An under-the-radar All-Star case in San Diego

This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, considering where things stood a month ago … but I think Jake Cronenworth has an All-Star case.

The Padres second baseman got off to an abysmal start. It was only six weeks ago -- after a series against the Phillies -- that Cronenworth’s batting average sat at .206 and his OPS at .620.

“I felt like I would have a really good at-bat,” Cronenworth said. “And then the other three or four, I couldn’t find that.”

The following series in San Francisco is when Cronenworth says things started to click. And it’s not just that things started to click -- it’s that he worked and worked and worked to make them click.

Cronenworth is one of the Padres’ most diligent students of the game. Amid his slump, he studied video of his swing tirelessly. He noticed he’d been dropping his hands a bit before he began to swing. That extra movement prevented him from covering all angles of the zone. He was no longer the complete hitter he’d been during his first two seasons.

Hitting coach Michael Brdar and Cronenworth came to the conclusion that Cronenworth needed to try and bring his hands through the zone closer to the letters of his jersey. And ever since that small change, Cronenworth has looked like, well, an All-Star.

“A lot of times you make an adjustment and you don’t see the results right away, which is hard,” Cronenworth said. “This started working right [away].”

Cronenworth is making a case for National League Player of the Month in June, posting a slash line of .337/.436/.593 with an NL-leading 22 RBIs entering Friday. (His hot streak couldn’t have come at a better time, too, with an ankle injury to Manny Machado piling onto the wrist injury for Fernando Tatis Jr.)

“We knew this was coming,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It just probably went on a little longer than you would expect for as quality a player as he is. It’s not surprising. … He’s a tough-minded kid. Maybe a lesser confident guy might’ve been affected more, the longer it went on. But I never really felt that from him.”

Now, about that All-Star case …

Cronenworth has work to do. Overall, he’s hitting a somewhat modest .250/.341/.408. But pair that with his elite defense, and Cronenworth actually sits atop all NL second basemen on the ballot, according to WAR. Here they are, ranked by bWAR entering Thursday:

1) Jake Cronenworth, SD: 2.6
2) Jeff McNeil, NYM: 2.4
3) Jazz Chisholm Jr., MIA: 2.4
4) Gavin Lux, LAD: 1.3
5) Brendan Rodgers, COL: 1.3

Now, juxtapose that with the first standings update in All-Star voting:

1) Jazz Chisholm Jr., MIA: 634,762
2) Ozzie Albies, ATL: 589,804
3) Jeff McNeil, NYM: 580,257
4) Gavin Lux, LAD: 256,411
5) Nolan Gorman, STL: 214,383

Cronenworth sits sixth (sixth?!) with 165,993 votes. Sure, a lot of those votes were cast before his breakout. But it’s clear he should be higher than sixth in any objective ranking of NL second basemen.

This season, it seems clear the best second baseman in the NL has been the Cardinals’ Tommy Edman. But Edman is on the ballot at shortstop. Behind Edman, it’s the trio of Cronenworth, Chisholm and McNeil who stand out.

Cronenworth lags well behind those two in All-Star voting. (If you feel aggrieved by this, you can vote here.) But it remains possible Cronenworth works his way into a spot on the NL bench, especially if he remains this hot at the plate.

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“It’s an incredible opportunity and situation to be put in,” said Cronenworth, who reached his first All-Star Game in 2021. “But you’ve just got to go out there and play, play your best to get there. I can only do so much.”