PEORIA, Ariz. — Should one walk past the weight room inside the Padres facility while Xander Bogaerts is working out, there is a decent chance the Padres shortstop will be seen with his shirt lifted up in the front, his abdomen bare for all to see.
Perhaps he is trying to cool himself. It has been unseasonably hot in the Phoenix area this spring.
Or maybe it simply feels good to look like a much younger man.
“He’s a physical specimen,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “… The first day I saw him, I’m like, ‘Dang, Xander, you look pretty good.’ He just lifted up his shirt and showed off his abs. So he’s proud of the way he looks right now.”
The 33-year-old Bogaerts smiles at the notion.
“To be honest, every year I notice how hard it is to lose weight,” he said. “Listen, bro, I’m telling you, before, it was easy. But as I got in the 30s, it’s like, I’m doing everything I can and it still sometimes ain’t enough. So, like, I’m really big on looking at myself in the mirror and being like, ‘Alright, let’s go. We’ve got to do something.’ So that’s just me on a personal level. That’s just a me thing. Some guys, they look and they don’t care.”
This is all well and good, even impressive for anyone of a certain age who can appreciate every word Bogaerts said as the unfortunate gospel.
But about baseball.
Keeping weight off and sporting a six-pack as your 30s roll along might be difficult. Being able to hit a baseball is even more difficult for those who progress into what is, at best, middle age for an MLB player.
Bogaerts’ time with the Padres began in his age-30 season. And over the past three seasons with them, he is batting 20 points lower, reaching base almost 10% less and getting an extra-base hit slightly more than half as often as he did while spending the entirety of his 20s with the Boston Red Sox.
To be clear, Bogaerts has put together some excellent stretches with the Padres. He has, in fact, spent about half of each of his three seasons being something of an albatross in the lineup and half being one of the team’s most productive hitters.
He has dealt with a different freak injury each season, and it is almost as simple as saying Bogaerts has started poorly and finished strong every year he has been with the Padres.
After reaching base in his first 30 games with the team in 2023, Bogaerts proceeded to finish the first half with a .253 batting average and .731 OPS. He got a cortisone injection in his left wrist just before the All-Star break and closed the season batting .321 with an .857 OPS over his final 71 games. Those second-half numbers ranked first and second, respectively, on the team
In 47 games before fracturing his left shoulder diving for a ball at second base in 2024, Bogaerts batted .219 with a .581 OPS. He came back just before the All-Star break and closed with a .299 average and .770 OPS. His average and slugging percentage (.432) were third highest on the team from his July 12 return until season’s end.
In 2025, his left shoulder bothered him off and on through June, and he hit .227 with a .617 OPS through 72 games. A foul ball that fractured his foot in September was the only thing that slowed him in the latter portion of the season, as he hit .301 with an .831 OPS over his final 64 games. He led the team in average and OPS from June 19 to the end of the season.
The Padres’ Xander Bogaerts runs to first base during a spring training game against the Dodgers on February 22, 2026. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Bogaerts has no explanation. Not last spring training. Not this one.
He is a notorious tinkerer. Last season, he moved back in the box in June shortly before his performance improved. But he can’t even draw a straight line there.
“I don’t know,” he said of how the shift helped. “But it did, for sure. Sometimes I have a lot of answers for stuff. But that one I do not know. … You have more time, maybe. We’re seeing guys who throw 97-98 (mph). I think maybe just a little bit is a lot. I don’t know. But that’s my guess.”
The improvement in the previous two seasons coincided with his recovery from physical ailments. So staying healthy might help.
He played fewer than 144 games once in eight full seasons in Boston. He has played 136 and 111 the past two seasons here. And almost half of the 155 games he played in ‘23, he was nagged by the wrist injury.
Bogaerts does acknowledge the injuries, but he focuses mostly on what he has done and not done when he is on the field.
“Throughout my career, I’ve been pretty consistent,” he said. “That’s one of the hardest parts, because I feel like sometimes I put myself — I mean, I don’t put myself because I want to, right — but you dig yourself in a hole where it’s like hard to come out and then you come out of it, but it was too big of a hole. But, I mean, it’s better finishing strong than going a whole year just doing trash.”
In total, Bogaerts’ time with the Padres has not belonged in a dumpster.
He has been solidly above average, as attested to by his 107 wRC+, a metric that measures a player’s offensive production and weighs it against the rest of the league and sets 100 as the average.
He is aware that is not enough.
“It’s not that bad,” Bogaerts said. “But now, I know that’s not what I signed up for. You sign up for greater and doing really good things. Doing really good things for just a half, as opposed to the whole year, that is not good enough.”
Bogaerts knows he is not — and cannot be — judged without bias. His performance is always weighed against the stacks of cash piled up on the other side of the scale.
He is the shortstop making $25 million a year who has not yet justified the portion of the payroll he commands or that his previous performance promised.
Xander Bogaerts #2 of the San Diego Padres participates in drills during spring training workouts at the Peoria Sports Complex on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026 in Peoria, Ariz.(Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Regarding Bogaerts, who returned to camp Friday after playing for the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, Padres officials often speak conceptually with a mix of conviction and wistfulness.
“We’re a different team if we get the Bogaerts that we’ve seen for most of his career and for flashes here in San Diego,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “I know he’s had a good offseason. He’s excited about that challenge and being that player. We’ve got a lot of belief in him. He’s a big part of our team, for sure, and we’re looking forward to seeing that player.
“He’s a real bat that can hit anywhere — one to five — in a lineup and put up an .800-plus OPS. That’s a Xander Bogaerts season. And I think (if) we start getting that from the middle of the diamond, from the shortstop position — (if) he’s running, he’s moving well, he’s stealing bags and a guy that can play both sides of the ball, he changes our dynamics. That’s what we’re looking forward to seeing this year.”
Bogaerts too.
That is what the work is about. It’s not just about looking good and feeling good. It is part of an attempt to be good — to be the player he once was.
“You still want to perform like you know you’re capable,” Bogaerts said. “Or do that for the whole year instead maybe it’s just the second half. It’s crazy. For all the bad that I played the first half these last couple years, it turned out not so bad. But at the end, it’s not what I want to do.”