Travis Jankowski

Jankowski will push for a bench outfield spot with the Mets this spring. While he's misplaced as a starter, he's been a capable fourth or fifth outfielder at times during his career, including last season, when he hit a respectable .252/.364/.351 in 157 trips to the plate for the Phillies.

Jankowski stole 30 bases with the Padres in 2016 and 24 in 2018, but he has totaled four bags over the past two seasons. He missed the first half of 2019 with a wrist injury and spent time in the minors, coming to the plate just 43 times for the big-league club that season. The Reds brought him in last winter to provide depth to their outfield. He was on the Opening Day roster and remained with the club for a month before being sent down, logging 17 PA without an extra-base hit. Cincinnati outrighted him off the 40-man roster in October. Jankowski's speed seems to be declining at close to 30 years old and it does not look like he will get the playing time to put what he has left to use. This may be it for him in the majors entirely.

After a wrist injury forced Jankowski to miss the first half of the season, he was relegated to a minor-league role for a month prior to joining the Padres in mid-August. He recorded just a .432 OPS in limited major-league action with a .202 wOBA. He was much more effective in Triple-A, as he carried a .388 BABIP with seven stolen bases in 160 at-bats. Jankowski has above-average contact rates, with a career 89.3 Z-Contact%, but so far he's failed to do much with his contact in the majors. In fact, his barrel rate and average exit velocity both ranking in the bottom 2% of the league in his larger sample in 2018. He was traded in the offseason to Cincinnati, where he will serve as the fourth outfielder although he may be forced into a starting role in center field to begin the season if Nick Senzel is not fully recovered from offseason shoulder surgery.

Jankowski enjoyed a bounce-back season in 2018 after injuries derailed his 2017 campaign. The 27-year-old opened the year in the minors, but was promoted to the big club at the end of April after Wil Myers was placed on the DL. Jankowski immediately settled into the strong side of an outfield platoon, appearing in 117 games (78 of which were starts) and finishing the season with a career-best .259/.332/.346 slash line. The outfielder benefited from improved plate discipline, as he was able to maintain a strong walk rate (9.6%) while dropping his strikeout rate below 20 percent (18.9%) for the first time in his big-league career. Though Jankowski lacks any sort of power (his four homers in 2018 doubled his career total), he's stolen at least 24 bases in two of the last three seasons and the fact that he bats lefty helps in a San Diego outfield consisting mostly of right-handed hitters.

Jankowski's season was abruptly cut short after he suffered a bone bruise in April. He returned, but only in the minors and only for 40 ineffective games at Triple-A. Jankowski is a speed demon, as he needed just 383 plate appearances to steal 30 bases for the Padres in 2016. But Jankowski has never hit more than three home runs in any professional campaign, across any minor-league level. Jankowski's speed, plate discipline and ability to play all three outfield positions make him an option for NL-only reserves, but without the pop, his appeal in mixed leagues is limited. It looks like Jankowski will head into spring training as the team's fourth outfielder, behind Jose Pirela, Manuel Margot and Hunter Renfroe.

Jankowski emerged as a fantasy darling of sorts, piling up 30 stolen bases despite a part-time role for a significant portion of the season. Just as he did in the minors between Double-A and Triple-A in 2015, Jankowski showed a good eye at the plate (11 percent walk rate), which buoyed a .332 OBP and enabled him to lead off in 71 of the 82 games he started. The Padres scaled back his playing time slightly down the stretch following a late-season promotion of Manuel Margot, and it's possible that Jankowski will be placed in a fourth outfielder role to begin 2017, with Margot and Hunter Renfroe in the mix for Opening Day roster spots. A good defender, Jankowski has the speed and instincts necessary to be an above average center fielder, but he has very limited power and will need to put the ball in play more often (26.1 percent strikeout rate) in order to solidify a starting job, and it's likely that he would be used as part of a strict platoon against right-handed starters.

The Padres pushed Jankowski to San Diego for a late-season callup in 2015, after he started the season at Double-A. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, Jankowski is a speedster with minimal pop and a still developing bat, but his numbers at Double-A and Triple-A point to a potential leadoff hitter at the big league level if everything clicks. His 34-game taste of big league pitching brought a spike in his strikeout rate (25.0-percent), but he's whiffed half that often at each stop going back to High-A in 2014, and he delivered a walk rate north of 10.0 percent at both of his minor-league stops last season. As a basestealer, Jankowski finished 2015 with a 34-for-46 mark across all three levels, hinting at his potential to contribute in that category with steady playing time. The acquisition of Jon Jay from the Cardinals during the offseason gives the Padres a capable alternative to roam center field if it's determined that Jankowski needs more time at Triple-A.

A second-round pick of the Padres in 2012, Jankowski upped his walk rate significantly from his initial abbreviated season (5.1% at Low-A Fort Wayne) to 2013's first full campaign (9.7% at High-A Lake Elsinore), finishing with a slash line of .286/.356/.355 in 493 at-bats. Furthermore, he's a stud on the basepaths, swiping 71 bags in 85 tries. Considering his progress to date, it isn't out of the question that he begins the year at Double-A San Antonio.