Jackson Merrill Is Slumping Again, But His Numbers Are Lying to Padres

[Sam Caulder]

Jackson Merrill looked like one of baseball's future superstars after his breakout 2024 campaign at just 21 years old. But since that point, there has been a lot more up-and-down in his game. After posting an .826 OPS in 2024, that number dropped to .774 during an injury-riddled 2025 campaign. And this season, it has dropped again, with Merrill sitting at just a .701 OPS. His recent stretch certainly isn't helping anything.

His season as a whole has been all over the place. He really struggled over the first few months, looking nothing like the player who burst onto the scene as one of the best young hitters in baseball two years ago. But then, he got hot in July and August and started to look more like himself again.

Now, he's back in a slump. Since August 13, Merrill is hitting just .179 over 88 plate appearances, with a .611 OPS. His strikeout rate has also jumped well above normal to 26.1%. Obviously, this is someone the Padres really need producing, especially at this point in the year. They're making a push for the Wild Card, and Merrill is supposed to be one of the players capable of carrying this offense. That production simply hasn't been there lately. So how does he snap out of it?

As ridiculous as it may sound, I think Merrill's best course of action might be to keep on doing what he's doing. Because despite what the surface-level numbers would tell you, there’s a lot that he's doing well right now. The quality of contact Merrill has generated during this rough stretch has actually been awesome. His average exit velocity over those 88 plate appearances sits at 94.2 MPH. Now, it's not like average exit velocity alone tells you everything. You can hit a 100+ MPH pop-up, after all, and that isn't exactly helping anyone. But Merrill isn't just hitting the ball hard; he's finding barrels.

His barrel rate during this stretch is up over 14%. Barrels are essentially the ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle, and they're the easiest way for hitters to consistently produce extra-base contact. A 14% barrel rate is crazy. Merrill's season-long barrel rate of 12% is already extremely impressive, but when a hitter is barreling the ball at an even higher rate than that, he should be producing at a much higher level than a .611 OPS. And the expected numbers would certainly agree.

Merrill's expected batting average during this rough stretch sits at .262, which is 83 points higher than his actual .179 mark. His expected slugging percentage is even more eye-opening at .507, 161 points higher than what he's actually produced. Put those numbers together, and the underlying data suggests Merrill is hitting the ball more like an .850 OPS player. Instead, he's producing an OPS that is just barely above .600. That's a pretty massive difference. He’s hitting the ball well, the results just haven't followed. 

Now, for what it's worth, there has been one notable change in Merrill's batted-ball profile during this stretch. His fly-ball rate has climbed all the way up to 51%. Over the course of his career, that number has been closer to 41%, so that's a pretty sizable jump. And an increase in fly balls doesn't always work for every hitter. Sometimes, a player starts trying to elevate the ball more often and simply turns hard line drives into fly-ball outs. On the surface, you could argue that this has been part of the problem for Merrill, considering the actual production simply hasn't been there. But again, it comes back to the quality of contact.

If Merrill was hitting more fly balls while his exit velocity and barrel rate were declining, that would be a much bigger concern. But that's not what is happening. He's hitting the ball harder than ever during this recent stretch and producing barrels at an extremely high rate. At some point, you would expect that to turn into more results.

Baseball has a funny way of evening things out over time. It's extremely unfortunate that Merrill is going through this slump now, as the Padres make their push for a Wild Card spot. This is when they need their best players to be at their best, and the recent production from one of their most important hitters simply hasn't been good enough. But the encouraging part is that there doesn't appear to be much reason for Merrill to completely overhaul his approach. If anything, he might just need to keep doing what he's doing.

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