Good morning from San Francisco,
The Padres getting 14 hits and scoring 10 runs last night to break out of their offensive rut had everything to do with their approach.
“We were aggressive,” Gavin Sheets said. “We were in attack mode, which is good. We’ve talked about (how) we have waited until later in the games to get in attack mode. As a team, we made a decision to get in attack mode early and put some really good at-bats together and put a lot of pressure on them. … It’s a good form of baseball.”
It doesn’t matter where a player is batting in the order if he is passive or making bad swing decisions or whatever else might contribute to the poor quality of a plate appearance.
So credit to the Padres players and to the hitting coaches.
“You could put a finger on a number of things,” manager Craig Stammen said. “I think bringing awareness to it, talking about it, moving things around, you know, whatever it is. I think one thing is, they’re a determined group, and they’re not satisfied with just being OK. They want to be great. And I think today was a little bit of them showing that’s what they’re in for this season.”
But give some credit to Stammen for being bold.
It didn’t hurt anything, and it probably at least sent a message that he ain’t messing around.
Relatively speaking, Stammen blew up the batting order yesterday.
The pin pulled in that grenade was dropping Fernando Tatis Jr. from second to fifth, the lowest he has batted since early in his rookie season.
Stammen downplayed the significance of his move before and after the game.
But a lot of managers don’t do that to struggling stars. Bob Melvin didn’t do it to Xander Bogaerts in 2023. Mike Shildt didn’t do it to Luis Arraez in 2025.
Stammen, a rookie manager, has acknowledged he is on a learning curve. But he is in some ways already playing chess, thinking several moves ahead.
“I want to be open to different ideas,” he said. “I want to be creative … and not subject to ‘This is how it has to be.’ Part of that philosophy is that I want to be pliable throughout the season so when we really need to be pliable, when it matters most, it’s not panic; it’s just kind of what we do.”
Just better
You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres’ 10-5 victory over the Giants went down, including how Walker Buehler recovered from a pair of two-run innings at the start to pitch into the sixth and how Sung-Mun Song had a big night in his first major league start.
Today will be the first newsletter in four days that doesn’t talk about how the Padres did not jump on the opposing starting pitcher.
The biggest thing that happened last night was that Padres hitters took advantage of Logan Webb leaving his sinker (and other pitches) up in the zone. Moreover, they swung at those pitches and put them in play.
They didn’t wait to fall behind, as they had against Trevor McDonald on Monday.
“You try to put your best swing on a little early,” Bogaerts said. “… He gets settled in, like that guy yesterday. That guy got in a groove, and he didn’t care who you were. He was going after you with strikes. Webb also throws a lot of strikes. So we tried to get him early, and it worked out good.”
The Padres saw just 21 pitches from Webb in the fourth inning. That is preposterous. Nine batters, five hits, five runs all in 21 pitches.
They saw just 24 pitches when scoring five runs in the ninth inning against the Rockies on April 23. But that inning came with a three-run homer.
Not every quality at-bat is eight pitches long.
Sometimes the Padres are at their best when they don’t wait around. It can look ugly when it results in three straight outs. But the great balance is between being disciplined and being passive.
Their primary problem this season has been not doing damage on pitches they should.
They are batting .274 on pitches in the strike zone this season. That is six points below the MLB average and 30 to 40 points below the league leaders in that category.
“I think it’s the identity of our team,” Stammen said of the selective aggressiveness. “We like to swing the bat. And if they feel like they’re getting a good pitch to hit, they’re going to swing the bat. And we give them the freedom to do that. We trust that they have great swings and that they can hit mistakes. And they hit the mistakes today, and we got the good results.”
Tatis’ take
Tatis certainly felt a certain type of way about being dropped in the order, as any player of his stature would.
But his public reaction demonstrated the proper humility.
“I’m just another baseball player,” he said.
Also, there was the matter of his entering the game with a .625 OPS and having not hit a home run and increasingly having struck out and hit the ball on the ground.
“I just know baseball,” Tatis said. “I know how baseball works. And that’s it.”
Meaning if you’re not hitting, you should have no expectations to continue hitting near the top of the order.
That does not mean Tatis won’t be back hitting second, third or fourth soon.
He still has the potential to be the most dangerous batter in the Padres’ lineup, and pitchers still approach him that way.
Tatis doubled last night on a soft line drive to right field. His other four at-bats: three groundball outs and a strikeout.
Eight of his past 11 balls in play have been grounders. That includes three hits.
Merrill rising?
If Jackson Merrill continues to make swing decisions like he has in his past five games, he could see more time as the Padres’ leadoff batter.
“For sure, he’s an option at the top of the order,” Stammen said. “That’s a place that is not going to be someone’s (for) the entire season. It’s going to be continuously changed in and out based on how the team is playing, how the guy at the top is hitting and how he is setting the table. So although he didn’t get off to a great start as the leadoff hitter, I think we proved getting him more at-bats at the top of the lineup is a good thing.”
Merrill was 0-for-3 with a walk last Wednesday in his only previous game in the leadoff spot and began last night with two strikeouts before finishing with three consecutive hits. That included an RBI single and RBI double.
It was his third multi-hit effort in his past four games. He is 8-for-17 with a double and a homer in that span and has raised his season batting average 35 points to .235.
The most noticeable change for Merrill is that he has been more disciplined while also being aggressive in the zone and, for the most, hitting pitches he should.
He did have an eight-pitch at-bat last night in which he fouled off a cutter up and over the middle before striking out two pitches later by chasing a cutter up and in off the plate. But, as I am sure he might put it, that is because hitting is f—ing hard, dude.
Merrill has over the past five games chased just 25% of the pitches he has seen outside the strike zone. He was before that chasing at a 38.3% rate, 16th highest in the majors.
Ramón Laureano, who has hit leadoff each of the past 23 games he has started, sat last night. Laureano is 5-for-31 (.151) with 15 strikeouts in his past nine games.
Buehler pushes through
Buehler left a slider up over the middle of the plate, and Casey Schmitt did what a major league batter is supposed to do when given such a pitch.
“The guy is hot, that’s a bad pitch,” Buehler said. “I think there’s not a day that’s not a two-run homer.”
Buehler allowed two more runs in the second inning without really making a mistake.
Three consecutive singles — on pitches down and off the plate or just on the edge of the strike zone and none hit harder than 75.5 mph off the bat — brought in one run. A fielder’s choice grounder brought in the other, furthering the Giants’ lead to 4-1.
He then retired 11 straight batters before leaving two runners on with one out for Jeremiah Estrada to clean up in the sixth.
“At some point, there’s a responsibility for a starting pitcher to try and go deep, and I haven’t done a very good job of that this year,” Buehler said. “In years past in my career, (after a) tough first inning, it’s like, ‘OK, the job is now to go six.’ And so there’s a little bit of a mentality switch. But, all in all, I feel like we threw the ball well. The offense obviously picked me up and kind of, you know, put some momentum back on our side, and then a good third, good fourth and good things happened for us.”
While he failed to complete what would have been his second six-inning outing, Buehler pitched into the sixth for the third time in his past five starts. That followed his working a total of 6⅔ innings in his first two starts.
The extended periods of effectiveness are what the Padres are looking for from Buehler as they assess their rotation needs.
Lucas Giolito is likely about 10 days from joining the Padres. He threw 78 pitches over four innings in a start for Double-A San Antonio last night. The plan is for him to make one more minor-league start.
Song’s debut
My pregame notebook yesterday led with the circumstances surrounding Jake Cronenworth’s placement on the seven-day concussion injured list.
You can read about that (here).
His being given some time off meant Song, who had been the Padres 27th man in Mexico City a couple weeks ago, was called up for real.
“Obviously, I debuted in Mexico,” Song said after last night’s game. “But I felt like this game was more like a debut game for me.”
Besides the expected excellent defense at second base, Song doubled to give the Padres the lead in the fourth inning. He scored that inning as well. In the eighth inning, he hit a one-out single, stole second and ran to third when catcher Jesus Rodriguez’s throw bounced into center field and scored on Merrill’s double.
“A nice debut,” Bogaerts said. “You don’t really see a lot of guys have an overall debut like that. Offense, defense, that stolen base.”
The plan is for Song, who bats left-handed, to mostly play second base. However, he was signed to also be able to fill in at third and shortstop when Manny Machado and Bogaerts need a day off.
Stammen said it has not been determined whether Song will only play against right-handed starters. But he said their other second baseman will still get his reps there.
“We still have the option of putting Fernando at second base,” Stammen said. “That’s definitely part of our plans. We are not going to stop doing that.”
Right choice
A part of the calculus when deciding whether to play Tatis at second base is that he is invaluable in right field.
“When he’s not out there, we notice it,” Stammen said. “It’s a big difference. Even (compared to having) good right fielders out there.”
It was noticeable on Sunday when the White Sox’ Colson Montgomery did not hesitate in going first to third on a single when he never would have if Tatis had been playing right field instead of Nick Castellanos. And it was noticeable last night when Tatis ran 92 feet with a top spring speed of 27.5 feet per second to chase down Matt Chapman’s drive to right-center field leading off the bottom of the fourth.
That ball had a 71% chance to be a hit based on the exit velocity and launch angle, and it would have been a hit had Castellanos or perhaps even Bryce Johnson been in right.
The Padres had just taken a two-run lead. Who knows what happens if Chapman got a leadoff double?
Hitting plays
Andujar went 3-for-5 with a triple and a double last night and is batting .322 with an .869 OPS. He does not have enough plate appearances to be a qualifier for the cumulative stats (average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS). But he probably will soon.
A balky left hamstring has kept the Padres from starting Andujar as much as his hitting has merited.
That is changing.
“Now that he’s feeling good,” Stammen said, “I feel like we can almost get him in there every day.”
Andujar has started 26 games and has 28 hits, that is eight fewer than Bogaerts, who leads the Padres with 34 hits.
Bogaerts was 2-for-4 with a walk last night. It was his team-leading 11th multi-hit game. Andujar’s eight multi-hit games are third, one behind Merrill.
Besides an injury history that has limited him to 313 games since 2019, Andujar was available for the bargain price of $4 million this offseason despite his decent production because he doesn’t do many of the things that baseball people believe project a sustainable hitter.
This season, he ranks 204th among 256 players with at least 80 plate appearances in barrel percentage (4.5%), 107th in hard-hit rate (43.3%), 125th in expected batting average (.248) and 137th in average exit velocity (89.3 mph).
Said Stammen: “He just gets hits.”
Left, left
Kyle Hart was the natural odd man out. That’s all.
He is a left-hander, and lefty Yuki Matsui had to be activated off the injured list.
“It was tough,” Stammen said. “He’s not one that’s deserving of being sent to Triple-A. I don’t view him as a Triple-A pitcher. He’s a big-leaguer. He’s going to be a huge part of our success as a team. He has been a huge part of the success of our team so far. But in the end, we want to try to keep as much depth as we can on the roster. You never know what can happen with pitching and injuries and weird things that happen throughout the year. So when a guy has options, sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can hurt their chances of staying on the roster. And that’s Kyle Hart’s situation right now.”
Hart, a former starter who was adjusting to a role that called for him to serve both as a left-handed specialist and long man, has a 5.40 ERA in 12 appearances (16⅔ innings). All but one of the runs he has allowed have come when he is working a second or third inning, and he has stranded six of the nine runners he has inherited.
Matsui, whose contract stipulates he cannot be assigned to the minor leagues without his permission, brings a 3.86 ERA over 126 innings (125 games) into 2026. He worked two innings in two of his final three appearances in Triple-A. He will likely fill a role similar to what he has in the past but also like Hart was, entering most games in medium- and low-leverage situations to primarily face left-handed batters.
Tidbits
- Andujar’s triple, which was his first hit of the night, was the 500th hit of his career.
- Andujar’s single and double came with two strikes. He is batting a team-high .289 (13-for-45) with two strikes this season. The rest of the Padres are batting .162 with two strikes. The MLB average is .169.
- The Padres’ six comebacks from deficits of three runs or more are most in the major leagues.
- Gavin Sheets was 2-for-4 and stole his second base of the season. That ties his career high set the past two seasons.
- Manny Machado was the only Padres starter player to not reach base last night. He is 3-for-23 over his past six games. This follows a four-game hitting streak in which he was 8-for-18.
- Machado is batting .212 with a .690 OPS. He had a .692 OPS after 33 games in 2023 and finished with a .782 OPS. He had a .695 OPS after 33 games in 2021 and finished with an .836 OPS.
- The Padres were 6-for-12 with runners in scoring position last night. They were 4-for-24 in their previous five games.
All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (12:45 p.m. PT).
Talk to you tomorrow.