Jackson Merrill's July Surge Is Helping Keep Padres Afloat

The San Diego Padres are still alive.  Despite their best efforts over the last handful of weeks, their sweep of the Miami Marlins over the weekend set them back at .500 (53-53). That put them back to within two games of a National League Wild Card spot, though three teams remain ahead of them before they even get to the likes of those currently occupying the three spots in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Arizona. 

Nevertheless, they're still hanging around. That doesn't lend itself to any clarity regarding their approach to the trade deadline, but it does draw the attention back to the active roster. Because the Padres wouldn't be in a position to have any hope, let alone a thinner margin, at this point if it weren't for those players. Specifically, we're talking about Jackson Merrill. 

Merrill was a centerpiece over the weekend sweep in Florida. He had a three-hit game on Saturday before adding another two on Sunday. Few actions were more notable over the weekend than this: 

Down early, Merrill's solo home run in the eighth gave them a lead they wouldn't relinquish. It was the latest in what has become a very strong July for a player who had struggled mightily over the season's first three months. 

This is Merrill's monthly distribution from the first half of the season: 

• March/April: 128 PA, .200/.270/.330, .130 ISO, 68 wRC+
• May: 101 PA, .220/.297/.341, .121 ISO, 79 wRC+
• June: 114 PA, .220/.248/.358, .138 ISO, 67 wRC+

To say that the young center fielder struggled in those first three months would be a severe understatement. Had he posted numbers of this variety in 2025, you could almost understand it given the myriad injuries he encountered. However, a fully healthy iteration of Merrill is one that was expected to bounce back. That didn't remotely come to fruition in the first half; there were a couple of modest stretches where it looked like a corner was being turned, but the production stayed minimal. Frustratingly, there didn't appear to be a clear cause for the struggle either. Some mixed up mechanics appeared to be central, but even those weren't as clear-cut as we'd like it to be. 

Perhaps it doesn't matter anymore. Merrill has turned a corner in July to a fairly astonishing extent. As the Padres' offense has stabilized, Merrill has been one of the drivers of the lineup this month. Through an even 90 plate appearances, he's carrying a slash of .298/.333/.571, with a gaudy .274 ISO and a 147 wRC+. His strikeout rate (23.3 percent) is his lowest in an individual month while the seven homers he's hit are only one off his cumulative total from the first three months of the season.

What's important to note about this stretch is that he isn't getting lucky. His .316 batting average on balls in play isn't the kind of nonsense figure you might expect from a struggling player suddenly breaking out. Nor is it the result of any massive shift in his mechanics. There is one component worth noting here, however: 

Previously, we discussed that Merrill's swing had become just long and just steep enough to pose an issue for him. That was leading to questionable contact that wasn't adept at creating impact. In other words, he was simply losing on the margins.

It's clear that Merrill is now finding that contact, whether he's done so by way of improved pitch recognition or a small mechanical tweak. That rate of his ideal attack angle is every bit indicative of a player who is finding the bat in the right spot upon meeting the ball.

The next step in this is making it sustainable. We don't know the reason for Merrill's 2026 trends of swinging longer, swinging harder, or swinging with enough of an increase in his angle that he ended up a shade under seemingly everything. What we do know right now is that he's making everything click. In order for the Padres to stay relevant, that will have to remain the case.

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