2024 was a career year for the veteran San Diego outfielder, and he continues to make headlines in the postseason. Should San Francisco try to get in on the fun and sign Profar when he becomes a free agent in the off-season’?

Three weeks into February, Jurickson Profar didn’t have a Major League contract. Not a particularly unique predicament given the off-season’s market, but Profar’s situation was fundamentally different from the marquee free agents like Matt Chapman or Blake Snell.

There were no multi-year deals, player friendly clauses, or crooked number figures to debate over. The 31-year-old wasn’t wheelin’ and dealin’, shopping around his talents, or playing offers off each other. Profar’s phone remained silent all winter. It wasn’t until after pitchers and catchers reported to camp that A.J. Preller signed the switch-hitting veteran to a one-year, one-million dollar contract. A move that didn’t cause many waves; at the time, receiving mild praise for shrewdly bolstering the Padres bench and not much more. Analysis that couldn’t have been more off the mark as Profar went on to basically do everything for the San Diego Padres this season but come off the bench. He logged 668 plate appearances (a career high), 1203 innings in left field while playing in all but four of San Diego’s 162 games. While that kind of day-in and day-out reliability and durability is already well worth the million dollar price tag, the pennies for Profar proved to be arguably the off-season’s best signing because of his production.

A 4.3 fWAR, a 139 wRC+, a .280/ .380/.459 along with 158 hits, 85 RBI, 24 home runs and 76 BB were all career highs. His .839 OPS was the 11th highest in baseball, especially thanks to his disciplined at-bats: few players showed off Profar’s eye and contact skills at the plate. His 11% BB-rate was just a hair below his 15% K-rate and ranked in the 90th percentile in terms of Chase and Whiff rates.

There’s the numbers to fawn over, then there’s the vibes. Watching Profar isn’t watching an inscrutable baseball savant. He’s inserted himself in the heart of the Padres line-up this year, but he’s inhabited the hearts of fans since he joined them in 2020. He leads the league in smiles by a long shot, though he’s far from docile or dopey on the field. The emotion shows perspective. A once highly-touted prospect who broke into the Majors at 19 in 2012 only to find himself stuck in the mud and spinning his wheels on the Texas farm a disappointing year later. At the age when you want and expect life to move fast, things slowed. It wasn’t until 2018 when he was 25 that he established himself as an everyday player in the Majors. A working stiff though, not a superstar. His highest fWAR before this season was 2.4 in 2022. His lowest was -1.6 last season. For most of his career, Profar has been a roster place-holder, or deemed even “irrelevant” if you are LA catcher Will Smith (which is perhaps the absolute douchiest thing you can say about another human being—Smith later apologized). Given his career arc, the energy, the swagger, the competitiveness that Profar plays with makes perfect sense.