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Despite being clear of the health woes that plagued him in 2025, Jackson Merrill has not been immune to the struggles of the collective San Diego Padres offense. In fact, he's largely been a driver of such struggles.
As he approaches his first 300 plate appearances of the season, Merrill carries a line of just .213/.277/.358 with little power (.146 ISO) and a wRC+ of 79. Each of his strikeout (24.1 percent) and walk (7.8 percent) rates are up a touch, with very little batted ball luck on which to fall back (.259 BABIP). He's provided steady defense and been a force on the bases (12 steals), but there hasn't been much to generate excitement over his performance at the plate.
The month of June has represented a turnaround in at least one respect, however. Merrill's power is beginning to show itself with more consistency than we'd seen in the first couple of months of the season.
Many of the issues that we saw from Merrill have persisted even halfway this month. His slash still only features a batting average of .226 and on-base percentage lingering around .260. His wRC+ is still, technically, that of a below-average hitter at 93. His batted ball fortunes are worse than ever, at a .244 BABIP. The power, though, is of particular interest. Merrill's ability to impact a baseball game with one swing has started to appear, even in the face of continued struggle elsewhere.
Merrill's ISO this month reads .210. Coming off a .130 figure in March & April and a .121 output in May, that's particularly encouraging. His three home runs this month match his total from March & April with half the month still to go. What's more is that Merrill's 52.1 percent hard-hit rate represents his highest in an individual month this year. That's by a fairly wide margin, too; he had rates of 44.2 and 47.7 percent in each of the the first two months.
What's interesting in the re-emergence of his power is that it's largely come on the strength of his work against breaking pitches. While Merrill's best work in his career has come against the hard stuff (run values of six and seven in his first two seasons, respectively), his rookie year showcased an impressive standing against breaking pitches. This month, he's mashing them:
His 61.5 percent hard-hit rate against breaking pitches this month is his highest against any of the three groups in any month thus far. He's finding the barrel at an obscene 23.1 percent clip, too, helping to drive that trend. Two of his three home runs this month have also come against breaking pitches. It's something that Merrill clearly recognizes, as well. His swing rate against breaking pitches is up at 68.2 percent this month, leading all pitch groups. What's encouraging about that is that while he's swinging at them more, he's not whiffing. Merrill's swing-and-miss rate against breaking pitches is actually down slightly from last month, while his fly-ball rate on contact has more than doubled to 53.8 percent.
Whether or not this is a permanent trend, however, remains to be seen. Merrill's best work has always come against fastballs. They've served as the primary source of quality contact and subsequent power output in the small sample that his career still is. That breaking balls have jumped to the forefront of his production is an interesting development that doesn't feature a strong foundation on which to stand at this point.
What may be more important in terms of that foundational skillset is that Merrill appears to be locking in his eye on some level. There's a pitch recognition happening here that is allowing him to jump on breaking pitches. Perhaps that's something that can carry over into the rest of his approach as he tries to reestablish himself as a multi-faceted offensive player. That's something that we'll have to continue to monitor given the minuscule sample with which we have to work.
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