On December 18, 2014, the San Diego Padres, led by general manager AJ Preller, made a splash. They pulled off a trade for Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp, a former runner-up in the MVP voting, to bolster their lineup. While Kemp did hit 46 home runs in his one and half season-stint with the Padres, he was a disaster on the field, and he ended up tallying just 0.2 WAR in his 254 games with the team.

The Padres couldn't wait to get Kemp off the team; things got so bad for Kemp in San Diego that the Padres got a meager trade return in the form of Hector Olivera in exchange. Nonetheless, it seems like the feeling was mutual, as Kemp revealed that he too was itching to get the Padres uniform off his back.

“When I got traded to Atlanta from San Diego, man, I was super happy because I wanted to get out of San Diego because it was weird. It was weird vibes,” Kemp said in an appearance on Pivot Podcast. “As a baseball player, I was used to being in LA and people hold you accountable, especially the media. … In San Diego, in my first month and a half, nobody bothered me and asked me questions. I was like I need to go somewhere where it matters.”

Matt Kemp, however, would not be much better with the Braves. His defensive woes made him very much unplayable even though there was still some pop left on his bat. The Dodgers saw the value in Kemp in 2018 and traded back for him, and he had a comeback season of sorts, putting up his best season since 2014.

Kemp is someone who thrives under pressure, and he might be the rare kind of player who is built for the spotlight. In that sense, playing in Los Angeles for the Dodgers set him up for success. And the stats back it up; he tallied 26.9 WAR with the Dodgers, and a -1.4 WAR with the four other teams (Padres, Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and Colorado Rockies) he spent some time with.

Matt Kemp's disappointing stint with the Padres

The Padres' decision to trade for Matt Kemp in 2014 was widely panned. Giving up Yasmani Grandal, an everyday catcher, in exchange for a slugger with no defensive home made little sense, especially when Grandal was still under team control at the time while Kemp was in the middle of his $160 million deal. To make matters worse, Grandal had tallied 7.6 WAR in his first three seasons in the big leagues, providing some excellent value for the Padres at such a young age.

Grandal emerged as an All-Star in his first season with the Dodgers, and he continued to provide a ton of value on the defensive side of the ball thanks to his pitch-framing ability. The switch-hitting catcher tallied 20.7 WAR during his four years in LA, proving the trade to be a wild misfire on the Padres' end.

Meanwhile, the Padres failed miserably in their bid to become a contending team in AJ Preller's first season. Matt Kemp was equally as dreadful defensively in right field, and it's not like he hit well enough to offset his deficiencies in the field. The Padres won 74 games in 2015 and they proceeded to miss out on the playoffs until 2020, when they broke their postseason drought during a COVID-shortened campaign.

Kemp, at the very least, can hold on to the fact that he is the first player in the history of the Padres franchise to hit for the cycle. It was on August 14, 2015 when Kemp completed the historic feat. Alas, with Kemp's latest admission, it's safe to say that Padres fans will grow to dislike him even more than they already do.

Kemp just loved wearing Dodgers colors

Until this day, it remains a bit mind-boggling that Matt Kemp wasn't able to win the 2011 NL MVP honors. The award was won by Ryan Braun, the star left fielder who played for a 96-win Milwaukee Brewers team.

Kemp hit more home runs than Braun (39 vs. 33), drove in more runs (126 vs. 111), and stole more bases (40 vs. 33). He was even playing a more difficult position (center field) at the time. The MVP would have been a formality for the Dodgers star had he hit more home runs so he could be part of the 40-40 club, or if he was able to win the batting title in a heated battle against Jose Reyes. Alas, Braun won out due to his team's better record.

However, Matt Kemp ran into some injury problems and was never the same again after 2011. Nevertheless, even as he's declined, Kemp showed that there's nothing quite like playing in LA for him. He was a positive contributor in all of his seasons for the Dodgers aside from his rookie campaign, and he had one last hurrah in him back in 2018, when he and the Dodgers fell short against the Boston Red Sox in the World Series in five games.

(All stats were taken from Fangraphs unless otherwise noted.)