PEORIA, Ariz. — Jake Cronenworth was at lunch with a friend this winter when that person asked him a curious question.
And perhaps the most astute question that could be asked of Cronenworth.
The query was essentially this:
What kind of ballplayer is Jake Cronenworth?
It is an apt thought exercise regarding a player who has been an All-Star twice and started games at three positions on the field and batted in all nine positions in the order and has the fifth-highest WAR among all players who made their major league debuts in 2020 (including pitchers) and yet seems to be widely thought of as being just kind of OK.
Truth is, Cronenworth has had some stretches in his six seasons where he has looked not very good at all. Against left-handed pitching, in particular, the left-handed hitter has at times struggled to the point it was justified to wonder why he remained in the lineup.
So about the kind of ballplayer he is …
“It was a good question,” Cronenworth said. “I never thought about it.”
His answer went something like this:
“I look at how I show up at the field every day, the way I go about my work, and the way I play on the field. And, yes, it may not be the flashiest. It may not be 30 homers or 50 doubles or this or that. But … I like to play hard. I run the bases hard. May not be the best night at the plate, but I’m grinding my butt off up there, playing hard on defense. And I think that’s what I want to be. That’s who I am as a player, for sure.”
Or in the succinct phrasing of Padres manager Craig Stammen: “He’s a ballplayer. That’s my answer.”
And maybe, as his seventh season is about to begin, it is possible Cronenworth has unlocked something that allows him to be more.
Jake Cronenworth #9 of the San Diego Padres is congratulated in the dugout after scoring a run against the Seattle Mariners during spring training game at the Peoria Sports Complex on Thursday, March 5, 2026 in Peoria, Ariz.(Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
To be clear, Cronenworth has been a fine big-leaguer.
His career wRC+, a metric that measures a player’s offensive production, is 109. That suggests a player who is almost 10% better than the average major leaguer. His fWAR (wins above replacement as determined by FanGraphs) is in the top 15% of all qualifying players over the past six seasons.
Even having missed significant portions of two seasons — with a fractured wrist (2023) and fractured rib (2025) — Cronenworth has started more games in the field than all but 15 other major leaguers since 2020. He provides above-average defense at first base, second base and shortstop. (The Padres will argue their in-house metrics even grade him as superior at first, unlike FanGraphs.)
Cronenworth sees as many pitches as almost anyone — 3.99 per plate appearance, more than all but 18 players since 2020. He puts 40% of the pitches he swings at in play, more than all but 41 players over the past six seasons. He gets on base as much as almost anyone — 1,070 times since his debut, more than all but 34 players in that span. (That is also fifth most by any player in franchise history in the first 781 games of his career.)
But just maybe, Cronenworth can be the kind of player who needs no explanation.
“I’d love to be that guy,” Cronenworth said Sunday. “I think it’s in there. I did a lot of work this offseason to hopefully unlock that.”
His ongoing focus in the cage now is on a swing path that is more direct to the ball.
And he is driving balls this spring, like the first opposite-field home run he hit as a major leaguer in a game last week and the triple he sent to the gap in right field Sunday. He is batting .364 (8-for-22) with two walks in Cactus League play.
At 32 years old, Cronenworth is coming off a season in which he learned a valuable lesson by thinking differently and is heading into a season he has prepared for by training differently.
Cronenworth’s initial explanation regarding his consistency in 2025 was not about work in the batting cage, plate discipline or his swing.
“I think paired with the preparation and just where I was a player,” he said. “Like, I was just confident every night going in, not trying to do too much, knowing that I could impact the game in a certain way. It may not be with a hit, it may be with a hit. Maybe with my glove. I think viewing it that way, I could go home happy if I did go 0-for-3 or 0-for-4, but I made a few great defensive plays. I helped us win. I was just as happy as if I went 4-for-4.”
Jake Cronenworth #9 of the San Diego Padres tags out Luke Raley #20 of the Seattle Mariners during spring training game at the Peoria Sports Complex on Thursday, March 5, 2026 in Peoria, Ariz.(Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Cronenworth has always been quite the worker and quite the tinkerer in the cage. What he liked last season was that he left the work behind.
“Something I did really well was I didn’t worry about my mechanics,” he said. “Even if I felt like crap before the game, when it was my turn to go to the plate, it was just all about competing.”
It is nonetheless significant that Cronenworth was more successful last year in more consistently keeping his swing short after so many in-season lapses where he would get long as he tried to infuse power.
It is a remarkable thing that Cronenworth has since 2020 put together a team-high 21 different streaks of at least nine games in which he has reached base safely. But each of his previous three seasons — when his overall numbers were down from his first three seasons — could be broken up into severe hot and cold stretches.
Not 2025.
Cronenworth’s on-base percentage never dipped below .340 after last season’s fourth game, and he finished with a career-high mark of .367, eighth-best in the National League. He got his batting average against left-handers back up to .248, second highest of his career, and his OBP against them to .373, his highest ever and nine points better than it was against right-handers.
As he prepared to build on that turnaround season — his seventh in the major leagues — Cronenworth worked to hold off what is very much middle age for a major leaguer.
“Being 32 now, a lot more running, a lot more getting faster, a lot of speed work,” he said. “I feel great. I feel faster. I feel physically, maybe not when I was 26 or 27, but I feel really, really, really good right now.
“You’ve gotta always be evolving. Pitching is always getting better, and I’m getting older. So it’s trying to find ways to stay young and get a little faster and move better. I feel like I’m in a really, really good position to do that.”