BREAKING: Jackson Merrill Agrees To Nine-Year Extension With Padres

[Davy Andrews]

The young star will be patrolling center field in San Diego for quite a while.

It's officially extension season across baseball. The Red Sox have locked down Garrett Crochet and the Blue Jays have locked down Alejandro Kirk. Now it's San Diego's turn. On Wednesday morning, Robert Murray of FanSided reported that Jackson Merrill has agreed to a nine-year, $135-million contract extension with the Padres. The deal is not particularly straightforward. It includes a $10 million signing bonus, but it starts in 2026, meaning that it stretches until 2034. The Padres also have a team option for a 10th year at $30 million. If the team declines the option, it converts into a player option. The deal is also full of
incentives, pushing the possible value all the way up to $204 million should Merrill continue playing like one of the best players in the game. He'll get a $1 million bonus for each season in which he hits 500 plate appearances, and top-10 finishes in MVP voting (which Merill achieved in his rookie season) would also trigger incentive clauses. Lastly, a top-5 finish would turn the 10th year of the deal from a team option into a player option. Complications aside, this is a huge move, locking up the team's center fielder, who put up a remarkable 5.3-fWAR rookie campaign in 2024, for the long haul.

Around this time last year, the Padres announced that they would be breaking camp with Merrill as the starting center fielder despite the fact that he was just 20 years old with no big-league experience and no experience in center at all. He didn't disappoint, bashing 24 home runs, putting up a 130 wRC+, providing excellent defense in center, and even stealing 16 bases. The 5.3 fWAR he put up made him the 18th-most valuable player in all of baseball, and he's off to a hot start again this year. Merrill is batting .400 with a home run.

Merrill's speed, defense, and power give him an enviable floor. Even if his hitting should fall off some — and the projections naturally expect it to do just that; people don't normally just keep hitting after rookie seasons like Merrill's — his elite center field defense and excellent baserunning should still allow him to be an All-Star caliber player. You have to imagine that his defense could improve even more after just his first full season as an outfielder.

Just yesterday, Randy Holt broke down the one big concern about Merrill's game, and over at FanGraphs, Michael Baumann recently addressed the same topic. Merrill's plate discipline leaves a lot to be desired. In 2024, he ran a 34.4% chase rate and a 4.9% walk rate. Both of those numbers were among the worst of any qualified player. Worse, plate discipline numbers tend to be both very predictive of overall performance and very sticky year-over-year. So plate discipline is something that Merrill will really need to work on. The good news is that Merrill is still extremely young and has plenty of room to grow as a hitter. Plate discipline stats might be sticky, but as good as he's been at the plate, Merrill's probably not a finished product just yet. Moreover, as Randy noted, Merrill was excellent on driving the ball hard even when he swung at pitches off the plate. If he can continue making contact and being an excellent bad-ball hitter, he may not ever walk much, but he'll still be a good hitter.

There's a lot to like from both sides of this deal, which, in its incentive-laden structure is reminiscent of the deal Julio Rodríguez signed with the Mariners. Merrill, who otherwise wouldn't have reached arbitration for another two years and wouldn't have had the chance to get paid anything close to what he was worth until 2030, has just guaranteed himself life-changing money. He gave up some money, but he also gained a lot of security, and if he performs well, that money could increase by as much as 50%. Moreover, he'll be hitting free agency when he's just 30 or 31, meaning that he'll still have the chance to sign another long-term deal that includes the tail end of his prime. The Padres just locked down a franchise cornerstone well into the next decade, and the performance bonuses allow them to mitigate the risk of such a big swing. If Merrill stays healthy and plays well, the Padres will be more than happy to pay him every penny of those incentive clauses.

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[Brandon Glick]

Next up on the extension block: Jason Heyward