Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill Are Anchoring Padres' Incredible Defensive Turnaround

Throughout the 2026 season, there have been two stable truths about the San Diego Padres. The first is that they boast one of the league's best corps of relief pitchers. The other is that they are one of the most improved defensive teams from a year-to-year standpoint. We've given a lot of love to the former all year long; now, it's time to laud the latter.

Last year's Padres were a below average defensive team, a label to which which no position group was especially immune. Their Fielding Run Value as a collective was -9, which had them 19th in Major League Baseball. Few regulars were able to avoid to such downtrodden defensive performance; each of Jake Cronenworth (-2 FRV), Gavin Sheets (-3), Manny Machado (-4), and Luis Arráez (-11) played out the full season with the team and contributed to the pinned-down metric. Even using Outs Above Average bumps only Cronenworth up to merely average status (0) and leaves the rest well below the threshold.

On the other side of the coin, Fernando Tatis Jr. (9), Xander Bogaerts (6), and Jackson Merrill (5) excelled in the FRV game, contributing a range element that the defense sorely lacked. In the case of Tatis & Merrill, their arms each played heavily into their quality FRV figures, while Bogaerts was left slightly behind in that regard. Regardless, this was a team that was in need of defensive growth ahead of 2026, especially up against the shambles of a rotation that was held together by various forms of duct tape and non-guaranteed contracts.

While that pitching staff hasn't entirely held up its end of the bargain throughout the season, the defense certainly has. In fact, the Padres are one of only three teams in baseball to turn in above-average glove work in 2026 after falling below the average threshold (by FRV) in 2025. The difference, however, lies in how significant the difference has been. While the Tampa Bay Rays & Chicago White Sox have each taken steps to dramatically improve their own defensive situations (Tampa Bay was at -39 last year & the Sox were at -38), the Padres are the only one of the trio to go from below-average defensively to one of the game's best. The Rays are at +1 FRV in 2026 while the White Sox are at +5. They've each certainly got their act together, but in a way that merely scratches above the league mean. San Diego, meanwhile, has ascended up to the status of a top-five defensive club at +20 FRV for the season thus far.

There are myriad reasons for that. A full season of Freddy Fermin behind the plate; Ty France stabilizing the infield as the team's regular first baseman; Manny Machado has clawed back to his prior status as an above-average defender. It's the outfield defense, though, that is really carrying the Padres to these new defensive heights. 

His short stint at second base earlier this year aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. continues to serve as one of the premier players on the outfield grass. A smaller sample of innings has him at only +2 FRV for the season, but he's also doing things like this: 

At the same time, Jackson Merrill has been extraordinary in working adjacent to Tatis. Despite his offensive struggles for much of the year, Merrill's defense has been as good as ever. His +9 FRV is the fifth-best figure for outfielders, with nearly half of that being attributed to his arm. No other outfielder has garnered more FRV love for throwing the baseball than Jackson Merrill has in 2026. 

The combination of those two alone has helped the outfield to rank eighth in FRV for the league's outfield groups. And that's without left field being at all sorted. 

Nine different players have assumed the left field post in 2026, largely due to the fact that Ramón Laureano hasn't appeared in a game since early June. The issue there is that it's been mostly a collection of utility players whose skill sets tend to play better on the infield. That's led to a much more pedestrian -1 FRV for the position, with Laureano the only one of the group to post a mark deemed above average. Even if some of those utility players (namely, Luis Rengifo and Gavin Sheets) have managed to occasionally compensate for defensive shortcomings with their bats, left field does remain the shortcoming of an otherwise top-tier group. 

They're certainly not doing it alone given the improvement elsewhere, but it's become clear that between Merrill & Tatis, the Padres working with one of the best defensive outfields in the game. It's been a large part of what has catapulted them up the league rankings in their defensive performance, and the value of that in the midst of a wild-card chase with a still-in-question rotation cannot be overstated.