MLB power rankings: The nose-diving Padres

Wrap your head around this: The Padres would be riding an eight-game losing streak into the week if it weren’t for the unlikeliest of their hitters homering in the seventh inning on Saturday.

As it turned out, Freddy Fermin homered not once but twice this weekend after carrying a .392 OPS into Saturday’s game. Now he’s got twice as many homers as … Fernando Tatis Jr. … in this mind-boggling season that began with the Padres sitting as high as 11 games over .500 on May 23.

A scuffling offense suggested that pace — buoyed by late-inning heroics — was unsustainable.

Which is what we’re seeing now with the Padres — last in the majors in runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging and OPS — losing 11 of their last 13 games to fall eight games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and a half-game out of a wild-card spot.

Yes, there’s plenty of time to course-correct.

But is this group — led by the slugless Tatis and the majors worst hitter in Manny Machado (.169 batting average) and the slumping Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts — capable of pulling out of this nosedive?

Padres manager Craig Stammen has no choice but to believe their track records carry more weight than a dismal two months.

“Yeah, they’re just struggling,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Thankfully it’s still June, and we’ve got a lot of season left, and I think when you’re a superstar it means you’ve been very consistent over the course of your career. It’s always a shock when you’re not as consistent as you’ve always been. For them personally and for everybody that expects a lot out of them. But I know they expect more out of them than anybody else. They’re the ones trying their hardest and they’re hanging their heads right now.

“But we’ve got to lift them up and know that better days are ahead.”

The top-10

And the rest

Tags: