San Diego Padres baseball has always carried a chip on its shoulder. Big ballparks, marine layer, pitchers who eat innings for breakfast — and still, every few years a bat shows up that makes the whole league lean in. These are the hitters who turned Petco into a bandbox for a night, who made Jack Murphy feel like a Little League field, who forced national broadcasts to practice saying “San Diego” in October.
That’s the spirit of the Silver Slugger in San Diego, a trophy that means a little more here because it’s never been easy. From Tony Gwynn’s surgical precision to Fernando Tatis Jr.’s highlight-reel chaos. Each winner marks a moment when the Padres weren’t just staying in games — they were dictating them. Here’s the full lineup of Silver Sluggers, remembered the way it felt in San Diego.
Every San Diego Padres player to win a Silver Slugger since 1980
Terry Kennedy (C) - 1983
.283 with muscle and a captain’s heartbeat. 17 homers, 98 RBIs, top-10 MVP finish — TK hit like a middle-infielder’s worst nightmare and caught like a manager’s best friend. The Silver Slugger was the exclamation point before ’84 took off.
Garry Templeton (SS) - 1984
The glove was calm, the bat was timely. In ’84, Templeton kept the line moving and the compass pointed toward the franchise’s first World Series.
Tony Gwynn (OF) - 1984, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1995, 1997
The blueprint. Seven Silver Sluggers, eight batting titles, a lifetime of line drives you can still hear. Gwynn didn’t just beat shifts; he invented counter-punches to pitches most guys can’t touch. Every award is just another way to say: we watched greatness up close.
On this day in 1999, Tony Gwynn joined the 3,000-hit club 🧡 pic.twitter.com/47NZRFXRIr
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 6, 2025
Benito Santiago (C) - 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991
Four Silver Sluggers and a highlight reel from behind the plate. Benito brought juice to a position that’s supposed to be all survival. Lasers to the gaps, sneaky pop, and nights where his bat flipped the game from defense-first to Padres-by-plenty.
Fred McGriff (1B) - 1992
Crime Dog doing Crime Dog things: 35 homers, 104 driven in, and that effortless, towering carry to right. Paired with Sheff, it was appointment baseball, two middle-order stars who made pitchers choose their headache.
Gary Sheffield (3B) - 1992
The bat waggle, the whip, the .330 batting title — Sheffield’s lone full ride in San Diego was pure electricity. Thirty-three homers, 100 RBIs, and a Silver Slugger that felt like a promise kept every time the ball screamed off his barrel. It was one of his five Silver Sluggers, the only one he won as a Padre before he moved on to seven other MLB clubs.
Ken Caminiti (3B) - 1996
Intensity made flesh. Cammy hit .326 with 40 bombs and 130 RBIs, looking angry at the baseball the entire time. MVP, Silver Slugger, and a season that dragged the Padres back to October with a snarl.
Greg Vaughn (OF) - 1998
Fifty. Vaughn’s moonshots powered a pennant run and turned the Murph into a launch site. Every at-bat felt combustible. When he got one, the whole ballpark stood up before the ball landed.
Mark Loretta (2B) - 2004
If you love perfect swings and professional at-bats, this was your guy. Loretta’s 2004 was pure craft, line drives on a string, situational hitting clinic, .335 like it was nothing. He didn’t just rack numbers; he organized innings.
Chase Headley (3B) - 2012
The summer he turned into a middle-of-the-order monster. Thirty-one homers, an NL-leading 115 RBIs, and weeks where every rally seemed to end with Headley jogging around the bases. For a minute there, he was the scariest at-bat in the division. We all remember.
Fernando Tatis Jr. (SS) - 2020, 2021
The spark that lit the decade. In 2020 he broke the sport open; in 2021 he broke pitchers’ spirits. The bat speed, the backspin, the rocket-launch celebrations — two straight Silver Sluggers at shortstop and a new definition of what brown-and-gold swagger looks like. Since shifting to right field, he’s still hunting his first Silver Slugger at the new spot.
Tatis dijo que es su turno 🔥 pic.twitter.com/NNKF8zjndR
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) May 11, 2025
Manny Machado (3B) - 2020, 2024
Sixty games, zero doubt who set the tone. In 2020, Machado’s bat was the metronome of the surge, big swings, bigger moments, and the feeling San Diego was done waiting its turn. Four years later he did it over the grind of 162, stacking a .275/.325/.472 line with 29 homers and 105 RBIs, nabbing a second Silver Slugger.
Juan Soto (LF) - 2023
The year Soto turned Petco into his personal strike-zone seminar. .410 OBP, 35 home runs, 109 RBIs, and a masterclass in spitting on bad pitches. When the lineup wobbled, Soto steadied it — the calm, relentless centerpiece who made every at-bat feel like a negotiation he was always going to win. Now a five-time Silver Slugger, he claimed one of them in his lone full season as a Padre.
San Diego’s Silver Sluggers are more than plaques on a wall; they’re checkpoints in the franchise’s evolution. Proof that even in a run-suppressing zip code, the Padres can roll out hitters who tilt series. It’s Gwynn redefining consistency, Vaughn shaking the upper deck, Caminiti daring the moment, Tatis changing camera angles, Machado setting standards, Soto turning patience into pain.
That’s the thread: stars who made the ballpark, and the conversation, feel smaller the second they stepped in. The next time a Padres bat starts bending the narrative again, you’ll know the feeling. We’ve seen it before. And we’re ready for the next chapter.