Good morning from San Francisco,
Freddy Fermin does not deny the challenge.
“It’s been very difficult,” the Padres’ new close-to-full-time catcher said last night. “But I’m very happy with how I’ve been able to (acclimate) to this team, learning from staff, learning from my teammates. I’m just very happy that I’m here. It’s difficult, but I’m happy.”
It was Fermin who punctuated a three-run seventh inning with a two-run homer last night, as the Padres beat the Giants 4-1 in the opener of their three-game series.
You can read in my game story (here) about how good the starting pitching was for both teams and how all five of the game’s runs were scored in an inning-and-a-half.
And, oh yeah, how the Padres are now just one game behind the Dodgers in the National League West.
Let’s talk now about the catcher the Padres got to fix their problem at the very bottom of the order.
Fermin has caught seven of the 10 games since the trade deadline and is batting .370 (10-for-27) with a double, a home run and five RBIs.
And, remember, defense and handling the pitching staff is the priority for a catcher.
Fermin, who did not play in the game after the deadline, has now caught six different starting pitchers in the past 10 days.
“The catcher is the … primary position where you have a really direct result in other people’s careers,” manager Mike Shildt said last night. “… The catcher has a responsibility to shepherd his 13 pitchers and work in concert with our pitching department and myself. And getting on board with how that works is not as easy as he’s made it look. He’s got a really high baseball IQ. He’s really smart, he’s really intentional about the conversations, about the relationships, and he gets in the game. He’s got a good feel and a good IQ for the game as well.”
Last night was perhaps the biggest step Fermin has taken with the Padres, as he caught Yu Darvish for the first time.
That, Darvish acknowledged, is a challenge “just because of the fact that I have a lot of pitches.”
Fermin had not even caught Darvish in the bullpen before last night.
“He did a great job behind the plate,” Darvish said.
Fermin is under team control for four more seasons after this one. So there is a while to go to evaluate him.
But what he has done is provide immediate validation for the Padres, who traded starting pitchers Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek to the Royals to get Fermin because their catchers were hitting a combined .203 with a .575 OPS.
Fermin had been Salvador Perez’s backup, though that still meant catching several times a week. Padres people said right away they expected Fermin would be better with even more playing time, and several personnel people called him a “glue guy.”
Said A.J. Preller: “We’ve never traded for a player that we’ve gotten more positive reports after the trade than Freddy Fermin. People were coming out of the woodwork talking about when they played with him, coached him, managed him.”
It is working out so far.
Big night
Jackson Merrill’s first three-hit game since May 12 ended a four-game hitless streak.
“Stuff’s not really going the best,” he said afterward. “I feel like I’ve been hot for like a month and just haven’t gotten a lot of luck. So just hoping for some stuff to fall, and we’ll go from there.”
Merrill has a 51% hard-hit rate, a 23% line drive rate and has struck out 19% of the time in 22 games since the All-Star break. In the 47 games leading into the break, his hard-hit rate was 49%, his line drive rate was 20% and his strikeout rate was 24%.
His overall numbers reflect the slight improvements in the metrics. He is batting .253 with a .674 OPS since the break where he hit .206 with a .602 OPS in the 47 games leading into the break.
But he could be doing even better lately with some better luck.
He is batting just .412 on hard-hit balls over the past 22 games. That is 72 points below the MLB average. Both of his hard hits last night resulted in base hits.
Even as his second season in the major leagues has not been as productive as his stellar rookie year, Merrill’s RBI double in the sixth inning last night improved his average to .313 with runners in scoring position. That is the best average on the team.
Sheets back at it
However much he plays or does not over the final two months of the regular season and into October, Gavin Sheets will be remembered as a significant contributor to the Padres’ success in 2025.
Even after hardly playing for nearly two weeks, he ranks second on the team with 54 RBIs and third with 15 home runs. His 12 go-ahead RBIs are tied third most.
It seems, however, that he still has things to accomplish in his first season with the Padres.
In his second start since the trade deadline, Sheets was 2-for-3 and hit the lead-off double that sparked the big seventh inning.
Sheets said the day after the deadline that he knew his role would be diminished but that he was OK with that, in part, because “winning baseball is the most fun baseball.”
Last night, he said, “Yeah, it feels good to get back in there and be a part of the wins.”
Sheets started in left field, as Ramón Laureano did not start for the first time in the 10 games since he joined the Padres at the deadline.
While Sheets had become the Padres’ regular left fielder, starting there 32 times in the 41 games leading up to the deadline, it could be argued that it was Ryan O’Hearn who took his playing time.
O’Hearn, acquired from the Orioles with Laureano, is a left-handed batter with some power who plays first base and the corner outfield spots. That is essentially the description of Sheets, except O’Hearn entered Monday batting 36 points higher (.286) and with an OPS that was 106 points higher (.837).
O’Hearn, who was the designated hitter, and Sheets were in the lineup together for the first time last night.
“Obviously, I want to be in there,” Sheets said. “That’s just the way it is. I think that’s how everybody should be. Everybody should want to be in there every night. And getting back out there and getting an opportunity felt really good, and I was happy to contribute.”
High level
One of the biggest plays of the night came as the result of a mistake.
On Giants rookie Drew Gilbert’s stolen base in the third inning, Fermin threw wide of second base, and the ball bounced into center field.
Merrill was running in to back up on the play almost as soon as Gilbert broke from first, and he sprinted in to grab the errant throw as Gilbert got up from his slide and ran toward third base. Merrill picked up the ball, in shallow right-center field, turned and fired on a line to Manny Machado, who tagged out Gilbert.
For all that Merrill did right, arguably the best part of the play was Machado taking two small steps forward to cut down the distance the throw had to travel and catching the ball far enough in front of the bag that he tagged Gilbert in the face. Gilbert would have been safe had Machado waited for the ball at the base.
“It was a great tag,” Shildt said. “I mean, if you want to get in the weeds with some of the good things we’ve done this year, we’ve done a lot of little things really well, but the tags have been outstanding. … Manny’s instincts for tags and meeting the ball and being able to get right there, he just has a high-level instinct.”
The Giants’ Drew Gilbert is tagged out by Padres third baseman Manny Machado in the the third inning Monday. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Up and down
Last night was Luis Arraez’s 33rd hitless game of the season, keeping him on pace for most in his career.
He had three straight two-hit games leading up to last night, giving him 39 multi-hit games this season, on pace for third-most in his career.
The net result of that frequent feast or famine is that Arraez is batting .292 and is in danger of hitting below .300 for the first time since he posted a .294 average in 2021. The three-time batting champion has not hit lower than .314 in any of his other five big-league seasons.
But he has been far more hot and cold this season.
Still, even after going 0-for-5 last night, Arraez is batting .340 (33-for-97) in 23 games since the All-Star break.
Tidbits
- Last night was the 34th time in his 107 regular season starts for the Padres that Yu Darvish went at least six innings while allowing no more than one run. That 31.8% rate is 12th best in the major leagues among pitchers who have made at least 100 starts since 2021.
- All eight fastballs Mason Miller threw last night were 101.5 mph or harder. Of the 14 fastballs Robert Suarez threw, 11 were 99 mph or harder. The 19 pitches 99 mph or harder were the second most by Padres pitchers in a game this season behind the 20 that Miller, Suarez, Adrian Morejón and David Morgan combined to throw last Tuesday against the Diamondbacks.
- Miller struck out all three batters he faced in the eighth inning last night. Jeremiah Estrada struck out one of the three batters he faced in the seventh. Since the trade deadline, Estrada has struck out 13 of the 21 batters he has faced while Miller has struck out 12 of the 20.
- Estrada has allowed one run in his past 22 appearances (22⅔ innings).
- Jake Cronenworth’s single broke a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning and extended his on-base streak to 16 games. That is the fourth-longest active streak in the majors, is tied for the second-longest of his career and is three games shy of his career-best streak achieved in his rookie season. Cronenworth is reaching base at a .425 clip during this streak.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. doubled twice last night, his fifth game this season with multiple extra-base hits. That is tied with 2020 for third most in his career behind 2021 (11) and 2023 (seven).
- Four of the Padres’ past five victories have come in games in which they scored the winning run in the seventh inning or later.
- The Padres struck out just five times last night. It was the 33rd game this season they have had five strikeouts or fewer, third most in MLB. The average number of strikeouts per team in a game is slightly more than eight.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.