Timely Play Has Put the Padres in First Place

If you were perusing the Padres’ team stats, you might do a double-take when comparing your first impressions of their performances to date against their standing in the National League West. Fernando Tatis Jr. is slugging .273 and has yet to homer, Manny Machado’s batting average is below the Mendoza Line, and two of their five players with a wRC+ of at least 100 are part-timers. On the other side of the ball, just three of their starting pitchers have ERAs below 5.00, one of whom (Nick Pivetta) has been out since mid-April due to a flexor strain. While closer Mason Miller has been lights out, their higher-leverage relievers have not been uniformly dominant. And yet with all of this, the Padres took over first place in their division on Monday night, after Michael King and friends stifled the Dodgers, 1-0, at Petco Park, the season’s first game between the two teams.

Contending teams have become the expectation in San Diego despite near-constant instability, with the Padres claiming Wild Card spots in four of the past six seasons under three different managers, now all departed in favor of first-year skipper Craig Stammen. They raised their payroll as high as $255 million in 2023, third highest in the game, before cutting back dramatically in the wake of owner Peter Seidler’s death in November 2023 and a subsequent battle for control of the franchise among his survivors. This year’s projected $209 million payroll ranks ninth. Yet somehow through the turmoil — including the pending sale of the team to Chelsea Football Club co-owner José E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones — the Padres are giving the Dodgers another run for their money.

But how? As you might have guessed given those subpar stats I cited above, the Padres are playing well above their heads relative to their raw numbers. At 29-18, they’re 11 games above .500 despite outscoring opponents by just eight runs, 196-188. They’re a major league-high 4.6 wins above their Pythagorean-projected winning percentage of .519, and five wins above their BaseRuns-projected winning percentage of .510, second to only the Rays. Based on their per-game BaseRuns numbers, the Padres have overachieved on the offensive side, scoring 0.22 runs per game more than their expected 3.98, but they’ve underachieved slightly on the pitching side, allowing 0.1 runs per game more than their projected 3.90.

Zooming in for a closer look, the Padres are hitting a cringeworthy .223/.294/.369; they have the NL’s lowest batting average, second lowest on-base percentage, and third-lowest slugging percentage. Some of that owes to the pitcher-friendliness of Petco, where the Padres and their opponents have hit a combined .218/.301/.346, but even after adjusting for that, the team’s 90 wRC+ is the league’s fourth-lowest mark. Gavin Sheets has been San Diego’s top hitter, batting .256/.333/.543 (147 wRC+) while starting against righties at first base, with a bit of DH and left field thrown in. He’s coming off a four-homers-in-five games binge against the Brewers and Mariners that helped him earn NL Player of the Week honors. Three of his nine home runs this season have been three-run ninth-inning shots that gave the Padres the lead — nobody had ever had so many in a season before — including his two-out homer off the Brewers’ Abner Uribe on Wednesday.

The well-traveled Ty France — now playing for his fifth team in three seasons — has been an effective platoon partner who has filled in at first when Sheets has played elsewhere, hitting .280/.308/.520 (132 wRC+). Miguel Andujar, who’s on his fifth team in five seasons and signed just before camp opened, has been a pleasant surprise (.298/.319/.504, 131 wRC+). His first-inning solo shot off Yoshinobu Yamamoto was the difference-maker on Monday night. Xander Bogaerts has been pretty good (.259/.332/.404, 113 wRC+). Backup catcher Luis Campusano has wielded an especially potent bat (.288/.362/.596, 169 wRC+), albeit in just 58 plate appearances, but he’s been out since he fouled a ball off his left foot and fractured a toe on May 5.

Every other Padres hitter is pulling in the wrong direction. Hell, Tatis is hitting .233/.306/.273 (70 wRC+) despite a 56.6% hard-hit rate because he’s hardly pulling the ball. He’s closed up his stance considerably, from 38 degrees open to 10 degrees open, his attack angle is more shallow, and he’s hitting to the opposite field more. His pull rate has dropped from 36.2% to 25.4%, and his pulled air rate from 12.0% to 6.3%, while his groundball rate has risen from 49.0% to 52.4%. MLB.com’s Mike Petriello took a deeper look recently, but suffice to say, the 27-year-old slugger needs to get his groove back. Machado is hitting .180/.278/.323 (74 wRC+) while shedding 2.7 mph of exit velocity relative to last season, and striking out a career-high 22.3% of the time. Jackson Merrill is hitting .202/.270/.324 (69 wRC+) with a groundball rate that’s up six points relative to last season. Ramón Laureano has been mediocre (.214./.293/.370, 90 wRC+), Nick Castellanos very bad (.198/.229/.362, 58 wRC+) even with a change of scenery, and both Freddy Fermin (.160/.247/.210, 37 wRC+) and Jake Cronenworth (.144/.272/.196, 47 wRC+) have been unfathomably awful at the plate. Cronenworth has been on the seven-day injured list with concussion-like symptoms since May 5, stemming from taking a 97-mph fastball from Yusei Kikuchi off his left jaw on April 18. He cleared concussion protocol that night and didn’t experience symptoms until a few days later. Perhaps owing to the time between the beaning and the manifestation of his symptoms, he didn’t realize that the headaches and grogginess he felt were due to a concussion, he said when he finally went on the IL. He had been “swinging at the pitches I usually hit, and not hitting them,” he said. In his absence, Tatis has been sharing time at second base with Sung-Mun Song, a 29-year-old KBO veteran in his first stateside season.

Despite those slumping hitters, the Padres are outdoing their ugly raw numbers thanks to strong situational hitting. For one thing, check out how much better they’re hitting with runners in scoring position than with the bases empty:

Major league hitters as a group perform better with runners in scoring position (.252/.341/.399, 106 wRC+) than they do when the bases are empty (.234/.310/.383, 96 wRC+), and while the same is true for the Padres, they’ve taken it to extremes in both directions. They have the second-lowest wRC+ of any team with the bases empty, 20 points below the major league average, but they’re seventh in wRC+ with runners in scoring position, 16 points above average — though alas, that’s in less than half as many plate appearances. San Diego’s wRC+ gap of 46 points between the two categories is in a virtual tie for the majors’ second largest:

Among individual Padres, Machado has been quite bad with runners in scoring position (.161/.310/.355, 84 wRC+), but that line is still better than his overall mark, and the same is true for the suddenly slaptacular Tatis (.310/.385/.310, 96 wRC+), who has yet to record an extra-base hit in that context. All of the other regulars save for Fermin and Croneworth have a wRC+ of 100 or better with runners in scoring position, led by Sheets (.385/.429/.923, 274 wRC+), who has four home runs and 16 RBI in 28 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, and Merrill (.333/.447/.538, 176 wRC+). Even Castellanos has been very good (.286/.323/.571, 138 wRC+ in 31 PA) under those circumstances. We’re not talking about large sample sizes, but for the most part, the hitters have risen to the occasion. That’s also true when considering high-leverage situations based on the inning and game state:

Led by Sheets (.417/.417/1.167, 343 wRC+ in 12 PA), Padres hitters have done exceptionally well under high-leverage circumstances (Leverage Index of 2.0 or higher), though again Tatis (.222/.333/.222, 44 wRC+ in 16 PA) and Machado (.111/.286/.444, 71 wRC+ in 14 PA) are among the laggards. At all other times, they have been meh as a team; in fact, San Diego’s 86 wRC+ (.218/.288/.357) in anything but high-leverage situations is in a virtual tie with the Giants for the lowest in the majors.

On that note, the Padres are now 7-4 in one-run games and 7-1 in two-run games; their combined .737 winning percentage in games decided by two or fewer runs is the majors’ best after Monday’s one-run victory and a one-run loss by the Reds (14-6, .700), who slipped below the Rays (13-5, .722) and Cardinals (.19-8, .704). On the other hand, the Padres are 6-10 in games decided by five or more runs; combine those subsets of games and they’re 20-15 despite being outscored by 12 runs.

On the pitching side, the Padres’ rotation has put up a 3.94 FIP (sixth in the league) but a 4.39 ERA (ninth); that’s a 112 ERA- once you adjust for park. King has been excellent (2.31 ERA, 3.40 FIP), and Randy Vásquez (2.68 ERA, 3.29 FIP) is in the midst of a nice breakout after adding some velocity and getting hitters to chase more often, but Walker Buehler (5.01 ERA, 3.73 FIP) is still searching for his old form. Those three starters have taken either nine or 10 turns, but nobody else has more than six in a unit that’s been beset by injuries. Pivetta made just four starts before landing on the injured list, and has no clear timetable for return. Joe Musgrove, who underwent October 2024 Tommy John surgery, suffered a setback during spring training and has no timetable for return, either. Jhony Brito is on a rehab assignment as he works his way back from May 2025 Tommy John surgery, but Yu Darvish will miss the season after undergoing UCL internal brace surgery in November. Germán Márquez, who put up Coors Field-like numbers in his first six starts for the Padres (5.76 ERA, 6.64 FIP), has been sidelined since May 1 due to an irritated nerve in his right forearm; he just began a throwing program but won’t be back for a few more weeks. Matt Waldron, who has been pummeled to a similar degree (8.49 ERA, 5.15 FIP) while splitting his time between the rotation and bullpen, is out due to a right brachialis injury.

The Padres did sign Lucas Giolito last month to bolster their pitching depth, and he made his season debut on Sunday; though he held the Mariners to just one hit over five innings, he also walked three and hit a batter, yielding three runs. Griffin Canning, who joined the rotation after Márquez and Waldron went down, debuted with a five-inning, one-run effort against the White Sox on May 3, but he’s been lit for six runs in each of his two subsequent starts — two of those 10 blowouts counted above — while totaling just six innings.

Anchored by Miller, who has allowed just one run in 22 innings while striking out a whopping 53.6% of hitters and converting all 15 of his save chances, the bullpen has been a strength. The unit ranks second in the NL with a 3.12 FIP, behind the Dodgers, while its 3.38 ERA is fifth. That said, the setup men ahead of Miller have been a mixed bag. Jason Adam has posted a minuscule 1.15 ERA while striking out just 11.1% of hitters en route to a 4.19 FIP, and Jeremiah Estrada has been good (3.29 ERA, 3.25 FIP), but Adrian Morejon has a 5.09 ERA to go with a more impressive 2.72 FIP. Given the dominance of Miller and the team’s divergent records in close games and blowouts, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Padres have excelled in high-leverage situations on this side as well:

Entering this season, the Padres didn’t look much like contenders. They’d just completed a disheartening winter in which they didn’t commit more than $4 million to a free agent besides King (whom they re-signed to a three-year, $75-million deal that includes a pair of opt-outs) and also lost Luis Arraez, Dylan Cease, Ryan O’Hearn, and Robert Suarez to free agency. Our preseason Playoff Odds forecast them for just 80.6 wins, with a 2.5% chance of taking the NL West and a 27% chance of reaching the playoffs. But here they are, again neck-and-neck with a much deeper and better-funded Dodgers team. Particularly because so many key players are underperforming, this shouldn’t be working, and yet the Padres have risen to the occasion so far, time and again.