Good morning,
Once more, the Padres have risen.
How could anyone be surprised?
Well, there was the most recent road trip, in which they had horrible luck and played horribly. That made it tempting to think that they were fading for good.
But, really, this is who they have been.
I wrote (here) after that 1-5 trip and before the just-completed 5-1 homestand about their propensity to bounce back.
It doesn’t make us wrong when we say they cannot afford many more (if any more) stumbles.
Even with Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill having had sub-.200 batting averages and the starting pitching having been paper-thin for a good bit of the season, there is an argument to be made that the Padres should be in a better spot in the standings.
But that is not their lot.
What cannot be disputed is their resilience.
Yesterday was their 23rd victory in a game in which they trailed by two or more runs, one off last season’s franchise record.
Moreover, they have time and again reversed their own ineptness, rebounding after each long lull or short skid.
Another word for that might be streaky.
Whatever.
They are back in playoff position, having leapfrogged the Diamondbacks again yesterday with their 9-2 rout of the Nationals and the Diamondbacks’ 5-2 loss in Kansas City.
Yesterday was the first time in four days but the sixth time in 11 days the teams traded places.
“I think a lot of teams play better under pressure,” Merrill said. “I think for us, we know we have to lock it in. So it’s just locking in. You saw that this week. We’re going to continue doing it on this road trip and come back and play hard.”
Breakout
The Padres did something yesterday that they had not in the first two games against the Nationals. They pummelled bad pitchers.
It was their first time scoring that many runs (nine) and getting that many hits (16) since an 11-2 victory over the Brewers on Aug. 11, 24 games earlier.
The Padres had scored more than three runs just twice in their previous seven games and had not had more than nine hits in any of those.
And after going 8-for-47 with runners in scoring position over their previous seven games, they were 5-for-10 yesterday.
You can read about all that in my game story (here).
That story also has some of the details about the guy who powered a lot of that offensive production.
Merrill hit two home runs, tripled, singled and drove in six runs.
He is …
The third Padres player ever to have two home runs and a triple in a game, joining Ryan Klesko (2001) and Greg Vaughn (1998).
The 36th Padres player to have six RBIs in a game. There have been 48 instances of a player having at least six RBIs, the last time being Kyle Higashioka on June 26, 2024.
The 15th Padres player to have at least 12 total bases in a game. Steve Finley and Hunter Renfroe did it twice. The last player to do it was Fernando Tatis Jr., who had three home runs and a single on June 25, 2021.
Merrill has rebounded from a season-opening stretch of 62 games in which he hit .198 with a .594 OPS. In 81 games since June 9, he is batting .278 with an .823 OPS.
His .905 OPS in 48 games since July 19 ranks fifth in the major leagues. He and Tatis are tied for fourth-most home runs in that span with 14.
Merrill’s 24 home runs are tied with his 2024 total for most in his career. With one more home run he will become the fourth Padres player (along with Wil Myers, Reggie Sanders and Tatis, who has done it three times) to have at least 25 homers and 25 stolen bases in a season.
“He’s a dynamic player,” Walker Buehler said. “… Games like today kind of show you what kind of player he is. There’s not many five-tool guys out there, and when he has games like this, I don’t think anyone in here is surprised.”
Due, process
Merrill was due. You might even say he was owed.
“You ain’t owed anything in this game,” Merrill said. “That’s what I’ve learned the last couple years.”
OK. But he was owed.
And baseball is paying him back the past few days.
Especially yesterday. He would probably have been 2-for-4 with a home run and a single in a normal night game at Petco Park. And his single would have been an out with a better defensive first baseman on the field for the Nationals.
“Ball flew for me, so it’s good to me,” Merrill said of the conditions yesterday.
I wrote in Monday’s newsletter about Merrill having hit the ball as hard over the past two weeks as he had in any stretch that long in his career.
In 10 games from Aug. 26 through Sunday, he had put 12 balls in play at 100 mph or harder and had an expected batting average of .351 but an actual batting average of .250 in that span. On Sunday alone, he made outs on a 113 mph line drive and a 104 mph line drive.
Then on Monday, he was 3-for-4 on balls hit at least 100 mph. Tuesday, he hit a 105 mph sacrifice fly.
Yesterday, his triple to center field had an exit velocity of 102 mph and was almost caught by Jacob Young at the wall. But Young had to sprint 110 feet and ran into the wall a split second before the ball hit off his glove.
Jackson Merrill 2-RUN triple!
Nationals @ Padres#MLB #ForTheFaithful pic.twitter.com/SxH3l1RwdX
— San Diego Strong (@PadresStrong) September 9, 2026
At night, that ball is almost certainly held up in the air and caught where the grass meets the warning track.
Two innings later, Merrill hit an opposite-field home run that landed two rows beyond the left field wall. The ball left his bat at 101.5 mph. It was the 15th ball since 2015 hit at Petco Park between 101 and 102 mph with a launch angle of 36 degrees. It was the third home run, all of which have come in day games.
Merrill’s 106 mph home run over the center field wall in the seventh inning would almost certainly have been a home run any day or night in any venue except maybe Oracle Park when the wind is blowing in.
His single came on a 94 mph grounder that deflected off Nationals first baseman Andrés Chaparro’s glove.
Whether baseball’s penchant for karma helped Merrill, what is certain is that he has looked much more consistently relaxed and assured at the plate lately.
For one thing, he has chased one of the 19 pitches has has seen outside the strike zone the past three games and chased at a 31% rate while batting .333 with a 1.056 OPS over his past 13 games. In his previous 11 games, he chased at a 47% rate while batting .119 with a .458 OPS.
“I mean, you look at my last couple 0-fers, I hit the ball hard every game,” he said. “So, you know, just sticking with the process. Not trying to chase results. Just chasing wins, and doing it with my friends, so it’s fun.”
Right result, but …
In the third inning, with the bases loaded and one out and two runs having already scored, Padres manager Craig Stammen went out to visit Buehler.
And no one would have known Stammen lost track of mound visits if he had done what he intended to do.
“When I left the dugout, I was very convicted that I was going to put (Kyle Hart) in the game,” Stammen said. “And then that 90 feet to the mound, there’s a lot of things going on in my head.”
Stammen got to the mound and talked with Buehler.
“He said, ‘How do you feel?’” Buehler recounted after the game. “I said, ‘I feel good. I’m ready to roll.’ And then,when he turns around, I think I’m still in the game. … There’s a lot on my mind besides how many mound visits we have.”
Stammen began walking back to the dugout while Buehler retreated behind the mound.
But the umpires had gathered around the mound, and second base umpire Gabe Morales had already waved toward the bullpen.
Stammen was alerted after a few steps that he had to make a change, because pitching coach Ruben Niebla had previously visited Buehler during the inning. (Two visits by a coach in an inning requires a change to be made on the second visit.)
So Stammen ended up doing what he planned to do at the start, and it worked out because Hart retired the next two batters and the Padres took the lead for good in the bottom of the third.
“I’ve got to be more decisive in the moment or in that walk to the mound,” Stammen said. “I was decisive in the dugout and less decisive as I went. And when you get less decisive, the game speeds up on you, and you make a decision that you probably shouldn’t make. But it worked out really well. We’ve got a great team. They’ve picked me up all year. They continue to do that. Today was a prime example of that.”
All’s well
Buehler began the game looking like he had gone back in time to when he was one of the National League’s most dominant starters.
He struck out the first four batters he faced and got through two perfect innings before his second pitch in the third inning was hit over the right field wall by Keibert Ruiz.
“Give up the homer, kind of lose the zone, and every game matters at this point,” Buehler said. “… But at the end of the day, the offense carried us. Obviously, bullpen has been pretty taxed, and I feel like sh– I couldn’t go deeper in the game. But at the end of the day, I didn’t pitch good enough in the third inning to stay in there anyway. So, you know, credit to the offense and the bullpen.”
Hart had another take.
“I think it’s a good time to acknowledge just how good the starters have been for us and how consistent they’ve been,” he said. “And Walker is no different. I mean, I think we’ve won, what, 19 of his 31 starts?”
Close. The Padres are a stunning 20-9 in games Buehler starts. That includes them going 3-1 in games in which he has not completed three innings.
The Padres are 13-16 in Michael King’s starts despite King’s 3.00 ERA being 1.61 points lower than Buehler’s.
The Padres have scored at least five runs in 19 of Buehler’s starts compared to eight times for King.
Hot and not
The only thing hotter than Merrill was the weather.
Jeff Sanders had some particulars on the temperature in his postgame notebook (here).
That story also looked at the Padres’ hole in the No.2 hole.
The players who have hit second for the Padres this season have combined for a .654 OPS, worst in the major leagues.
Sanders dives into the nuts and bolts of that and talks about potential solutions.
One player who has done well there for them is Samad Taylor, but that was mostly before he went on the injured list in early July with an oblique strain.
Taylor was in an 0-for-12 skid going into yesterday’s game. After striking out in his first at-bat, Taylor laid down a bunt single his second time up and doubled his next at-bat.
Yesterday was the first time Taylor even squared since he popped up a bunt on Sept. 2 in Cincinnati. He successfully laid down a sacrifice his first game back from the injured list on Aug. 30 in Tampa Bay but had not done so since.
“You don’t see success, you try to do more,” Taylor said. “So it’s trusting myself and knowing how good of a bunter I am. … When I first got back up I was trying to hit my way back into the groove I left on. But bunting and playing my game can put me back in that groove. My game, I feel that if I put a bunt down in any part of the grass, it’s a 95% chance I’m going to beat it out or it’s going to be a bang-bang play.”
Yesterday was Taylor’s team-leading fourth bunt hit. (He also has three sacrifice bunts in 126 plate appearances).
Whether him getting back to being himself gets him back in the two-hole remains to be seen. Stammen noted in Sanders’ notebook he likes the idea of Taylor creating traffic near the bottom of the order to potentially get men on for Tatis.
Hitting the road
The Padres’ past four homestands have consisted of six games, and they have gone 5-1 in three of them.
They have just six games remaining at Petco Park this season.
Tomorrow begins a run of seven games in San Francisco and Denver. They return home for three games against the Marlins, play three at Dodger Stadium and finish the season with three at home against the Diamondbacks.
The Padres’ 32-39 (.451) record on the road this season is second-worst among the 12 teams currently in playoff position. Only the White Sox (32-40, .444) are worse.
Tidbits
Ty France did not get a hit Saturday, Sunday or Monday. It was a rare stretch, and he responded by doing what he has done all season following mini skids. He is 5-for-9 in the two games since then. Yesterday, he had his sixth 3-hit game. France is batting .294 with an .873 OPS in 442 plate appearances. Houston’s Yordan Alvarez (.312/1.022) is the only other player with at least 400 plate appearances to have a batting average above .290 and an OPS above .850.
Tatis’ three hits yesterday gave him 161 for the season, a career high. He also moved past Chase Headley into sixth place on the Padres’ all-time hit list with 881.
Tatis had two infield hits in a game for just the third time in his career.
Machado was 0-for-4 yesterday but extended his on-base streak to 10 games with a walk. He also scored for the fifth consecutive game. He is batting .400 (14-for-35) and reaching base at a .500 clip over the past 10 games.
Austin Hays singled in both of his at-bats against Nationals left-hander Jackson Kent yesterday before being lifted for a pinch-hitter. Hays entered the game with five hits in his previous 32 at-bats (.156). He was 5-for-22 (.227) against lefties in that span.
Gavin Sheets was out of his walking boot and standing in the batter’s box to track pitches during King’s between-starts bullpen session yesterday morning. Sheets, on the injured list with plantar fasciitis, then put the boot back on. Even if he comes off the IL, he will likely wear the boot when not playing. While he could return to be part of a designated hitter platoon, Sheets might have surgery in the offseason.
Most baseball people agree that a team’s record in day games is apropos of nothing. That said, the Padres’ 34-22 (.607) record in day games is second in MLB behind the Pirates (38-24, .613).
The Padres’ four-game winning streak is their longest since they won six in a row from Aug. 8-14.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, so no newsletter tomorrow.
Jeff Sanders will post a story on our Padres page later today setting up the regular season’s final 2½ week.
The next Padres Daily will arrive to your inbox Saturday morning.
Talk to you then.