By Morris Phillips
SAN FRANCISCO–Hitting home runs, running the bases, scorching shots into the gaps for extra-bases, or drawing walks isn’t quite what the Padres do.
What they do is see pitches, work counts, and rack up base hits. The most hits (1,335 in 148 games), singles (922), and the best team batting average in MLB belong to the Padres in 2024, and it’s a hard-earned distinction for post-season likely San Diego.
“We got some really good approaches,” manager Mike Schildt said. “And guys not only have the bat to ball skills, we have a lot of guys–and Luis (Arraez) leads the charge, but… a lot of our guys put the ball in play. They take really tough at-bats, not afraid to hit with two strikes. But have the approach A) what they’re doing and B) what they’re trying to do with it. They see the field, and they can move the baseball around.”
The .264 team batting average was a modest number. In 1976, Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine hit .280 as a team. In 1986, Cleveland hit .284 as a team and missed the playoffs. In 1997, the Fenway Sox hit. 291, the Coors Field Rockies hit .288, and the Indians won the AL pennant by hitting .286. That’s baseball’s free swinging past.
In 2024, however .264 is robust and the industry standard. As the game has skewed more and more towards power pitching, strikeouts, and modest batting averages, the Padres have responded by dissecting almost every hurler they face. The hits define their success. The team batting average may seem pedestrian, but in fact, it’s exceptional.
“The approaches are dialed in, and guys can leave the ballpark either way,” rookie Brandon Lockridge added. Lockridge made his Major League debut on Friday, but it was his breakout .414 OBP with Yankees Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre that drew GM A.J. Preller’s attention and brought Lockridge to San Diego in a mid-season swap.
San Diego has talented hitters: perennial hitman Manny Machado heads the list. Machado has logged nearly six full seasons in San Diego, and 164 of his 339 career homers have come since his arrival.
Xander Bogaerts, in his first season away from Boston, has set sail with a .309 clip since July 12. He’s also likely to join Machado as an infielder with a ninth, consecutive season with 10 or more home runs. Currently, Bogaerts has nine homers, 99 hits, and 25 walks in 376 plate appearances.
Luis Arraez’ arrival in May by trade with the Marlins has been season-altering. The three-time All-Star with the powerful, compact build has compiled 147 hits while striking out just 15 times. Currently, he’s in a stretch of 129 appearances without a strikeout, and among franchise hitters, only Tony Gwynn (170) has gone longer without being punched. Arraez has the lowest career K rate in baseball (7.0 percent), and he’s made Arraez easier to spell than (Juan) Soto, the similarly talented slugger he essentially replaced at first base.
“Good approach, good swing, elite hitter, and that’s Luis,” manager Mike Shildt said in repeating hitting coach Gene Tenace’s assessment of Arraez.
Rookie Jackson Merrill’s arrival has also been transformational. The ROY candidate has 147 hits in 143 games and enough big moments on SportsCenter to boost the highlight show’s ratings. Merrill projects to finish the regular season with 550 plate appearances, more than 30 walks, and an outside shot at just 100 strikeouts.
Veterans Jake Cronenworth and Jurickson Profar are having big seasons. The 31-year old switch-hitting Profar has 145 hits and a career-best 3.1 WAR. Cronenworth has 131 hits and a team-high 53 walks.
Franchise wonder kid Fernando Tatis Jr. has experienced absences in all five of his big league seasons, missing 293 games due to injury or suspension. But those absences have very little to do with his incredible productivity. This season–in 90 games to date–the 25-year old Tatis has a four-hit game (June 20), and his first career walk-off hit (September 5). But this week alone, and in response to his absence due to a femoral stress reaction, he’s robbed Seattle’s Randy Arozarena with a spectacular reach over the right field wall, and homered in three, consecutive games. In the Padres’ 5-0 shutout of the Giants Friday night, Tatis redirected Logan Webb’s mistake slider 433 feet in the first inning.
“Go and attack,” Tatis said of his home run at-bat. “Webb has been a pitcher that’s been giving us a little trouble to face him. Today, we went in with the mentality that we were the attacker, and we had some good results.
“I want to be that guy, and as soon as I’m on the field, I’m going to push myself to be that guy, and I take a lot of pride in that,” he added.
The Petco Push, Padre Pride, or even the Friars’ Fresh Approach. You label it, and the NL West-contending Padres embody it.
CEASE AMAZES WITH ACCELERATED PATH TO 1,000 K’s
Dylan Cease was good in Chicago, until everyone around him disappeared. Cease is good in San Diego as well. And Cease has always wielded a nasty strikeout pitch or two, a standard he established in July 2019, when he arrived in the big leagues.
Cease’s first six appearances resulted in four losses for himself and the Sox. But the then 23-year old right-hander pitched deep into all six and racked up a healthy, strikeout total. In the ensuing five years, and below the radar, Cease has established himself as one of the games’ true aces with 56 total wins and his 1,000th strikeout on Friday.
In the third inning, Donovan Walton was caught looking at a fifth, consecutive slider. But Cease shrewdly delivered his only pitch away in the sequence, which likely caught Donovan by surprise.
“Longevity and execution and performance and all that good stuff, but just happy we won,” Cease said. “I feel like I haven’t contributed in like a month.”
“Congratulations to Dylan first of all. One thousand strikeouts in the big leagues is really impressive,” Schildt said. “It’s just two plus-plus pitches that you got to honor. You got to honor the top, with tonight sitting 98–97, 98–you got to honor that. And you got to honor a slider that looks like a strike out of the hand. You got those two plus pitches with that kind of life; it’s a recipe for a lot of strikeouts.”
Cease joined Robbie Ray, Blake Snell, and Yu Darvish to form the quartet that has reached a thousand punch outs the fastest all-time. All four contemporary hurlers, and coincidentally all present and accounted for on Friday at Oracle Park.
“That’s pretty wild,” Cease said. “I have no idea.”
