The Padres’ Silent Crisis Finally Exploded

There’s a statistic that can permanently change the way you see a baseball team. It’s not batting average, not home runs, not even OPS. It’s much simpler and much crueler: how many times you get a runner to second or third base and still fail to do anything with it. Forget expectations. Forget theoretical production. In baseball, you win with results in the moments that matter most.

The San Diego Padres have spent weeks playing a kind of parallel sport, a ghost version of baseball where they load the bases and then empty them without scoring, as if there were some unwritten law stating that a runner may reach third base but no farther.

This is not the story of one bad week. It’s the story of a trend that has been building for a long time and finally overflowed during the worst possible stretch: a three-game home sweep at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies, with final scores of 3-0, 4-3, and 3-0 that say less about what Philadelphia did right and more about what San Diego failed to do when it mattered most.

The numbers that don’t lie: Heading into a weekend series against the Nationals, in their last eight games, the Padres have been the worst team in Major League Baseball with runners in scoring position.

Their batting average in those situations during that stretch sits at .045, alongside a .140 expected batting average, also the worst mark in the league. To put that into perspective: in 52 at-bats with runners in scoring position, they collected two hits. Two. If you flipped a coin 52 times and it landed heads exactly twice, you’d suspect the coin was rigged. The Padres hit worse than a fair coin in the situations that decide baseball games.

The second-worst team in that span, the New York Mets, hit .143. The Phillies—the same team that swept San Diego—hit .152. Even they, despite struggling with runners on base themselves, tripled the Padres’ production. By the time you reach tenth place on that list, you’re looking at batting averages around .212. The distance between San Diego and the rest of the league is not a gap. It’s an abyss.

Their BABIP was .057. For all practical purposes, that is impossible to sustain over time. But the fact that it happened at all is equally significant: it means that whenever the Padres put the ball in play with men on base, it found a defender’s glove with almost suspicious precision.

All MLB teams with RISP: last 8 games (May 19–27, 2026) Sorted by BA/RISP ascending.

But then you look at the xBA, and the Padres sit at .140 in those situations. That’s not outstanding, but it’s not .045 either. There’s a massive gap between what they should have hit and what they actually hit, and that gap has only two possible explanations: bad luck and something behavioral, something in the swing or the adjustments hitters fail to make when the scoreboard matters most. It’s probably both.

To understand what happened this week, you have to zoom out. The last eight days were the breaking point, but the Padres’ issues with runners in scoring position did not begin on May 19. This has been building for months, one failed at-bat at a time, attached to specific names and faces.

The most painful story belongs to Manny Machado. Not because his numbers are the worst on the roster—Cronenworth sits at .074 and Fermin at .048, both lower—but because Machado is Machado. A seven-time All-Star and three-time Silver Slugger. One of the ten greatest third basemen in baseball history. The player around whom Petco Park was built in franchise terms. And yet, with the 2026 season unfolding around him, he’s hitting .132 in pressure situations, with a .097 BABIP that feels almost physically impossible for a hitter of his caliber.

Machado’s .097 BABIP with runners in scoring position has to rise. That’s close to a mathematical certainty. But the fact that it ever reached that number is already a sign that something is happening. Elite hitters usually do not hit the ball directly at defenders this consistently, especially not in the moments that matter most. There is something in Machado’s mechanics or approach with runners on base that is making him less effective, and that is the concerning part.

Then there’s Jake Cronenworth, hitting .074 with a .056 BABIP. When a hitter posts a BABIP that low, the first conclusion is bad luck. But it’s also fair to ask whether he’s changing his approach in pressure situations: becoming too conservative, trying too hard not to make the inning-ending out and, in the process, turning into exactly that.

San Diego Padres: individual RISP statistics, 2026 season Sorted by wOBA/RISP descending.

The counterpoint is that some Padres have responded in these spots. Jackson Merrill is hitting .289 with runners in scoring position and owns an .863 wOBA, making him one of the club’s best hitters in the moments that matter most. Gavin Sheets has posted a .355 average and a .451 ISO, proving that when he bats with men on base, the baseball leaves the bat with intent. Fernando Tatis Jr. is hitting .290 with a .671 wOBA, although surprisingly his power has completely disappeared in those situations (his ISO remains .000, meaning he has not recorded an extra-base hit with RISP this season).

The problem is that baseball is not an individual equation. It is a nine-man one. And when three or four of those nine cannot execute in critical moments, the total collapses everything the others are building.

To get a complete picture, let's dive into that sweep at the hands of the Phillies.

Monday, Game 1. The Padres loaded the bases with nobody out in the first inning against Jesús Luzardo. Nobody out. Bases loaded. It was the kind of moment that defines a series, the moment where winning teams seize control and refuse to give it back. Machado struck out. Merrill struck out. Castellanos grounded out to shortstop. Zero runs.

Luzardo carried the enormous weight of that escape through the next five innings and still never allowed a run. In the third inning, the Padres again put the first two hitters on base. Bogaerts grounded into a force out. Machado hit into a double play. Threat over, zero runs. San Diego lost 3-0.

Tuesday looked different on the surface (the Padres scored three runs), but the underlying pattern stayed the same. Machado came to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the eighth and runners on first and second. The Phillies led 4-3. Machado attacked the first pitch from Brad Keller and rolled it to third base for the inning’s final out. The Padres lost 4-3.

Wednesday brought Cristopher Sánchez, who extended his streak of consecutive scoreless innings to 44⅔, breaking a 115-year-old Phillies franchise record. In the fourth inning, Laureano ripped a two-out double that threatened the streak. Merrill, needing only any kind of hit, grounded out to second baseman Bryson Stott. San Diego lost 3-0. The sweep was complete.

What makes these three losses so revealing is not what Philadelphia did right, but the consistency with which San Diego arrived at the critical moment and failed to cross it. Not once. Not twice. Systematically, as though an invisible wall existed between second base and home plate.

And yet, this is where the narrative becomes complicated in the best possible way. The Padres are 7-6 in one-run games. San Diego has still found ways to win seven times. Not simply stay close. Win. Someone delivered the necessary hit. Someone refused to shrink under pressure.

But they also lost six. And many of those losses carry the unmistakable signature of failed RISP opportunities. A 7-6 record is not the mark of a bad team. It is the mark of a team that knows how to compete but still has not learned how to flip the scoreboard often enough. And there is a massive difference between those two things.

The teams that win in October are not necessarily the teams that compete the hardest. They are the teams that convert opportunities into runs with enough consistency for close games to tilt in their favor. The Padres are showing the first half of that equation—they keep reaching close games—but they continue failing the second.

What can they do? The honest answer is: wait for the BABIP to normalize. A .057 BABIP with runners in scoring position over eight games has to rise; the statistical laws of baseball simply do not allow that number to survive forever. Eventually, the hard-hit balls will begin finding gaps instead of gloves. Eventually, Machado will line that ball into the outfield in the exact moment it is needed.

But they also need to examine the hitters who are changing their swings as the pressure rises, and they need to have uncomfortable conversations about approach, pitch selection, and whether the effort to avoid making the “big out” is turning them into passive hitters precisely when they need to be more aggressive.

For now, while that question remains unresolved, San Diego’s runners keep reaching third base.

And there they stay.