Padres' improbable turnaround from MLB's worst offense revived their playoff dreams

Take a trip back in time to the middle of June. Following games on June 16, the San Diego Padres had scored the fewest runs in baseball by five (and the team they were closest to had played two fewer games). They had the worst wRC+ in baseball by a lot. They had the lowest average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. By any measure, the offense stunk. For a team with that kind of talent, it was mystifying.

Somehow, they were still hanging around .500, mostly because of a great bullpen and the kind of grind-it-out wins that don’t hold up forever. Thankfully, the bats woke up. It wasn’t all at once, but since that date, the Padres are top-10 in runs scored. They have the third-best wRC+ in baseball. They’re middle-of-the-pack in home runs instead of at the bottom. And it’s easy to see why. The stars became the stars again, and it happened in a hurry.

Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill sparked the Padres’ offensive turnaround

The numbers for all of the stars don’t line up perfectly to June 17, but you can see how these players have picked it up. Jackson Merrill seemed to flip a switch with a two-home run game against Kansas City on July 19 in a 19-2 Padres win. Since and including that day, he’s hitting .378/.395/.732 with eight home runs and 17 runs scored in his last 21 games. His season line is still lacking, yes, but it’s gotten into respectable territory. If you like longer samples, you can go back a bit to June 9, and he’s hit .292/.319/.507 in his last 54 games. That will certainly play. 

Fernando Tatis Jr. has followed a similar arc. The days of waiting for his first home run feel like a distant memory. That power outage sparked a lot of questions about everything, including his role. But while everyone spent time picking apart his swing and everything else, he started to find the groove. He hit his first home run on May 30. His next came on June 10. But since May 30, he’s hit .294/.358/.506 with 11 home runs in 62 games. Since that magical June 17 date, he’s hit .289/.364/.524 with nine home runs in 46 games. Maybe there’s a slight correlation between Tatis and the rest of the offense. 

The third of the struggling triumvirate, Manny Machado, started getting going in June too. He was hitting .166 after the game on June 8, his third straight hitless game. But he had two hits on June 9, another two on June 12, and has now hit .265/.351/.515 over his last 53 games. He’s hitting for a far better average and enough power to help the offense not only stay afloat but thrive. 

And it’s not just the stars. Jake Cronenworth has looked fantastic since returning from the concussion IL. Ty France has been great all season long. Luis Rengifo has been great. Samad Taylor was great. Both were low-key pickups in the middle of the season. Even Gavin Sheets, who had a long homerless drought, went deep against the Astros. Austin Hays was just signed and he hit a big pinch-hit home run. 

These last few weeks have been a big reminder why AJ Preller’s front office has kept adding pieces in the hopes that things would finally click. Now they have the kind of depth that makes the star trio heating up now matter so much. This is a team that simply can’t afford to waste what’s left of this window. 

The offense, as it looks now, makes the current race for the Wild Card so gripping. At the start of play Monday, the Diamondbacks and Phillies are tied for the second and third Wild Cards, respectively, with the Padres just one game back. The gap, or lack thereof, has only tightened the sense of urgency around every series left on the schedule. With the offense looking like they expected, the Padres answered that uptick by adding Casey Mize and Robbie Ray at the deadline to hope to shore up a rotation that had put a lot of pressure on the bullpen.

The 7-2 win to clinch the series against Houston pushed them to 62-57 and made them 14-9 since the break. The Brewers, statistically the best team in baseball, will come to Petco Park next to give the Padres a real test to see if this version can handle it against the elite teams.

With just over 40 games left, none of it is guaranteed. But for a team that spent two and a half months looking like the worst offense in the game, just being in a spot for a sprint to the playoffs is a real statement. The Padres didn’t need a roster teardown or a savior trade to fix what was broken. They needed Merrill, Tatis, and Machado to be who everyone believed them to be. Now that they are, the Padres look like a team nobody wants to face now or in October.

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