Xander Bogaerts' Biggest Weakness Got Exposed In 2026. How Do the Padres Move Forward?

[Yirsandy Rodríguez]

The biggest thing that made Xander Bogaerts a sought-after shortstop when he became a free agent was his ability to impact the game as an all-around elite player. When he arrived in San Diego, he met those standards in 2023, but since then, his offense has been declining until it hit rock bottom this season.

The regressions in his game have been limited to the offense, as he remains an above-average fielder and a pretty good baserunner. However, Bogaerts fell to the 24th percentile in batting value, the worst of his career with the Padres, and finished with a batting average of just .231 and a .344 slugging percentage. It is impossible not to think about his decline when seeing how far he fell short of his usual numbers: he hit .292 with a .458 slugging percentage in 10 seasons with Boston, compared with .272 and .407 between 2023 and 2025, since he arrived in San Diego.

As you can see here, the problem is not his bat speed or Bogaerts’ ability to make contact and put the ball in play. In fact, he finished 2026 with his highest walk rate (12.7%), so his plate discipline helped prevent his entire offense from ending up in an even worse abyss. That said, this is my theory about what caused Bogaerts’ chaos at the plate: his inability to hit pitches that were not fastballs.

Pitch Category	Pitch %	PA	HR	K%	BA	xBA	OBP	xOBP	SLG	xSLG	xwOBA	BABIP	Whiff%	EV (MPH)	Hard Hit%	Barrel/BBE%	Bat Speed
Fastballs	54.8%	372	9	11.8%	.261	.276	.371	.386	.392	.429	.363	.278	14.3%	91.2	45.8%	6.6%	70.6
Non-Fastballs	33.0%	169	3	25.4%	.204	.220	.290	.306	.293	.321	.284	.260	32.3%	86.7	35.5%	3.7%	68.8

Although that BABIP mark remained at a similar level, the differences in contact quality were notable, with significant drops in xBA, xSLG, Barrel/BBE%, and whiff%.

Of those 169 plate appearances that ended with a pitch type that wasn't a heater, he recorded a high strikeout rate of 25.4% and another 30.7% ended in ground balls or pop-ups that averaged just a .195 xwOBA. Unlike what happened against fastballs, Bogaerts’ swing failed to do damage in the inner zones, where he hit just .221 xBA against middle and middle-high pitches. His highest average in the lower and outside edges, where pitches were located most often in decisive counts, was .224 in the lower zone over the plate.

Here is Bogaerts’ spray-chart on the non-fastballs he put in play.

The hot zones were scarce, and most were located toward the left side of the infield. That decline in his ability to produce hard-hit balls was the most concerning drop that marked Bogaerts’ 2026 season and the biggest challenge he has ahead of him during the remaining seven years of his contract with the Padres.

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