Pull-heavy approach is backfiring for Padres’ high-priced veteran

Xander Bogaerts' Statcast page shows us a player with a good approach who is struggling to hit the ball hard. His slash line tells a different story, which is one of a player who is having a down year across the board.

What is going on with Bogaerts? The Padres' veteran has been on a roll over his past 12 games, but his season slash line remains well-below his career average. Is Bogaerts finally figuring things out, or is he destined to slump again? Let's look at the numbers.

Bogaerts started strong in 2025, with a .306 average and .805 OPS through his first 14 games of the season. Then things took a turn for the worse. Between April 12th and June 17th, Bogaerts slashed .208/.281/.287, with an OPS of .568. In 57 games, he hit just three home runs and seven doubles, losing his ability to hit for extra bases almost entirely.

The culprit appears to be his low barrel rate (5.3%) and hard-hit rate (39.1%), but is it deeper than that?

Something that stands out when looking at his Statcast page is Bogaerts' hits spray chart. In 2024, Bogaerts hit the ball to all areas of the field. In 2025, the chart shows a clear tilt towards the left side. Bogaerts is pulling almost everything to the left side of the infield. All five of his home runs and all but two of his 18 doubles have been pulled.

Bogaerts has been a pull-friendly hitter before. In 2016, all 21 of his home runs were pulled. He was an All-Star that year, posting a 111 OPS+. In 2018, three of his 20 home runs were hit to right field, with the rest landing in left or center field. Even in 2019, when he posted a career-high 139 OPS+, only four of his 33 long balls went to the opposite field. However, his doubles and singles were spread more evenly.

From 2019-2024, Bogaerts stayed remarkably consistent, using the whole field to his advantage. While most of his power came from the pull side, he was able to keep a high batting average by using the whole field and spraying the ball into all areas. This year, things seem to have changed.

Bogaerts looks more like the pull-friendly hitter he was in 2016. It's hard to tell if it is paying off. On the one hand, his numbers are slightly up. Bogaerts has an OPS+ of 96, a tick better than his 92 mark in 2024. His OPS is up from .688 to .703. That's mostly due to his past 11 games, which have seen Bogaerts hit .450 and slug .750. If he can sustain even a .275 average and .400 slugging percentage the rest of the way, it would be a massive step in the right direction, and based on the way he's swung the bat the past week, it's possible for him to do just that.

On the other hand, Bogaerts is still underperforming based on his career numbers. His .258 batting average is 30 points below his career .288 mark. Statcast gives him an expected batting average of .275, which is better but still not amazing without power. His .371 slugging percentage is his worst since 2015, and his expected slugging of .401 is not much better.

Perhaps Bogaerts should back off from his pull-heavy approach and return to spraying the ball all over the field? It might help him get back to being the player he was in 2021-22, when he was an all-star in back-to-back seasons.

At the end of the day, Bogaerts needs to do what works for him and hope his results continue to improve. The Padres certainly need his production in the lineup if they are going to succeed in 2025.