Is Jackson Merrill a Lock to Bounce Back for Padres in 2026?

[Randy Holt]

Had it not been for the 2024 brilliance of Paul Skenes in Pittsburgh, we may very well have had to stipulate "former National League Rookie of the Year" when discussing Jackson Merrill. As it were, Skenes took home the hardware while Merrill had to "settle" for a nine-year extension ahead of Year 2 in Major League Baseball. 

Indeed, such a contract was well-earned on the part of Merrill and not even remotely questioned for a San Diego Padres team that has faced plenty of them for handing out hefty multi-year pacts. His 2024 season featured a a .292/.326/.500 line across 156 games, as well as a 130 wRC+ and 5.3 fWAR. Just 13 qualifying position players finished ahead of Merrill in that fWAR figure, and only three of them were of the outfielder variety. One can understand why the Padres were so eager to lock him up long-term.

His percentile distribution was indicative of a player standing on the cusp of elite status, as well: 

While there might have been a desire to see Merrill reign in the discipline a bit, it didn't cost him in his ability to avoid strikeouts or generate quality contact. Despite the aggression inherent in his approach, each of those rates remained respectable. His 7.5 ft swing length average allowed for zone coverage, with enough bat speed to help him compensate to the tune of the 16th-best Contact% among position players that year (81.0). He also scored high marks defensively, where his 12 Outs Above Average checked in in the 97th percentile.

Unfortunately for Merrill, many of the positives from his rookie campaign regressed mightily in 2025. His line fell to one that went .264/.317/.457, with a wRC+ that dropped 14 points from the prior year (116). His 3.0 fWAR was a notable step back. It was still a strong year by any individual standard, but still rung as disappointing for a player that looked like a budding superstar after Year 1. Of course, there were perfectly good and obvious reasons for that. 

By the time we reached the end of August last year, Merrill was set to head to the injured list for the third time in 2025. He strained his hamstring in April and was the victim of a hard tag to the head while sliding into second base in June. The third stint was due to a rolled ankle that resulted in a sprain and bone bruise. Enduring such a rollercoaster on the health side resulted in Merrill appearing in just 115 games and even some of those were not played at 100 percent health. The result of such health woes were a percentile chart that doesn't look nearly as appealing as the first year: 

Merrill wasn't able to generate the same type of contact and saw roughly a five percent increase in strikeouts. What's striking is that he maintained an upper-tier barrel rate within all of that. It leads to a natural conclusion that some effects lingered as Merrill worked his way back from injury, only to face another a short while later. That doesn't mean it's all negative, though.

The approach, in particular, saw some improvement. While Merrill did whiff and, subsequently, struck out more throughout the 2025 season, he also walked more. He saw a slight decrease in his swing rate and chase rate with two strikes specifically, indicating that there could be some growth on the horizon in that regard. A combination of an improving approach and an offseason clear of myriad injuries should each bode well, to say nothing of how Merrill finished the year. 

The following is Merrill's monthly wOBA throughout last season: 

There is a significant drop following the hamstring injury that held him out for exactly a month. It continued to drop following the concussion in June. Once he was clear of that second IL trip, the numbers started to rise sharply. Even following the ankle injury, he continued to ascend back toward his 2024 levels of performance. 

Aside from April, where he had come out scorching at the plate, September was Merrill's best individual month of the year. He returned from the ankle injury on September 1 and turned in a month that included a .352 ISO and 160 wRC+. His 53.8 percent hard-hit rate was his highest in an individual month. That continued into the postseason, as Merrill reached base in four of 12 plate appearances and was one of the team's only hitters to contribute much of anything in a short series against the Chicago Cubs. 

It is ultimately those trends that have the arrow pointing back up for Merrill in 2026... with one caveat. September was more aggression than patience at the plate, as his swing and strikeout rates each went up and the walk rate went down. But even if Merrill is unable to sustain growth in his approach, it's surely a tradeoff the Padres are willing to accept if the outcomes look like that. Regardless of the nuance presented in his plate appearances, it's clear that the healthy version of Jackson Merrill that we saw mere glimpses of in 2025 is closer to the true version we saw full-time in 2024.

If the Padres are going to bank on a rebound from any of their hitters, he's likely the one.

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