Micah Owings pitched well enough for the Diamondbacks last season that most people stopped saying he should give up pitching and become a full-time hitter, but the 29-year-old right-hander has still had to settle for a minor-league deal from the Padres.
Owings was an excellent hitter in college and has batted .286 with an .820 OPS in 217 plate appearances as a big leaguer, but came to the plate just 19 times for Arizona last year while throwing 63 innings with a 3.57 ERA and 44/23 K/BB ratio.
He’s a fairly marginal pitcher, posting a 4.91 ERA in 473 innings, so it would seemingly make sense for an NL team like the Padres to use him more in a Brooks Kieschnick-style dual role. So far no team has done that, though, and he’s expected to compete for a traditional bullpen job in spring training.