CINCINNATI — The Padres are pretty good for a team that hardly scores.
It seems easy to confidently predict this will not last, that they will either start scoring more or cease to be good.
They need help from the outside to beef up their offense. They need their injured starting pitchers to return and perform at the level they have in the past.
To think those things almost have to happen for the Padres — who at 44-36 sit in playoff position — to continue to contend seem fairly inarguable as well.
But who knows?
Every season is its own evolving story.
The Padres’ 2025 seems to have already been a novel wrapped in a riddle smothered in drama.
Their game Friday against the Reds will bring them to the exact midpoint of the season.
And there is no telling how the second half of the season will unfold.
There is plenty to be concerned about and just as many reasons to be optimistic.
This is the thing
It was almost too perfect.
Wednesday’s 1-0 victory over the Nationals was a sort of marker, as it completed a stretch of 26 games in 27 days (and 35 in 37) and took the Padres to the brink of the season’s midpoint.
And in that game, we saw so much of what is right and wrong and inspiring and terrifying and uplifting and depressing about this team.
The Padres hardly hit on Wednesday and didn’t capitalize when they did. They got clutch pitching when they needed it most, as closer Robert Suarez was serving the first half of a two-game suspension and setup man Jason Adam was unavailable due to his workload. They made an excellent and timely defensive play.
More than anything, the top of their lineup was mostly ineffective.
Manager Mike Shildt made a change in his batting order — his second significant shakeup in four days after 76 games of almost exclusively putting the top four hitters in the same spots.
Luis Arraez got three hits and drove in the game’s only run. The second through four hitters — Manny Machado (up one spot), Jackson Merrill (up two spots from where he started and down a spot from where he had been the previous three days) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (down three spots) — went 0-for-10 with two walks.
That being a metaphor for the season is not perfect, because Machado would have been the hero if it were. But it works, because the Padres’ core, as a whole, has underperformed, and that is a big reason the Padres rank 20th in the major leagues in runs per game.
Machado ranks fifth in the National League in batting average (.298) and 14th in OPS (.852). He leads the Padres in RBIs (47) and has hit 10 home runs in his past 128 at-bats going back to May 23.
Tatis’ overall numbers (15 home runs, .806 OPS) are OK. Those numbers in 48 games since May 3: seven and .675.
Merrill’s lack of production has been mostly due to his not being on the field. He is batting .301 with an .812 OPS, but a hamstring strain and concussion have limited him to 48 games.
Only a 12-game hitting streak has Arraez’s batting average up to .288 and his on-base percentage up to .317. He has virtually no potential for slugging, so his being on base is imperative.
These are the four cornerstones on which the Padres’ 2025 season rests.
Simplifying it just a little too much: Those four players are batting .306 with an .862 OPS in wins and .265 with a .694 OPS in losses.
For whatever urgency there is to the Padres acquiring a right-handed hitter who can serve as their primary left fielder or designated hitter at the trade deadline, there is even more urgency for the players they are counting on to be more consistent.
For whatever need there is for Xander Bogaerts to be closer to what he was in Boston and Jake Cronenworth to continue to grind patient at-bats and Gavin Sheets to perpetuate his renaissance and for the team’s two catchers to provide a little more offensively, none of those players are expected at this point to carry a team.
Arraez is not the kind of player to put a team on his shoulders, either, but his place in the lineup makes him crucial. Not for nothing: the Padres’ record when he starts is 42-31.
But the reality is the other three batters at the top of the order have for portions of time carried the Padres.
A recent for instance: Merrill had a .916 OPS, Machado a .904 OPS and Tatis (limited by injury to 105 plate appearances) a .908 OPS from June 19 through the end of last season. No other Padres player was above .798 in that period. The Padres were an MLB-best 56-29 over that span.
Pitching plays
Good teams win enough low-scoring games.
The Padres are 14-24 when they score three or fewer runs in a game, which is the third-best record in MLB. They are 7-7 in such games since May 30.
For the season, the Padres’ starting pitchers rank 11th in the major leagues in ERA (3.84) while their bullpen is tied for third (3.30).
Their relievers have over that time made 55% of their appearances in games that were tied or within one run. (Three quarters of their appearances were made in games that were within two runs.)
It is working for them.
But this is a crazy way to try to live.
Navigating an entire season on the edge is exhausting and often leads to a slow fade.
As good as Padres pitchers have generally been, the chatter on the inside is acknowledges that Adam cannot keep pitching in half their games. He has literally done that. And Jeremiah Estrada (39) and Adrián Morejón (38) are right behind him.
The rotation needs a lift — to help the bullpen and to help itself.
Nick Pivetta (3.36 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 8-2 record) has been a godsend and Dylan Cease (3.69 ERA over his past nine starts) appears to be pitching like he remembers who he is.
Stephen Kolek (3.95 ERA in 10 starts), Randy Vásquez (3.60 ERA in 16 starts) and Ryan Bergert (3.13 ERA in five starts) are to be commended. But the common refrain goes something like this: “They have done all we could have asked.” And that is a backhanded compliment.
The Padres know full well that a team with a subpar rotation and excellent bullpen can survive a playoff series. In fact, it can win a World Series. (We’re talking about the 2024 Dodgers in case you forgot how that bullpen manhandled the Padres in the NL Division Series.)
But they need Yu Darvish, who is tracking to return either just before or just after the All-Star break, back and pitching like late-season Darvish from 2024. They need Michael King, who has made big progress in the past week but still is not guaranteed to return, to be there for them by September.
The state of things
Shildt on Wednesday segued from an answer about Bogaerts’ sore shoulder into a “state of the team” address that he said “is not really a State of the Union” heading into the midpoint of the season.
“More of like a real appreciation of love for this team for the last 27 days,” Shildt said. “… I could not be more proud of this team, the way they’ve handled this stretch. My admiration and appreciation of love for this team is even higher than it was, which is saying something, because I’ve got so much respect and admiration for this club. But you talk about being battle tested, you know, the season will do that. We had a lot take place in those 26 games.”
He meandered on to talk about the love for the game and for each other that exists in the clubhouse and gave a “tip of the hat” to the coaching staff and the medical staff and the support staff and commended everyone’s dedication and preparation.
He concluded with this:
“Really nice organizational effort over the last tough stretch — and setting us up for a really positive (result) moving forward. But we’ve got to continue to grow on it.”
Cut through the non sequiturs and rabbit trails and his compulsion to try to mention every person who works for the Padres in every quote about the Padres, and Shildt was actually speaking to the heart of the matter.
The bottom line is that the Padres have survived.
They played 24 games without Merrill early in the season and seven more this month. They were without Cronenworth for 24 games fro mid-April to early May. They were without Arraez for a week in late April. They only ever had shadows of Jason Heyward and Yuli Gurriel. King has been down for more than a month. Darvish was shut down in spring training. Their bullpen made do without Bryan Hoeing until Tuesday.
“I think we did really well,” Pivetta said after Wednesday’s game. “I mean, especially with the injuries that we had and just things that have happened in those series, the teams that we faced. I think there’s a lot more in the tank. I think we’re capable of doing great things. … I think there’s more in us.”