{"id":121439,"date":"2025-06-21T23:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T23:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/121439\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T23:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T23:10:07","slug":"padres-designate-jason-heyward-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/121439\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres Designate Jason Heyward For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Padres announced this afternoon that they\u2019ve designated outfielder Jason Heyward<\/a> for assignment. The move makes room on the 40-man roster for right-hander Bryan Hoeing<\/a>, who has been activated from the 60-day injured list. Righty Sean Reynolds<\/a> was optioned to make room for Hoeing on the active roster.<\/p>\n

Heyward, 35, is a veteran of 16 MLB seasons who has enjoyed a decorated career since being selected 14th overall by the Braves in the 2007 draft. A well-regarded talent in the draft who rose to become the sport\u2019s consensus #1 prospect prior to his big league debut in 2010, he turned in a brilliant inaugural campaign that year and finished second in NL Rookie of the Year voting behind Buster Posey<\/a>. He went on to hit .268\/.353\/.431 with Atlanta and St. Louis across his first six years in the majors before he reached free agency.<\/p>\n

The outfielder\u2019s elite defense in right field, solid hitting (118 wRC+), and the fact that he was entering free agency ahead of his age-26 campaign all made him one of the top free agents on the market. He eventually signed with the Cubs on an eight-year deal that went down as a bit of an albatross. While Heyward won a pair of Gold Gloves and a World Series championship during his time in Chicago, he hit just .245\/.323\/.377 (88 wRC+) across seven seasons with the Cubs and was ultimately designated for assignment prior to the final year of his contract.<\/p>\n

For many players, getting DFA\u2019d at the end of a large contract represents the end of the line. That wasn\u2019t the case for Heyward, however, as he managed to bounce back with the Dodgers in 2023 and slash .269\/.340\/.473 (120 wRC+) across 124 games as their regular right fielder. He re-signed in Los Angeles for the 2024 season and turned in a roughly league average performance but was squeezed off the roster in the second half by trade deadline acquisitions. That led to a brief stint with the Astros where he hit .218\/.283\/.473 (104 wRC+) before returning to free agency and signing with the Padres.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Padres announced this afternoon that they\u2019ve designated outfielder Jason Heyward for assignment. The move makes room on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,783,873,4,43,137,18,4339,4338,2286],"class_list":{"0":"post-121439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bryan-hoeing","10":"tag-jason-heyward","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-padres","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sandiegopadres","17":"tag-sean-reynolds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114723882770931866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}