The 2025 Padres Are Neither Their Offensive Highs Nor Their Recent Offensive Lows

[Randy Holt]

The San Diego Padres are a bad offensive baseball team right now. Some might say they're bad and offensive at present, given how the past week has gone. 

It started last weekend against Seattle. The Padres were swept at home and managed to score just one run in each of the three games. It got worse in Toronto, as they dropped consecutive games via shutout to open the series before losing in extra innings to close it. Even as they ended the losing streak on Friday in Atlanta, they still only mustered a pair of runs in doing so before offering just one again on Saturday. 

There isn't a whole lot in the underlying numbers to suggest it'll end anytime soon, either. That feels hard to believe given where they were just a couple of weeks ago. 

Through May 14th, they were 27-15 and just a half game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West. They were a top-10 offensive group by wRC+ (109), driven by an on-base approach (.333) that featured limited strikeouts (8.9 percent) and timely hitting, highlighted by a .282 average with runners in scoring position and a .294 average with two outs, which led baseball by a wide margin. The group ran deep, too. 

Seven different Padres hitters sat above the average threshold by wRC+ in that stretch. Jackson Merrill paced the group on either side of his hamstring injury (211), followed by Jake Cronenworth (168) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (163). Even the likes of Elias Diaz (109) and Tyler Wade (105) were above average with pretty heavy playing time.

There were a couple of different issues, though. For one, the batting averages on balls in play were entirely unsustainable. Merrill was over .450; Wade was over .400. Manny Machado was up at .395. As good as two of those three players are, that rate is always going to come down. Then you factor in the team's work with two outs. 

With two outs, virtually everything across the board ballooned even further. Wade, Machado, Oscar Gonzalez, Merrill, Cronenworth, and Gavin Sheets all BABIP'd over .400 with two outs across at least 20 plate appearances. The team at large ran that .294 average with a .369 on-base percentage and a 140 wRC+ with two outs on the board. There is simply no margin for error anywhere that would allow that to be sustainable. The offensive production was going to dip into something more sustainable at some point, even as you're waiting for more power from guys like Machado or Xander Bogaerts to balance it out. 

This also lends itself to the idea that the Padres' current misery is, in itself, unsustainable. 

Over the past week-and-change, Luis Arráez is essentially the only member of the Padres getting contact to fall. He carries a strikeout rate of just 3.4 percent and a 175 wRC+ through his last 29 PA. The rest of the lineup, however, is finding no such fortune. 

Fernando Tatis Jr's BABIP is just .250 and the highest of the other regulars. Merrill's at only .235 while each of Cronenworth, Sheets, and Machado sit at or below .200. Tatis, Merrill, and Machado have each plummeted with two outs, as well. They're averaging a -55 wRC+ between them with two outs. Machado's catching the worst of it, with a BABIP of just .111 in two-out situations. 

One aspect where the Padres can help themselves start to work their way out of it is in their approach. They were striking out at a shade below 16 percent as a collective through May 14th. They're up to almost 24 percent inside of this recent stretch. The walk rate has also been cut in half. They were walking at a 9.6 percent clip through the first half of May and are at just 4.5 percent over the past week. 

That part of it almost feels natural. Your offense is scuffling something serious, and you're subsequently trying to make something happen. That forces a hitter into taking swings he wouldn't normally take. However, a more measured approach, which drove the team early on, is likely what needs to happen to help them crawl back out of it. 

I suppose it does ring as at least some sort of good news that the Padres aren't as bad as their recent stretch would indicate. However, the paradox is that they aren't as good as the first one was. They're somewhere in the middle, with no shortage of nuances involved in where the real offensive upside of this group exists. Either way, nine of their next dozen games after Atlanta come against teams in the bottom half of the league in staff ERA. Perhaps we'll start to see the real San Diego Padres make an appearance over that stretch.

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