Randy Holt

When it comes to the offense and pitching staff (the latter of which specifically applies to the rotation), the San Diego Padres are floundering. Despite keeping up with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West standings through more than a month to open 2026, they're currently mired in third place with very little optimism of working themselves out of a late-May-early-June swoon anytime soon. That doesn't mean it's all bad, though. In addition to the bullpen, which has been a predictable strength of the roster, the team's defense has been much-improved. That progression comes despite the team routinely spending time lingering in the bottom half of the league in defensive output over the last handful of seasons. No position seemed to be immune to the struggle on that side of the ball. Take 2024, for example. The Padres ranked 22nd in the league in Fielding Run Value (-16). FRV represents the most logical route toward evaluating the collective, given its comprehensive approach to not only glove work but also throwing value (i.e., arm strength, accuracy, etc.). Jackson Merrill led the way that year with a FRV of 10, with Ha-Seong Kim's 4 FRV ranking second on the team. From there, it was a steady stream downhill. Regulars Xander Bogaerts (-1), Jake Cronenworth (-4), Luis Arráez (-4), and Jurickson Profar (-6), all finished under the average threshold by the metric. The catching situation was nothing short of a disaster, with Kyle Higashioka (-2) and Luis Campusano (-13) weighing down the group further. The 2025 campaign demonstrated a continued struggle on that side of the ball. Even with a rapid ascent up the FRV board from Fernando Tatis Jr. (9) and Xander Bogaerts (7), the group still finished 17th with a -2 FRV as a collective. Cronenworth and Arráez were below average at two positions each, while trade deadline acquisition Ramón Laureano managed that feat at all three outfield positions. Meanwhile, Manny Machado checked in at -4 FRV, while Martín Maldonado was the caboose at -6. Even with steady work behind the plate from catching mate Elías Díaz, the catching in particular was another source of struggle that compounded with modestly-below-average play elsewhere to give the Padres a firmly below-average defense. Things have shifted heavily in 2026, however. The Padres are fourth in the league with a FRV of 17. That trails the first-place Chicago Cubs (27) by a heavy amount, but is just one notch below second-place Boston's 18. It's the result not only of improvement at key positions, but a progression by multiple players who had struggled over the last couple of years. Catching represents the most obvious area of improvement, especially given the struggles of individual backstops over the last couple of seasons. This year, however, it's an area of strength. Each of Freddy Fermin (2) and Rodolfo Durán (2) are comfortably above average in FRV, while Luis Campusano (0) is checking in at exactly average in his own right and demonstrating significant improvement defensively from two years ago. Durán's work has helped to ensure stability in Campusano's absence, as well. While that group is the most notable among the improvements, a couple of changes behind made to the roster configuration have also helped. The obvious one is moving Tatis from full-time work in right field to regular work at the keystone. Across 2024 and 2025, the Padres' -7 FRV at second base ranked 25th in the league. Tatis, though, is working with a 4 FRV in 225 innings there while continuing to offer above-average play in right field (2 FRV). As a result, they're now seventh in the league in their defensive performance at the position. First base is also a key area of improvement. Ty France was coming off a Gold Glove season in Minnesota when the Padres added him on a minor-league deal this winter. His 5 FRV is pacing the team and proving to be a massive improvement on the combination of Arráez, Cronenworth, et al. from last season. Only two teams (Chicago & Atlanta) have a higher Fielding Run Value at that spot than the Padres do in their cumulative first base work. Those key changes come in addition to improvements from Manny Machado (3 FRV) and continued stability at shortstop from Xander Bogaerts (also 3 FRV). Ramón Laureano had also been above average in this regard prior to his injury. It's possible that there's a positioning component — Machado, for example, has moved in a couple of feet on his average start point — but there isn't any one change that appears to be indicative of the more individual improvements manifesting on the roster. The full-time run for Fermin and change in personnel at first base are obvious factors yielding big benefits, as well as Tatis' move to second base. Regardless of the how, there isn't any doubt that this is a much better defensive team than it has been the last couple of years. Of course, how much that matters in the standings remains to be seen. Pitching and defense are always noted as the pillars of contention. The Padres have all of one and half of the other at present, given their deficiencies in the rotation. The defense isn't going to prop them up against their counterparts in the NL West, but it could certainly be a separator if the team is able to overcome its present shortcomings when at the plate and starting the game on the mound. View full article

The San Diego Padres were never going to be players in the deep end of the spending pool over the winter of 2025-2026. Their stack of long-term position player contracts worked in conjunction with an uncertain ownership future to limit any sort of financial flexibility. The sliver of it that remained went out the window when the team elected to bring back Michael King on a three-year deal. At this point, we know how the remainder of the offseason played out. With the additional exception of Sung Mun Song, A.J. Preller was forced into a smattering of one-year and minor-league pacts. Despite glaring needs in both the rotation and in the lineup, no positional group was immune to the approach. Each area of need was filled out with a little bit of each, with the hope being that enough volume would lead to striking somewhere. Unfortunately for Preller and the Padres, that's not really how it's played out. The following is how the team's offseason played out on the mound, particularly in the starting rotation: Kyle Hart: One-year deal Sean Boyle: Minor-league deal Ty Adcock: One-year deal Triston McKenzie: Minor-league deal Marco Gonzales: Minor-league deal Griffin Canning: One-year deal Germán Márquez: One-year deal Walker Buehler: Minor-league deal While the bullpen was an enduring area of strength, the rotation was to be filled out largely from this group. The names of particular intrigue were those with prior success at the top level: McKenzie, Gonzales, Canning, Márquez, and Buehler. With Canning starting the season on the Injured List as he worked back from an Achilles injury sustained in 2025, the early starting roles went to Márquez and Buehler. Márquez pitched to a 5.76 ERA and 6.64 FIP before hitting the IL on May 1. He hasn't been seen since. Buehler has survived a dozen starts thus far, with a 4.53 ERA to his name despite whiff and contact metrics well into the bottom half of the league rankings. Canning, since his return, has an ERA of 6.34 through six starts (and a FIP over five). In El Paso, meanwhile, Gonzales has an ERA over nine. McKenzie is rolling with a 14.85 figure through nine appearances (only three of which were starts). Boyle's is over six while Adcock has only pitched one-third of an inning due to injury. Even adding Lucas Giolito in late April hasn't done much to stabilize things in the way the Padres might have hoped after his first couple of outings. Through four starts, he's working with an ERA near five (4.86) and a FIP that looks much worse (6.64). He's averaging barely more than four innings per start after working just over six across his last pair of outings. And it's not as if it gets much better once you look on the offensive side of things: Nick Solak: Minor-league deal Sung Mun Song: Three-year deal José Miranda: Minor-league deal Samad Taylor: Minor-league deal Miguel Andujar: One-year deal Nick Castellanos: One-year deal Ty France: Minor-league deal With the Padres needing to improve their bench and discover some supplemental power, the hope here was much the same in the rotation. Even if it meant limiting the dynamic quality of the roster by filling it out with first base/corner outfield types. After a strong spring, though, Miranda never reached the top level for the Padres before he was released. Castellanos wRC+'d a meager 53 before his designation for assignment last week. Song got off to a late start due to an oblique injury but has been quite bad in his transition to the U.S.; despite nearly parallel strikeout and walk rates, he's hitting just .194 (72 wRC+) through roughly 40 plate appearances. Solak remains in El Paso while Taylor has just two plate appearances to his name after his contract selection. That leaves only Andujar and France as saving graces on the positional side. Andujar has been almost exactly league average (98 wRC+) but has provided very little power (.168 ISO). He's also reaching base at just a .285 clip thanks heavily to a brutal 3.1 percent walk rate. France, however, has slashed .277/.323/.504 with a 133 wRC+. He's offered some stability at what was a relatively vacant first base spot expected to be assumed by Gavin Sheets ahead of 2026. With injuries and production issues in the outfield, though, France's output has at least allowed Sheets to be utilized elsewhere. However, when you're looking at Ty France as the lone clear victory out of essentially 15 different contracts, it's clear that the way in which the roster was constructed this past winter constitutes an objective failure. It's difficult to lay that entirely at the feet of the front office given the strict financial straits which Preller and company were forced to navigate. However, there's also an onus on the coaching staff to maximize player production. The inability of this staff to extract any value from more than 90 percent of their signings from this winter, non-guaranteed pact or not, represents real shortcomings manifesting on that side of things as well. It's not that one expects a team to extract value from players who are past their prime or have dealt with too many injuries to be effective. That would be unrealistic and unfair. It's just the rate of failures that is hard to make peace with. When you compound that with the struggles of the established names on the roster — some of which could also be due to factors on the coaching side of things — you get the 2026 San Diego Padres: a team floundering after a strong start that was never going to be sustainable. Not all of this is within the control of brass considering where those restrictions came from in the first place, but it's a place with which the Padres may have to familiarize themselves until the core begins emerging from their collective slump or new ownership is able to inject additional means of adding impact. View full article

The San Diego Padres remain a fascinating case study of team success. They continue to sit within striking distance of the Los Angeles Dodgers atop the National League West and are still ahead of the field in the standings for the National League wild card. That continued success has not come remotely due to their offense, however. It's come in spite of it. The Padres remain near the bottom of the league in run production, ranking 27th in runs scored. They're last in team batting average (.218), last in team on-base percentage (.291), and 28th in their collective wRC+ (88). While they're closer to the middle of the pack in their power production (.143 ISO), they continue to be a downtrodden team in matters of scoring runs. The prolonged struggle of their three most essential hitters — Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Jackson Merrill — remains a problem of the highest order, with no particular end in sight. Throughout this continued struggle, there is one idea we've heard repeated. It's come from manager Craig Stammen, hitting coach Steven Souza Jr, and a handful of players: information. The hitters have all of the information they need. Each of Machado and Nick Castellanos have noted as much. The Padres have what they need, they just need to execute. The vision of what they need, however, is a fairly murky picture. Especially when you compare results and underlying trends to what Souza Jr noted ahead of the season: “What I am going to try and bring is controlling the zone, hammering mistakes, being able to make the pitcher do something different out there. Because when these guys put the ball on the barrel, it’s hit hard and goes a long way, typically.” Souza's quote is, of course, coach-speak, and you're not going to expect to see a coach divulge his plan for hitters in hopes of maintaining a competitive advantage. At the same time, when you have a team struggling as badly as the Padres are, even an outsider begins to wonder just how much there is to this whole operation beyond "hitting hard and watching it go a long way." Because the trends aren't lending themselves to much more than an abstract philosophy to this point in the season. The Padres are certainly swinging harder: After sitting near the bottom of the league in average bat speed, the team is much closer to the top of the league here in 2026. And while there's been some change in personnel, there hasn't been quite enough turnover to indicate anything other than this being due to the change in philosophy. The Padres are swinging harder by design. However, there's also an inefficiency to it. The only team making less squared-up contact in the entire league is the Los Angeles Angels. That's not particularly a team you want to be in league with on really any front. What is clear is that this increase in swing speed is coming at the expense of their ability to make contact. That relationship exists on its own, but there's also an approach factor here. Despite a collective swing rate that ranks fifth in the league (49.6 percent), the Padres rank just 19th in Contact% (75.8). They're chasing at the league's third-highest rate as well (70.6 percent) and whiffing at the fourth-highest (12.0 percent). There's an impatience manifesting here, and when you combine that with the inefficiency wrought by overly aggressive swings, you get a relatively punchless team at the plate. The mess in the approach is also reflected in the team's run value. Run value is considered in relation to four zones around the plate: heart, shadow, chase, and waste. The trends of the Padres regulars in each of these zones is also indicative of some fairly serious problems: The heart of the zone is where hitters should be doing the most damage. Yet, only Gavin Sheets & Nick Castellanos have a positive run value in the portion of the zone where run production should be simplest. If a pitcher puts something in the heart of the zone, that's your opportunity as a hitter. This is perhaps the most damning evidence of the Padre offensive plan thus far in 2026. They're also not handling the edges well, with only Miguel Andujar working that portion effectively, with only the portions outside of the zone — where value is derived from not swinging the baseball bat — proving to be a consistent source of positivity for this group. Again, we don't know what information is being exchanged between coaches and hitters and everybody in between. However, there's clearly an issue here rooted somewhere in the philosophy of the new staff. The approaches are questionable and compounding with harder swings to render the offense as ineffective as any in the sport. It's a problem with no end in sight, and the abstract quality of it all makes it especially concerning for a team trying to remain in contention. View full article

Lucas Giolito is not the pitcher he once was. The San Diego Padres are simply banking on him being better than he is right now. Giolito has made two starts for the Padres. He's thrown 10 innings and has posted a 2.70 ERA. Most important, at present, is the fact that he has a pair of wins to his credit. He has effectively navigated hard contact to the point where he hasn't allowed a barrel in either start. With a pitcher that didn't have a spring training, though, there's still a rounding-into-form that needs to take place before the results can be considered more reliable. That is certainly the case with Giolito. Because while the actual outcomes have been strong and resulted in two crucial wins at this still-early stage of the season for the Padres, they've also been imperfect. Giolito's fastball velocity is way down, at 90.4 MPH with the four-seamer. His 12.2 percent strikeout rate would represent a career-low, while his 19.5 percent walk rate is astronomical compared to his career averages. He's also still trying to figure out his pitch usage. In Giolito's first start, he was four-seam forward. He threw the pitch 55 percent of the time with a 25 percent whiff rate and 10 called strikes. Even without the velocity, it was effective. His changeup came in as his primary secondary pitch at a 29 percent pitch rate. It wasn't effective on the whiff side, but he also avoided hard contact entirely with it. Over the weekend, Giolito made start No. 2 against the Athletics. Therein, the pitch mix was somewhat flipped in that he threw the change 47 percent of the time and the four-seamer for 31 percent of his offerings. The whiffs came through with the former this time (33 percent), but not the latter. The A's were much more adept at avoiding chase and making contact than in his first start against Seattle, but the results remained strong across his second outing. What's important in all of this isn't so much the results. This is still a minuscule sample and it's hard to glean too much based on those outcomes for a player that didn't have a spring exhibition slate in which to ramp up. It's Giolito getting a grip on what he wants to throw and the subsequent effect of those choices. Which brings us to one element on which to keep an eye: where's the slider? The slider has long represented Giolito's tertiary offering. He has always been four-seam and changeup first, with the slider behind them. However, that pitch has only been thrown 15.9 percent of the time in his two starts this season. Is it a feel thing? Is it not wanting to aggravate prior issues by heavily utilizing a pitch notorious for irritating the elbow? Considering he's cut the usage by 10 percent off last year's rate, it's worth monitoring given the necessity of a third pitch in starting pitcher success. Of course, the results have their place as well. While the game for Giolito has been about getting settled in the rotation, he's going to be keen to improve the underlying stuff beyond his ERA. Especially given that he's operated with a rather fortunate .185 batting average on balls in play through those two starts. He's going to want to get the strikeout rate to at least a modest bump and improve his command to cut the free passes to a much more serious extent. Ultimately, the results have been what the Padres needed. After watching a stretch of starts featuring wobbly outings from Germán Márquez, Walker Buehler, and Griffin Canning, a couple of five-inning performances resulting in victories have to feel like a breath of fresh air. But as the sample grows, there's plenty of room for improvement from Giolito. He doesn't need to be the pitcher he once was, but there's going to need to be at least a bit of a trending in that direction for him to continue to provide such steady value for the remainder of 2026. View full article

Even as we reach the end of May, the San Diego Padres are, somewhat surprisingly, continuing to prove their meddle in 2026. Despite an offense that continues to linger around the middle of the pack and a pitching staff racking up injuries but not innings, they’ve been hanging around with the Los Angeles Dodgers at or near the top of the National League West. If they could gain some stability in the rotation, they could further fortify themselves as a repeat contender in the NL. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case quite yet. Facing an uncertain ownership future (that has since become more certain) and some payroll peril wrought by repeated long-term position player contracts from A.J. Preller, the Padres were forced into various band-aid solutions this past winter. That approach drove their additions to the lineup – in the form of one-year or minor-league deals – but has become more glaring in the rotation where the same philosophy applied. After bringing Michael King back on what is essentially a one-year pact, the Padres added each of Germán Márquez, Walker Buehler, and Griffin Canning on either one-year or minor-league, non-guaranteed deals. That trio joined Matt Waldron and JP Sears as candidates to fill out the back end of the rotation (as well as Marco Gonzales & Triston McKenzie as rotation candidates in camp). It was a group short on ceiling but also without a clear floor given the blend of past-prime skill sets and variable performance. So, it should come as no surprise that the results thus far have been exceedingly mediocre for San Diego. The Padres rank 18th in fWAR accrued by starting pitching (3.3), with an ERA that sits 22nd (4.47) and a FIP that reads slightly better at 4.01 (15th). Most concerning, though, is the fact that their 241.2 innings from the rotation ranks just 25th. As of the middle of the month, they’d been outscored 69-35 in the first three innings of games in 2026. While the offense itself is part of the issue in that latter number, the absence of longevity from much of the starting staff looms as the larger problem moving forward. It’s hard to think of an example of this more on display than on May 14 in Milwaukee. Griffin Canning needed 43 pitches to get through the first inning against the Brewers, walking four consecutive hitters and leaving his team in a 3-0 hole before it was done. Through his first three starts, he was averaging less than four innings per outing with an ERA that sat (deceptively) over 10 and a walk rate that checked in over 16 percent. It’s still a small sample for him, but the issues aren’t limited to Canning either. Márquez has a 5.76 ERA across six starts with an even worse FIP (6.65) and a strikeout rate of only 14.8 percent against a 9.4 percent walk rate. Waldron has an 8.49 ERA and FIP over five through roughly 23 innings of work. The issues have become more glaring in the absence of Nick Pivetta and repeated setbacks for Joe Musgrove. Had the Padres had their full arsenal of safe options among the starting candidates, this would be far less of a conversation. But outside of Michael King and Randy Vásquez, there isn’t a lot of stability to be found. It remains to be seen how much Lucas Giolito will help in that regard, but it seems as if the Padres will be in need of help regardless. Ultimately, the issue lies not in what the rotation woes are doing to the team at large, but what it could mean for the bullpen. Padre relievers have already been asked to throw over 200 innings, ranking seventh in the league. That’s an intense volume at this point in the year. Bullpens become more crucial as the season wears on, and the Padres will certainly want their top arms to remain as fresh as possible if they’re to remain in contention for the stretch run. Whether or not that can happen, however, is an entire mystery. Each of Márquez (even if currently on the IL) and Waldron appear on the shakiest ground. Canning has been mostly fine, if not at the mercy of terrible command and woeful defense. However, the Padres simply cannot sustain their success with only two starters offering steady outings. Perhaps Giolito will help to quell those concerns. If not, questions about this team’s long-term viability with such a patchwork rotation will continue to persist. View full article

To say that Gavin Sheets got off to a poor start here in 2026 might be overstating the situation. After all, he did finish April above the average threshold in wRC+ (110). For a San Diego Padres team starved for consistency on the offensive side, though, it was definitely an output that left something to be desired. Sheets' first month of the season was propped up heavily by his power output. He struck out 22.0 percent of the time against a mere 4.4 percent walk rate. That type of spread doesn't lend itself to regular contribution. As such, the power (.244 ISO) represented the only meaningful production Sheets was able to offer the Friars. That ISO figure trailed only Luis Campusano among Padres hitters in March & April, though Sheets' number came with nearly twice the plate appearances. In terms of total contributions, things have certainly shifted for Sheets here in May. Here is the breakdown of Sheets' performance between the season's first month and his work this month: March/April: .233/.275/.477, 22.0 K%, 4.4 BB%, 110 wRC+ May: .302/.434/.674, 18.9 K%, 18.9 BB%, 209 wRC+ It's not just that Sheets has been better; he's been obscenely good in general. No qualifying hitter in the sport has a better wRC+ than Sheets' 209 and only two have posted a higher ISO over halfway through the month than his .372 mark (Byron Buxton & Kyle Schwarber). How Sheets has managed to drive up his numbers in such an impressive way isn't any sort of mystery. For one, he's become more patient. Sheets' swing rate in April was 46.8 percent before dropping to 38.1 thus far in May. The chase rate has come down along with that overall decline in swings, falling from 37.2 percent to 31.3 percent between the two months. That increased patience has (obviously) allowed him to drop his strikeout rate while driving the walk rate way up, but it's also allowed him to do more with the contact that's being made. More specifically, it's allowing him to find the portions of the zone that are going to yield the most positive outcomes. The below visual is of Sheets' swing rates in and around the strike zone in March & April: It's not a bad trend, mind you, where many of those swings wind up. But there's also a lot of work down in the zone that's going to result in a heavy volume of groundball contact. Meanwhile, this is where Sheets is swinging to this point in May: There's been a much heavier emphasis on not only the inner portion of the zone, but avoiding those lower areas that have caused him trouble in the past. With not a ton of variable change with respect to pitch types, we can attribute the improved patience to his ability to lock in on more impactful portions of the zone. The areas of emphasis in the second visual (middle-middle and middle-in) are where we typically see his power manifest. That trend is present in the elevation of Sheets' contact over these past handful of weeks. After going for a groundball rate over 45 percent in April, he's down to 36 percent in May. His fly-ball rate, meanwhile, has experienced an eleven percent leap up to 30.3 in May. The quality of contact was always there, but his lack of discipline wasn't allowing it to be maximized. By honing in his approach and gaining control of the zone, he's been able to elevate his game to a fairly drastic extent, much to the Padres' benefit. View full article

You could forgive Jackson Merrill for a sophomore slump in 2025. It would even be tough to label it such. The San Diego Padres' young star dealt with a variety of injuries seemingly from the jump, facing a hamstring strain, a concussion, and an ankle injury before the season reached its end, to say nothing of the lingering effects in between. As a result, he experienced a decline just about everywhere on the stat sheet. Yet even clear of such health woes, things have only gotten worse thus far in 2026. As he approaches 200 plate appearances for the year, Merrill is bogged down in a .206/.274/.329 line. He's striking out at a 26.1 percent clip and has a wRC+ of 72. His power has waned, with a .124 isolated power number that represents a 69-point drop from even last year's 15-point decline in that regard. Just about the only positives to emerge to this point in the year are an increased walk rate (8.0 percent) and eight steals that put him halfway to his career-high. As the Padres struggle to find sustained production on offense, Merrill's early struggles have been right at the forefront with no such injury excuses on which to fall back. The issue with Merrill's early performance this year isn't even in the performance itself. It's the absence of an obvious explanation for why he's underperforming. Generally, one can look at a player's underlying trends and find a catalyst that speaks to the origins of the struggle. Matters of the approach are a particularly notable factor in performance variance. Merrill's case isn't so apparent, however. For example, here are his swing trends over the course of his three years in the league: 2024: 34.3 O-Swing%, 79.8 Z-Swing%, 56.7 Swing% 2025: 37.8 O-Swing%, 79.1 Z-Swing%, 58.3 Swing% 2026: 36.3 O-Swing%, 80.6 Z-Swing%, 56.1 Swing% There isn't anything remarkably different in the approach there. Even his swing distribution against different pitch types has remained within three percent over that stretch of time. Instead of the issue being in the approach, Merrill's problem lies in the execution. He's just not making enough contact. Here are those trends over three years: 2024: 66.0 O-Contact%, 87.6 Z-Contact%, 81.0 Contact%, 10.8 SwStr% 2025: 58.6 O-Contact%, 83.7 Z-Contact%, 75.5 Contact%, 14.1 SwStr% 2026: 60.3 O-Contact%, 83.4 Z-Contact%, 75.1 Contact%, 14.0 SwStr% That's a pretty cut-and-dry case right there. Even though his swing rate is at the lowest point of his career, he's not managing to translate that into anything meaningful. This is especially true against off-speed pitches. The rate of swings against that pitch type has only increased by a single percentage point, but his whiff rate against off-speed offerings has jumped from 26.0 percent in 2024 to 34.8 percent in 2026. It's possible that some of this, especially the off-speed element, is due to an increased swing speed. At 73.3 MPH, Merrill's swing is harder than ever. Conventional baseball wisdom, however, indicates that you don't need to swing hard to make meaningful contact. Is it possible that Merrill is simply swinging too hard in a way that's stifling his ability to make contact? It would represent an obvious connection between an approach that has stayed the same despite contact metrics that have dropped off since his rookie season. He's also been coming in with a steeper swing in the last two years than in the first. His attack angle in 2024 was just six degrees against a 10-degree angle in 2025 and a nine-degree angle thus far in 2026. A faster, steeper swing occurring alongside wilting contact numbers seems to be where we may find the root of the issue for Merrill. Especially with a hard contact rate that sits up in the 84th percentile (48.3 percent). That's our intersection. The approach has been steady, but the swing has become more aggressive and, at the same time, steeper. That means when contact is there, it's of a harder variety, but we also see less of it. That's also why the biggest issue in his contact has been with the off-speed, which feeds off a hitter's aggression. It's not that Merrill is swinging at the wrong pitches. He's swinging at them in the wrong manner. Whether or not this is something fixable within the confines of a baseball season remains to be seen. It's not a pure mechanical tweak like footwork but something that manifests more out of mindset or instruction. That means an adjustment will have to come courtesy of Merrill's own fix or from hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. Doing so in the midst of a 162-game grind is far easier said than done. View full article

The San Diego Padres are not a fast baseball team when it comes to moving around the bases. Anyone who has watched Manny Machado sidle up the basepaths would not be surprised by that fact. But while Machado represents the most noticeable element of the team’s collective lack of speed, he’s hardly the only sole representative in this department. In fact, when it comes to the broader major-league picture, only a trio of Padres would come highly recommended in their ability to scoot on the basepaths: Jake Cronenworth, Jackson Merrill, and Fernando Tatis Jr. Those three sit in the 91st, the 89th, and the 85th percentiles, respectively, in sprint speed. You’d have to trek down the 71st to find the next-closest Padre in Ramón Laureano before you saw another name from this roster. That there are so few fleet-footed members of the 2026 Padres doesn’t feel particularly surprising. This is a veteran-laden roster that is heavily comprised of first base/corner outfield types. However, the actual distribution of spring speed does paint a rather sobering picture of what the group is able to do on the basepaths: In the above visual, Luis Campusano represents the slower of the two catchers indicated, while Ty France is the slower of the two first basemen. Nick Castellanos and Bryce Johnson, respectively, are represented as part of the right field group. Ultimately, that is a contingent that falls quite heavily below average in matters of spring speed, or, at best, decidedly average. Interestingly, though, it’s not something that is proving to be too much of a surface-level detriment. We can see where the issue is manifesting for them, however. Statcast’s Run Value illustrates the value of the baserunner, taking into account runs created via steals or extra bases taken. The Padres actually rank ninth in the league in this metric, checking in with a run value of two. Where things get complex is in where that run value emerges. In establishing run value via extra-bases taken, the Padres’ ranking falls all the way down to 17th where their run value is zero. Instead, the run value they do have is rooted in their ability to steal bases, where they rank tied for second. That’s where the impact of the team’s collective (lack of) speed comes into focus. In the breakdown of run value via extra bases taken, the Padres are 26th in advances (6), 13th in runners thrown out (-2), and fourth in runners held up (-4). That’s where a team’s lack of speed is going to hurt you. It leads to conservative tendencies on the basepaths and a 23rd-place ranking in advance attempts overall (102). You’re not going to have a Manny Machado or a Ty France or even a Nick Castellanos try to grab an extra base. Such a conservative approach helps to buoy them in the rankings a bit in avoiding throw-outs and makes holds the more logical approach, but it certainly isn’t generating much in actually producing value. The steals game, meanwhile, is where the Padres are proving effective. They rank eighth in the league in steals (41), with Tatis (10), Jackson Merrill (8), and Xander Bogaerts (5) leading the way. An even dozen players have at least one steal to their credit this year. As a result, they’re fifth in league in run value added via steals of second (1), and seven in the league in run value in steals of third (0). They have six more attempted steals of second versus the average (which ranks fifth) and two more attempted steals of third against the average (which ranks sixth). Their 12th-place standing in attempted steals is indicative of a certain efficiency in this phase of the game. It’s important to note the difference in how sprint speed impacts the two sides of the Padres’ run value. A runner doesn’t have to be fast to steal bases. While it can be a positive factor, the concept of a read and a jump also have a bearing on a successful steal. The taking of extra bases, however, requires less on the instinct front and more on the ability to get around the bases with a certain degree of speed. The Padres visibly have the former but lack the latter. Given the two’s standing in opposition with one another, it’s hard not to feel like they cancel each other out. The Padres aren’t hurt in their ability to score because they can get runners into scoring position with the steal. They’re also held back some by a relative absence of extra bases being taken upon contact. At the end of the day, it’s the byproduct of the team’s roster construction and something that will likely be maintained moving forward. For a team that finds offensive production quite challenging on any given night, that's not the most satisfying answer to give, but it's one the Friars will have to live with. View full article

The San Diego Padres have largely continued to win baseball games despite an offense that has slowly worked its way from below average to more of a middling nature. While they continue to wait on the likes of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill to become regular contributors to the cause, it’s been an unlikely source spearheading the runs they are able to score: Xander Bogaerts. Bogaerts hasn’t been entirely lost on offense during his time with the Padres, but there have certainly been stretches where it looked as if the organization would regret his 11-year deal far too early into it. He’s done his best to stave off those concerns in 2026, however, working at a pace that has him to set to exceed his prior production just about everywhere if he’s able to maintain it. Through more than 160 plate appearances thus far, Bogaerts carries a line that reads .262/.337/.423 with a 121 wRC+. His 16.9 percent strikeout rate sits up in the 78th percentile with a walk rate that rests nicely at 10.2 percent. The former is down slightly and the latter is up more significantly from his trends since arriving in San Diego prior to 2023. Most notable within his performance, though, is the power. Bogaerts has a .161 isolated power figure to this point. That’s not a gaudy number relative to the league’s genuine sluggers, but he previously topped out for the Padres back in that initial 2023 campaign with a .154 ISO. The two subsequent years featured marks of .117 and .128, respectively. He compensated well in those two middle years with his baserunning acumen, but the absence of any real impact stifled his ability to contribute regularly to an offensive attack to which his place in the payroll indicates he should be central. Nevertheless, there’s a contribution happening here that wasn’t before. With a player experiencing even a modest upswing in power after an extended sample without it, the sustainability question generally harkens to mechanics and approach as preeminent sources of the increase. And what’s interesting in this case is that Bogaerts isn’t doing anything demonstrably different within his swing that is indicative of an uptick in power. He’s actually swinging the bat slower, with an attack angle, attack direction, and tilt that have all remained fairly similar to every other season on which we have data. The mechanics of the swing have remained just about constant. As for the approach, Bogaerts has remained fairly steady there, too. He’s become a touch more aggressive overall, raising his swing rate from 41.7 percent last year to 44.3 percent thus far in 2026. He’s also managed to make slightly more contact, so there’s a higher volume of balls in play. That tends to help the overall line, especially when the contact is happening to all fields (Bogaerts has driven his Oppo% up by nearly six percent). He’s also swinging at more fastballs (also by about six percent), which can help to yield the type of all-fields contact helping Bogaerts to maintain his production to date. But there isn’t anything particularly noteworthy within this area of his game either. What it may, in fact, come down to is rather simple: he’s healthy. In each of Bogaerts’ first three seasons with the Padres, he has dealt with an injury of some sort. He battled a lingering wrist injury and a calf issue in 2023, a shoulder injury in 2024, and a myriad of problems in 2025 that included his shoulder, hamstring, and foot. Only the 2024 injury cost him legitimate time as he appeared in just 111 games. The rest, however, were of the lingering variety which certainly tamped down his production across even games in which he was still playing. Which means that there’s a decent shot that Bogaerts is the same player he’s always been in matters of his mechanics and his approach. We know the talent has always been there. Perhaps something in the underlying data will manifest as the sample grows and provides us with another rationale. In the meantime, a healthy Xander Bogaerts is not only an improved player for the Padres in 2026, but an absolutely crucial one given the slow start of some of his counterparts. View full article

When Ethan Salas burst onto the Single-A scene as a 17-year-old back in 2023, it might’ve been easy to expect to see him playing home games at the top level for the San Diego Padres by now. Especially when he was up a level with Double-A San Antonio at the same age. Between injuries and subsequent uneven performance in the years since, however, he remains a catcher for… Double-A San Antonio. Perhaps not for long, however. Clear of a 2025 back injury that limited him to only 10 games, Salas has come out of the gates scorching for the Missions. As of mid-May, he’s slashing .320/.396/.546 with a 151 wRC+. His 23.4 percent strikeout rate sits around his career norm in the minor leagues, while his 11.7 percent walk rate is indicative of the improved discipline he demonstrated in his minuscule sample last season. What’s more impressive is the rate at which he’s performed over this last stretch of games. Salas has recorded hits in 11 of his last 15 contests. Eight of those outings have featured multiple hits. All of his home runs have come in that stretch, with nine total walks against 12 total strikeouts. It’s resulted in a percentile distribution that looks rather visually appealing: This isn’t a matter of a hitter finding a random hot stretch. He’s making a ton of contact and elevating the ball to the pull side. When those two things are working in conjunction with one another, good things tend to happen. Hence, the gaudy line you see before you through his first 110-ish plate appearances of 2026. The question is whether any of this will actually matter to A.J. Preller. Last year, we saw Preller trade his No. 1 prospect in Leo De Vries for a relief pitcher. Of course, Mason Miller isn’t just any relief pitcher (especially not thus far in 2026), but moving a middle infield prospect of his caliber amid the context of an aging group of veterans on the major-league roster still raises questions about how much value is placed on prospects for this organization and its leader. As Salas now begins to recoup his value, both in trade and in future projection for the Padres, is there a chance he’s the next marquee prospect to land with a new organization? This one is a bit more difficult to envision than the trade of De Vries. Don’t get it twisted. De Vries’ upside is massive. The Padres also have Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, and Jake Cronenworth around the infield in the long-term. Only Cronenworth is a viable trade candidate among that group, and the organization has been inclined to hold onto him through multiple bouts of trade rumors. On paper, there is personnel in place at a position which De Vries would be likely to occupy (with the “on paper” phrasing doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence). Salas faces much softer obstacles on his path to the big leagues. Sure, the Padres have two catchers with multiple years of team control in place; Freddy Fermin is arbitration-eligible through 2029 and Luis Campusano carries his through 2028. Fermin is a defensive-forward backstop without much to speak of in the bat. Campusano represents the inverse, with the organization demonstrating a prior reluctance to even allow him to catch given what some of his defensive metrics looked like. There are no established veterans on long-term deals standing in Ethan Salas’ way. And if he’s going to continue to look like he has this year, his promotion to the next level could be aggressive. It wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to expect to see him in San Diego before year’s end if the current trajectory is even remotely maintained. When one factors in the positional context, trading Salas in the same way that De Vries was shipped out would be a really tough sell for Preller. Luckily, it’s one that he may not feel as inclined to make now that Salas has trended back toward ascent rather than spending time in Stagnation City. View full article

When Kyle Hart struggled through six starts out of the gate for the San Diego Padres in 2025, the remainder of his appearances came in relief. Even short on rotation depth to start this year, that’s where Hart has spent all of his time in 2026. The results? A 5.40 ERA, a plummeting 14.7 K%, and an 8.8 percent walk rate that sits above last year’s mark through 16 2/3 innings. That work earned him a demotion to Triple-A upon the return of Yuki Matsui. And yet, there’s something enticing about this iteration of Kyle Hart (even if his recent minor-league option will put a pin on the anticipation). Last year’s version of Hart didn’t offer anything particularly inspiring. He pitched to a 5.86 ERA, a 5.18 FIP, and was only particularly strong in his ability to mitigate free passes (7.3 BB%). For a pitcher without upper-tier stuff, he also wasn’t particularly adept at mixing things up depending on the handedness of opposing hitters. This is Hart’s pitch distribution in 2025: There was a favoring of the sweeper against lefties that was balanced out by the changeup to right-handed hitters. Other than that, he was evenly spreading things out regardless of opposing hitters. Worse yet is the fact that deploying the change against righties didn’t make a bit of difference, as he was touched for a .359 opposing wOBA and 42.5 percent hard hit rate against that handedness. In 2026, however, there has been a stark change to Hart’s repertoire. Note that splitter down at the bottom of the distribution, thrown a mere five percent of the time in total. That’s where things get interesting: Hart’s splitter usage has taken off. He’s now throwing it 22.4 percent of the time, in line with each of his sweeper and sinker usage. Not only that, the changeup has become a thing of memory; he has yet to throw one in 2026. While the results haven’t been there in terms of run prevention, there’s something very interesting happening with that splitter in particular. Opposing hitters are swinging at the split 56.1 percent of the time. That’s the most of any pitch Hart is throwing. They’re whiffing at a 21.9 percent, also the tops of any component in his arsenal. It’s gone for a 25.0 Hard-Hit% and has yet to find a barrel. Even more importantly, it’s righties that are most heavily impacted by each of these trends. Not only are they following each one, they’re putting the splitter into the ground at a 66.7 percent rate. The value of this development cannot be overstated given that it’s a tool designed for right-handed hitters (and he’s throwing it to said hitters more than any other pitch at 31 percent of the time). It’s been an imperfect process given that Hart still has a .328 wOBA against righties on his ledger. Within that context, though, it’s notable that he continues to walk righties at a much higher rate, with five of his six walks coming against hitters of the opposite handedness. Nevertheless, the fact that the process is there speaks to an evolution that could be tremendously beneficial to the middle innings for the Padres. The strikeout numbers don’t look good. The walk rate looks just okay. But when you are working with a hard-hit rate in the 95th percentile and a groundball rate in the 96th, then you offer plenty to be a regularly utilized arm in relief. If Hart is able to gain enough of a grip on his command to right-handed hitters, there’s a real viability here that removes any thought of a restriction over which handedness he could face. The splitter is the springboard. He just needs to harness it. View full article

Despite a solid record for the first full month of the season, the San Diego Padres came into May sitting near the bottom of Major League Baseball in a number of offensive categories. As of the start of the Cardinals series, they're 23rd in runs scored (141), 26th in on-base percentage (.307), and 22nd in isolated power (.143). Not that this is surprising, of course, given the minimal turnover for a team that struggled to plate runs for much of 2025. That doesn't mean the lineup is operating in the same fashion, though. In fact, the lack of an offensive punch stands in contrast to what the lineup is attempting to do. The 2024 Padres — a team which featured five of the same regulars as this year's group — ranked 29th in average bat speed (70.5 MPH). They did, however, trade swing speed for efficiency in ranking atop the league in squared-up contact (28.0 percent of swings) and sitting 12th in blasts (10.7 percent). Despite a modest increase in swing speed the following season (71.3 MPH), the trend largely carried over into 2025. They were fourth in the league in squared-up swing rate (26.8 percent) and maintained the same blast rate. The trend here is creating quality contact despite a swing speed that sits behind many of their peers across the major-league landscape. With a new coaching staff in place this year, though, it appears that they've begun to deviate a bit from this philosophy in 2026. This year's Padres are up to 12th in the league in average swing speed (72.4 percent). Their collective fast swing rate (defined as over 75 MPH) has moved up to 26.9 percent. While the individual swing speeds vary in their increase (or decrease, in some cases), each of Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth, and Jackson Merrill have seen dramatic increases in their fast swing rate. When you factor in the subtraction of a notoriously-slow-swinging Luis Arráez and add in harder swingers like Ty France and Miguel Andujar, the collective increase isn't difficult to conceptualize. Are the Padres better for it, though? The below graphic shows last year's team, with their swing speeds sitting on the x-axis and their squared-up contact on the percentage of swings on the y-axis: Obviously the Arráez outlier obscures things, but you'll note where Padres hitters sit in proximity to the vertical red line indicating league average swing speed and the horizontal one indicating league average in matters of squared-up contact. Our interest is in the latter. These Padres lingered nicely around that line. Even if they weren't swinging particularly hard (outside of Tatis, Machado, and Sheets), they were creating quality contact in a way that yielded positive results in matters of batting average, on-base percentage, and strikeout avoidance. Squared-up contact doesn't necessarily indicate power outcomes, but it does serve to prop up an offense that may lack it. This year's Padres aren't looking in quite the same form: In 2025, even those that were not squaring up contact with league average regularity were at least approaching it. This year, there's very little keeping the Padres afloat. Outside of Tatis and Sheets, who are riding their swing speeds to really nice rates in this regard (and Bogaerts, who has gone the opposite direction), this is a group living well below where they were last year. So, while the Padres are near the top of the league in hard-hit rate (43.4 percent), it's much too infrequent to actually matter. It's also being driven by their hardest swingers. They're trading efficiency for speed, and, in doing so, have fallen to the middle of the pack in contact rate and experienced a subsequent rise in strikeouts. Squaring up baseballs in the eyes of Statcast is all about maximizing the exit velocity attainable on a pitch. The Padres aren't doing that in the midst of the paradoxical thinking bestowed by new hitting coach Steven Souza Jr., who is apparently driving them to do this. Given how things have transpired in recent games, in addition to how a handful of hitters have struggled all season, perhaps it's time for a bit of a reevaluation. View full article

There was a time when a first start of the season coming against the Chicago White Sox would've represented as soft a landing as possible. But with the San Diego Padres having dropped the first two of three against a Sox team that has been surging over the past week, Griffin Canning didn't quite get the calm welcome of a bad team standing opposed to him. Nevertheless, he managed. Sunday afternoon was Canning's first start in a Padres uniform after signing a one-year deal late in the offseason. After working through five rehab starts following last year's Achilles injury, it was an opportunity for the team to get someone else in the mix given the struggles of the Walker Buehler, Germán Márquez, Matt Waldron contingent in the latter portion of the starting five. If Canning's first start was any indication, some of that trio could be on the outs in fairly short order. Canning worked five innings (73 pitches), allowing three hits and three walks while striking out seven. He allowed one run on a Drew Romo solo homer, but did enough to leave with the lead (which was later surrendered by Adrian Morejon). Craig Stammen was intentional with how he used the deployed the newest Friars starter, limiting both his pitch count and his amount of turns through the order. Canning, for his money, was smart about usage, too. The changeup was his most frequently used pitched of the afternoon (40 percent) with the four-seam following it up at 34 percent (his slider/sweeper comprised the rest of his distribution). The first time through the order, though, Canning was heavy on the four-seamer (48 percent) before pivoting to the off-speed (47 percent) & breaking (26 percent) pitches more the second time through. Here is how things broke down for Canning in the start: The stuff played, to be sure. Canning was able to generate consistent whiffs with all three pitches and generated a fair bit of chase with the changeup and slider. The former was particularly effective given the volume of its usage and the raw number of whiffs he was able to garner with it. The location breakdown also offered reason for optimism surrounding his presence in the rotation: The fastball worked up, the changeup primarily worked down, and the slider moved around horizontally. For a starting pitcher making his first start of the season against a team on a bit of a run, it's not a bad looking distribution. If this is the version of Canning that the Padres are going to get moving forward, then he's absolutely someone who can offer the stability that the back end of the rotation has lacked. As easy as it may be to remember Canning as the starter who never realized his potential with the Los Angeles Angels, it's also easy to forget that he was beginning to break out with the New York Mets in 2025. In 16 starts, he'd posted a 3.77 ERA, a solid whiff rate, and an elite groundball rate. If he's going to simplify the arsenal so that his changeup and slider — pitches which have graded out as his best in his career by Stuff+ — are his primary offerings to play off the four-seam, then there's reason to think he could build on that small sample from Queens. At the same time, it's only one start. The Padres have had a tough time stabilizing their rotation with the volume approach. With Canning now in the mix and Lucas Giolito on the way, the former's first start is as good a reason as any in recent weeks for some optimism on that front. View full article