compete against one of the Cubs or Mets who end up a surprise change. If the regular season ended today, San Diego would be confronted with Chicago in a three-game set on Wigley Field.
Of course, it should be noted that that kind of timeline Bogaerts would require to continue to rehabilitate at a fairly aggressive pace without suffering setbacks. While Bogaerts adds back to the center of an setup that is familiar Jose Iglesias And his 66 WRC+ to be the primary answer at shortstop in his absence would be a huge boost for the Padres, they still do not hurt exactly for attacking contributors after they have both brought in Ramon Laureano And Ryan O’Hearn At this year’s trade theadline. Those additions are sufficient to make San Diego the fifth best offensive in the NL since the deadline, which should be enough to make them a formidable opponent, given their dominant bullpen led by led by Mason Miller And Robert Suarez As well as a rotation that occurs Michael King” Nick PivettaAnd Dylan stops.
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