This article appeared in the Union-Tribune print edition on March 20. The question has been answered for the Padres. Yuli Gurriel can still play. That is what the Padres wanted to see, and they have seen it. All around the organization, the men who spend hours a day evaluating such things say the bat speed is faster and so are his feet. They say he is leaner. They say they have loved almost every at-bat. He is hitting the ball hard. He has even played a capable first base. So it sure seems he is going to be on the Padres’ opening-day roster. No one is saying he will be their Jurickson Profar of 2025. Gurriel will have to earn his keep by showing in April’s real games that the exhibitions of March were not a mirage. But the reality is the Padres have been impressed. Immensely. “You’re talking about pretty much the definition of a professional hitter,” manager Mike Shildt said. “We’ve seen that recently. Yuli comes in (with) the reputation, for sure, (as a) winning player. Came in, fantastic shape, moving great. Is on everything, just takes great at-bats, and just has a great presence about him.” So there it is. The Padres’ designated hitter, at least against left-handers and probably more often than that, will be 41 years old in June and had a .635 OPS in 18 games last season and was only slightly better (.653 OPS in 254 games) the two seasons before that. But there is time to judge what he might be in 2025. First, it might be instructive to at least get to know who he is. Even a serious baseball fan might only know that after he defected from Cuba in 2016 and signed with the Astros, he was part of two World Series winners and won a batting title. A look at his eight-plus seasons in the major leagues reveals a guy who was just OK. Gurriel has a .280 batting average and .764 OPS in 927 career games. He is two home runs shy of 100. His career OPS+ is 107, which makes him 7% better than an average player. But when people in the game talk about Yuli Gurriel, it is with reverence. “It’s kind of baseball royalty with his family and history from Cuban baseball,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “He’s been a top talent in the game, really, over the last 20 years. And I think if he had come to the States a few years earlier, he’s probably in the conversation for one of the better players of his generation, possibly Hall of Fame consideration.” Gurriel was playing in the Cuban National Series at age 17. He hit .300 that 2001-02 season. He played in his homeland for 15 seasons and in Japan for one. He was on the radar of MLB personnel people from the time he was a teenager, and by the time he played in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, when he had an .857 OPS over eight games and Cuba lost to Japan in the final at Petco Park, there was rampant talk he would be the best player available if he were in the draft that year. There were reports for a decade that his defection was imminent and even an erroneous report by a major outlet that a defection had happened. Besides being a star in the CNS, Gurriel was a member of the Cuban national team that won several international tournaments, including gold at the 2004 Olympics. Fidel Castro reportedly loved him like a son. And Yuli’s father is Lourdes Gurriel Delgado, a legendary player and manager in Cuba. It was not until February 2016 that Yuli, then 31 years old, defected alongside his younger brother, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. And Yuli was 32 by the time he signed with the Astros five months later. That September, he made his MLB debut. His first full season was 2017, when he batted .299 with an .817 OPS and the Astros won the World Series. He batted .295 with an .811 OPS from 2017 through ‘21. That five-year span concluded with him winning the American League batting title in 2021 with a .319 average. The next year, Gurriel got his second World Series ring. He tied for sixth in the American League in doubles but batted just .242/.288/.360 during the regular season. He did hit .347/.360/.490 in the playoffs. He spent 2023 with the Marlins, for whom he had just 329 plate appearances. Gurriel was unsigned last year until agreeing to a minor-league deal with the Braves. He spent the bulk of the season in Triple-A before being traded to the Royals on Aug. 31. He was a regular for them at the end of the season and in the postseason after the team lost first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino to a thumb injury. The Padres signed him in February to a minor-league deal that will pay him $1.25 million if he is in the majors. He has a chance to earn an additional $1 million in playing time incentives. Asked what has happened the past few seasons, Gurriel said: “I think starting in 2023, that’s really the first year that I wasn’t playing every day. And I think, if I’m being honest, it kind of took a hit on the confidence, because I wasn’t getting as many consistent at-bats.” It was clear from the time he walked in the clubhouse how much players respected him. A recommendation of Manny Machado, who worked out with Gurriel in Miami this offseason, played a small role in the Padres deciding to take a flier. “He was outrunning all of us,” Machado said of their winter workouts. “We had a bunch of 20-year-olds out there. He was beating all of us.” The Padres will gladly be the beneficiaries of Gurriel going back in time. “He’s special,” fellow Cuban Jose Iglesias said. “If he had (come to the United States when he was) younger, he would have been a superstar. He was a star here. But he would have been (bigger) for sure.” There are people who believe Gurriel would have been in the major leagues at age 19. Most say no later than 21. They talk about 3,000 hits having been a possibility, if not a probability. When he won the batting title at age 37, it tied Gurriel with Barry Bonds, George Brett and Tony Gywnn for second-oldest to ever to do so. (Bonds also won when he was 39.) Gurriel is one of 45 players to average 1.3 hits per game or more from age 33 to 37. More than half of the other 44 are in the Hall of Fame. So when he hears, as he has for years, that he would be considered one of the better hitters of his time and potentially be a Hall of Famer had he started his career here earlier, he smiles and shrugs. “I mean, that could be true,” he said through an interpreter. “It could not be true. I think, obviously, it would have been nicer to come over here at a younger age. But really, you know, everything on God’s timing. His timing is perfect.”