The San Diego Padres signed Sung-Mun Song to play multiple infield positions, but now he's stuck in a rehab assignment.
The San Diego Padres extended the rehab assignment of infielder Sung-Man Song as he continues to recover from the right oblique strain he suffered shortly before reporting to camp. The move was reported by Darragh McDonald of MLBTradeRumors .com, who noted the unusual circumstances behind this situation.
It’s been a bit of a roller coaster for Song as he tries to get back on the field for San Diego. He seemed to have recovered from the injury during spring training, but he had a setback that landed him on the IL. He started a rehab assignment shortly after Opening Day, but standard rehab assignments for position players come with a 20-day maximum, so San Diego had to extend him.
It’s not normal for players who sign eight-figure, multi-year deals to be optioned to the minors, as McDonald noted, but most player with deals on that level are MLB veterans who have reached free agency by attaining six years of service time.
Those players can’t be optioned to the minors without their consent, but Song came over to MLB from the KBO League in South Korea, so it’s unclear if he consented or simply didn’t have a clause in his contract that would have allowed him to reject his kind of move.
Song is now at Triple-A El Paso regardless of the contract circumstances, and McDonald noted that the Padres may have wanted the infielder to get minor league reps rather than have him in a part-time role with the team.
A roster crunch may also be a part of this. The Padres don’t have many players with minor league options, so adding Song would have required releasing a bench player like Bryce Johnson, Ty France or Nick Castellanos. All three have helped contribute to the Padres recent hot streak, so adding Song might have been a move they simply didn’t want to make right now.
McDonald also noted that Song hasn’t exactly been forcing the issue. He’s been drawing walks during his rehab assignment, but he has only two extra base hits to go with a slash line of .276/.364/.310, which is considered mediocre in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. Song hit 26 home runs in the KBO last season, so the Padres were expecting more.
Perhaps the biggest evidence of their disappointment is the decision to use outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. as their backup second baseman. The move energized Tatis offensively, but this is the kind of situation for which the Padres signed Song, so that, too, is more than a little unusual.