Good morning from high above a flyover state,
The Padres played a truly blah game for the first time yesterday.
You can read my game story (here) about the 6-0 loss to the Tigers that completed a 2-4 road trip. Included therein are some interesting comments from Manny Machado and manager Mike Shildt and some remarkable facts about what made the Padres’ 25th game of 2025 such a rare dud.
We’re going to do something different in today’s newsletter and just talk about one topic.
And that one topic is to what extent the seams are pulling apart on a patchwork roster. And why.
I don’t promise too many clear answers. And that is sort of the point. The Padres don’t have clear answers right now other than to keep playing as well as they generally have and survive until they get one or two or three of their core players back from the injured list.
The Padres have lost five position players from their opening-day roster. We don’t want to trivialize their being without outfielders Brandon Lockridge (hamstring strain) and Jason Heyward (knee inflammation).
But when we discuss the big hits they have taken, we are primarily talking about half of their six core offensive players being sidelined.
To review, the Padres have been without Jackson Merrill (hamstring strain) for 15 games, without Jake Cronenworth (fractured rib) for 13 and without Luis Arraez (concussion) for three-plus.
Here is what they were each doing at the time of their injuries:
Since Arraez went down in the first inning Sunday, Gavin Sheets has been his sole replacement, both in the No.2 spot and at first base. Sheets was 1-for-4 and drove in a run Sunday and 2-for-4 with a home run on Monday. He went 0-for-7 with four strikeouts the past two days.
The absences of Merrill and Cronenworth have been going on long enough to be able to draw some conclusions.
Their primary replacements have been Jose Iglesias and Tyler Wade.
Here is how what two have done since becoming everyday starters out of necessity:
That might not be Donovan Solano and David Peralta, two heroes who rose from the bench last season, but it is more than serviceable. It is about the best the Padres could rightly expect.
You could argue that even though he is not matching what Cronenworth was doing, there has not been much dropoff with Iglesias.
And what Wade has done, well, you can’t knock it. Except to say he is not Merrill, which is both unfair and entirely the issue.
The Padres were 8-2 with Merrill. They are 9-6 since.
They are missing not only his consistent production but his penchant for producing in big moments.
Merrill drove in the tying and go-ahead runs in their season opener and then tied that game again with another RBI. He hit home runs that put them ahead for good in their sixth and seventh games. In his final game before going on the IL, he hit a two-run homer and later walked, stole second and scored the tying run in a comeback from four runs down.
Injuries to Cronenworth and Arraez are a blow. Missing Merrill has proved to be a crater in the heart of the order.
He batted fourth or fifth in every game.
The primary fill-ins in those middle-of-the-order spots have been Xander Bogaerts, Oscar Gonzalez and Sheets. Tirso Ornelas batted fifth twice. Cronenworth batted fourth once, and Yuli Gurriel batted fifth in one start and pinch-hit three other times in one of those two spots. Heyward pinch-hit twice for Gonzalez in the fifth spot.
Here is what players have done hitting fourth and fifth since Merrill went down:
That is a .267 average, one homer, five doubles and 12 RBIs in 15 games. As a reminder, Merrill hit .378 with three homers and two doubles and drove in 10 runs in 10 games.
“We know they’re coming back,” Machado said of the missing core players. “It’s just a matter of just keeping the boat afloat, right? And we’ve been doing that. We’ve been playing really good baseball, and these guys have come in and really, really stepped in big time for us. It’s good when we have guys like that that can come in and step in when some of our big guys are down and continue doing what our plan is offensively and defensively.”
What Machado said above is not incorrect. The Padres have gotten decent sporadic production from a number of fill-ins. But there is a reason some players are regulars and others are not. The “are nots” are not supposed to be counted on every day.
Just the sheer volume of players listed above suggests a whole bunch of things had to continually go right to counteract how many things have gone wrong.
Now, the other thing that must be looked at when considering how a team responds when losing key contributors is how other star players step up — or don’t.
Here is how the remaining three healthy of the Padres “Core 6” have fared, going back to the first game without Merrill:
It is practically imperative that Bogaerts slug more in the heart of the order. Machado can’t go 3-for-21 in the next six games, as he has in the past six.
Further, the next turn through the starting rotation must be better than the last turn (4.50 ERA, 24 innings).
Beyond that, what the above numbers show is that it really isn’t surprising at all that the Padres would have a clunker like yesterday or lose two series in a row.
Merrill could be back during the homestand, and the Padres appear to believe the start of the next road trip on May 1 is absolutely realistic for his return. Barring unforeseen complications, Arraez appears set to miss just three more games. Cronenworth is trending toward a mid-May return.
As Machado said, it is about keeping afloat.
Tidbits
- Machado was overall bullish on how the Padres played the past week. He provided one caveat: “If you want to look at something,” he said, “it’s probably going to be (that) we could have been a little bit better with runners in scoring position and getting a couple more runs on the board.” The Padres hit .146 (6-for-41) with runners in scoring position on the six-game road trip.
- Alek Jacob worked 1⅔ innings yesterday to run his scoreless streak to 9⅓ innings.
- Yuki Matsui began the season with four scoreless appearances (four innings). He has allowed at least one run (and a total of five runs) in four of his past six appearances covering seven innings. That includes the two runs he allowed in yesterday’s eighth inning.
- The Padres were shut out yesterday for the first time since July 19, a streak of 86 regular-season games, which was the second-longest such streak in club history behind a 103-game run from June 21, 2004, to April 13, 2005. Now, when considering the magnitude of this streak, we must acknowledge the Padres suffered two pretty big shutouts in the National League Division Series.
- Tirso Ornelas is still looking for his first major league hit. He would have had it in almost half the ballparks in the major leagues yesterday, but he instead hit a 407-foot out to the massive center field at Comerica Park. His 107.4 mph drive, which Javier Baez caught basket style with his back to the plate, would have been a home run in 14 of the 30 MLB parks. That includes Petco Park.
¡NO LLEGA!
Javier Báez le robó el extrabase a Tirso Ornelas🇲🇽 quien aún no puede conectar su primer hit en @MLB.
El batazo caminó 407 pies pero se quedó en la franja de advertencia del jardín central y en el guante de Báez.
— Miguel Lugo (@_MiguelLugo) April 23, 2025
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, and I am going to skip Friday’s game to work on some projects that you’ll see later.
I will have a story on our Padres page later today talking about why the Padres believe they are built to avoid losing skids. Jeff Sanders will have coverage of Friday’s game and updates on the injured players.
Next newsletter will be in your inbox Sunday.
