Padres are already seeing a reassuring payoff from Freddy Fermin behind the plate

Spring training stats come and go. Trust doesn’t. And the Padres are already talking about Freddy Fermin like a catcher who has it.

That’s the sneaky part of what’s coming out of camp in Peoria: the pitching staff already talks about Fermin like he’s been here for years, not months. In A.J. Cassavell’s MLB.com report, you can feel how quickly the relationship has hardened into something real — the kind of catcher-pitcher trust that turns “good stuff” into actual outs. 

Padres may have found a quietly stabilizing answer at catcher in Freddy Fermin

And it matters, because this roster isn’t built to win games by being loose. It’s built to win by being sharp. If the Padres are going to survive the inevitable spring weirdness, the early-season pitch-count management, and the constant NL West knife fight, they need stability in the places fans don’t always watch closely. Catcher is one of those places.

The best example is how pitchers describe him. Mason Miller, for one, got an instant scouting report from Lucas Erceg the moment Miller landed in San Diego last summer: Fermin was going to “live and die” with him on every pitch. That’s a pitcher basically saying, I trust this guy to steer the car at 100 miles per hour. 

What makes it more impressive is that Fermin didn’t get the easy version of the job. He arrived midseason and had to learn an entire staff on the fly — which is brutal for any catcher, and even worse when you’re being asked to guide guys with distinct weapons and clear preferences. Craig Stammen even pointed to specific growing pains with Jeremiah Estrada, where pitch selection needed to evolve as they learned each other. The point wasn’t that Fermin was perfect. The point was that he adjusted, and the pitchers noticed. 

That’s why Randy Vásquez calling him “my guy” lands the way it does. That’s a pitcher saying the work is real, the communication is real, and the game plan is actually getting through. 

The Padres paid for this, too. They didn’t acquire Fermin as a throw-in — they traded Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek to get him. And when a front office spends pitching to buy certainty, it’s telling you what it values.

San Diego doesn’t need a catcher who merely catches. They need one who calms innings down, keeps pitchers aggressive, and turns a talented staff into a coordinated one. If Fermin really is that guy over a full season, it’s a reassuring payoff that could quietly swing the entire 2026 story.