Overshadowed By Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon Is An Entirely Different Force To Reckon With

[Randy Holt]

The San Diego Padres have what is perhaps the most impressive pitcher in baseball in Mason Miller. At worst, they have its most impressive pitch in the form of his slider. But while his slider and obscene velocity compound to grab most of the narrative around the stability of the team's relief corps, it shouldn't overshadow the work being done by Adrian Morejon. 

That Morejon is having an excellent season is hardly surprising. He's coming off a pair of impressive campaigns, including a 2025 season in which he posted a 2.08 ERA, 2.2 fWAR, and made an appearance in Atlanta as a National League All-Star. That excellence is a bit overlooked, however, given the first number to which one always points when examining a pitcher's quality: the ERA. 

Morejon has a 4.00 ERA through his first 33 appearances of 2026. That number itself ranks only 119th among qualifying relief pitchers. It's a number that makes his overall performance somewhat easy to overlook. It's also incredibly deceptive. 

Despite that figure sitting atop the stat sheet, Morejon has thrived everywhere else. His percentile distribution alone is indicative of a pitcher that has been much better than such a number would indicate; he ranks in the top 10 percent league-wide in xERA, fastball velocity, average exit velocity allowed, barrel rate allowed, hard-hit rate, chase rate, whiff rate, walk rate, and ground-ball rate. In other words, he's one of the best pitchers in the sport at basically anything you can do on the mound.

Not only has Morejon brought elite velocity, he's been dominant in forcing opposing hitters to chase and look foolish in doing so, as illustrated by his whiff rate (34.2 percent). In those rare instances in which hitters do make contact, they're not doing it to any meaningful extent. As such, it becomes easy to attribute the ERA to a blend of bad luck (.305 opposing BABIP) and a pair of isolated clunky outings (one on April 7 in Pittsburgh and one on June 4 in Philadelphia). Otherwise, he's been genuinely excellent. 

Beyond the ERA itself, Morejon has posted a 2.21 FIP and strikeout (28.1 percent) & walk (4.8 percent) rates that would stand as a career best if the season ended today. He's already turned in a 1.3 fWAR figure, putting him on pace to at least match the total he posted in his standard-setting 2025 season. 

That Morejon is posting these numbers speaks to what the stuff is doing this year. He's thrown the sinker as a primary pitch at 47 percent of the time, with each of his slider (21 percent), changeup (18 percent), and four-seam (14 percent) serving as consistently-used secondary offerings. Stuff+ loves all four pitches, as they carry figures of 133, 127, 129, and 121, respectively. That means that not only his pitches above average in their physical characteristics but comfortably above. Only Mason Miller's slider ranks higher on the season among Padre pitchers and nobody (not even Miller) has a better pitch by that measure since the start of June. For what it's worth, all four pitches also sit above average on the Location+ side with the changeup leading the way at 115, indicating he's not only maximizing his pitches in their shape but in their situational value as well. 

Statcast's new data around swing timing and miss distance helps to further emphasize the work being done by Morejon: 

In general, the pitches are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Hitters are late on the four-seam and early on each of the changeup & slider. Two of Morejon's pitches, the change and the four-seam, rank in the top eight of individual Padre pitches in their ability to generate flawed swings (20 and 16 percent, respectively). That Morejon's avoiding bats in this way speaks to not only the stuff itself but his ability to locate. It's an effective supplement to what each of Stuff+ & Location+ tell us. 

Regardless of metric, though, it all tells us the same thing: Adrian Morejon has been one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball in 2026. If anything, his ability to mix four pitches this effectively rather than the relief industry standard of two or maybe three only adds to the lore. It's easy to overlook the season he's having; the Padres are struggling, his ERA looks below average, and he shares a bullpen seat with baseball's objectively best reliever. None of that, though, should lead to an underestimation of just how good Adrian Morejon has been this season. 

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