The Padres Are Swinging Harder In 2026. Does It Even Matter?

[Randy Holt]

Despite a solid record for the first full month of the season, the San Diego Padres came into May sitting near the bottom of Major League Baseball in a number of offensive categories. As of the start of the Cardinals series, they're 23rd in runs scored (141), 26th in on-base percentage (.307), and 22nd in isolated power (.143). Not that this is surprising, of course, given the minimal turnover for a team that struggled to plate runs for much of 2025. That doesn't mean the lineup is operating in the same fashion, though. In fact, the lack of an offensive punch stands in contrast to what the lineup is attempting to do. 

The 2024 Padres — a team which featured five of the same regulars as this year's group — ranked 29th in average bat speed (70.5 MPH). They did, however, trade swing speed for efficiency in ranking atop the league in squared-up contact (28.0 percent of swings) and sitting 12th in blasts (10.7 percent). Despite a modest increase in swing speed the following season (71.3 MPH), the trend largely carried over into 2025. They were fourth in the league in squared-up swing rate (26.8 percent) and maintained the same blast rate. 

The trend here is creating quality contact despite a swing speed that sits behind many of their peers across the major-league landscape. With a new coaching staff in place this year, though, it appears that they've begun to deviate a bit from this philosophy in 2026. 

This year's Padres are up to 12th in the league in average swing speed (72.4 percent). Their collective fast swing rate (defined as over 75 MPH) has moved up to 26.9 percent. While the individual swing speeds vary in their increase (or decrease, in some cases), each of Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth, and Jackson Merrill have seen dramatic increases in their fast swing rate. When you factor in the subtraction of a notoriously-slow-swinging Luis Arráez and add in harder swingers like Ty France and Miguel Andujar, the collective increase isn't difficult to conceptualize. Are the Padres better for it, though? 

The below graphic shows last year's team, with their swing speeds sitting on the x-axis and their squared-up contact on the percentage of swings on the y-axis:

Obviously the Arráez outlier obscures things, but you'll note where Padres hitters sit in proximity to the vertical red line indicating league average swing speed and the horizontal one indicating league average in matters of squared-up contact. Our interest is in the latter. These Padres lingered nicely around that line. Even if they weren't swinging particularly hard (outside of Tatis, Machado, and Sheets), they were creating quality contact in a way that yielded positive results in matters of batting average, on-base percentage, and strikeout avoidance. Squared-up contact doesn't necessarily indicate power outcomes, but it does serve to prop up an offense that may lack it. 

This year's Padres aren't looking in quite the same form: 

In 2025, even those that were not squaring up contact with league average regularity were at least approaching it. This year, there's very little keeping the Padres afloat. Outside of Tatis and Sheets, who are riding their swing speeds to really nice rates in this regard (and Bogaerts, who has gone the opposite direction), this is a group living well below where they were last year. 

So, while the Padres are near the top of the league in hard-hit rate (43.4 percent), it's much too infrequent to actually matter. It's also being driven by their hardest swingers. They're trading efficiency for speed, and, in doing so, have fallen to the middle of the pack in contact rate and experienced a subsequent rise in strikeouts. Squaring up baseballs in the eyes of Statcast is all about maximizing the exit velocity attainable on a pitch. The Padres aren't doing that in the midst of the paradoxical thinking bestowed by new hitting coach Steven Souza Jr., who is apparently driving them to do this. 

Given how things have transpired in recent games, in addition to how a handful of hitters have struggled all season, perhaps it's time for a bit of a reevaluation.

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