Representative Sample

Signal In The Noise

Some of this is going to be familiar, but the Padres offensive struggles are enough of a threat to their post-season ambitions to justify looking at the same questions from different angles to see if anything might have been missed.

The tailspin the Padres offense has been in since May 16th when the Mariners came to town has focused attention on the team’s lack of slugging. To many it seemed that a long standing problem with the team’s line drive approach was coming home to roost. And that was a very reasonable narrative because it fit with what the aggregated data for the entire team suggested. But it’s important that future projections be made on data sets that are a representative sample of what the team can expect going forward. Through May 15th, the day before the first game against the Mariners, the Padres were 23rd in MLB in home runs with only 39, a clear sign the team lacked slugging:

But it’s interesting to look at where the team’s home run production was coming from up until the tailspin. This chart breaks down the team’s home run production prior to the Mariners series down by 3 cohorts: the players likely to remain in the starting lineup, the current left field options and bench, and the players already departed from the team and unlikely to return:

It was clearly the bench and left fielders who had cumulatively taken over 33% of the team’s plate appearances that were responsible for the the absence of slug. When you look at the cohort of starters it was really Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts that were under-performing in home run production in the starting lineup. We’ve already written about why every indicator from the early season was that Machado was likely going to slug, and in fact was having his best season in years in several categories that typically translate to good slugging output (hard hit percentage, expected slugging, wOBA on contact, average exit velocity, launch angle sweet-spot percentage, as well as the second best barrel rate of his career and an increased average launch angle compared to 2024). We speculated that this might mean he isn’t cooked. Bogaerts on the other hand seemed much more likely to be having regression, though he never had a very high home run rate to begin with. It’s the bench and replacements that were just woeful.

And so it was good news when most of the starting lineup returned and many fewer plate appearances were needed from the bench cohort. Indeed, during the past 10 days the bench has played far less of a role, but several hitters in the starting lineup have scuffled badly and the cumulative performance has been nearly as bad as when half the starting lineup was missing earlier in the season:

It’s interesting that through both the pre-slump and intra-slump spans the home run rate from the cohort of competent major league starters, 3.3%, has been consistent. This is in line with this cohort’s career averages, and is a decent mark overall that doesn’t seem unsustainable.

The 2025 Padres are going to be very hard to analyze using cumulative stats because there is such a stark difference between the different cohorts, and even adding the past 10 days of data when the team was fairly healthy (in terms of availability) there is just a huge amount of downward drag on the cumulative statistics from players that are not nearly as relevant to the team’s fortunes as their outsized early season share of playing time would suggest. The bench and replacements still account for almost 30% of the total plate appearances for the Padres on the season:

The implication of the above is crystal clear: left field and the bench are the source of the vast majority of the power outage to date. But there’s another concern, and there’s a thought experiment that can help address how seriously to take it.

Thought Experiment

Until the team is slugging regularly there will be hand-wringing about Victor Rodriguez’ coaching style being responsible for the lack of slug. And there’s a simple thought experiment that can help assess whether coaching is the likely source of the lack of slugging. You can use players’ career home run rates to estimate how many home runs they should have if the coaching staff was not suppressing their ability to hit home runs:

Indeed, the first glance suggests that the team is under-performing its expected home run output significantly, by 7.5 expected home runs. So the question becomes whether these numbers would be significantly better if the team was constantly emphasizing the long ball. You can see right away the vast majority of the missing home runs are from bench and replacement players that have underperformed their career averages. It’s a little hard to believe that Jason Heyward, Jose Iglesias, Yuli Gurriel, Tyler Wade, Oscar Gonzales, Connor Joe, Brandon Lockridge, and Martin Maldonado were having their home run output suppressed by coaching. And they cumulatively account for 6.6 of the missing 7.5 home runs based on their career averages. It seems more likely that at this stage in their careers it’s a skill issue. But that’s not proof. It can’t be ruled out that coaching style is responsible for these cohorts hitting 6-7 home runs fewer than they would have under a different hitting coach. Luis Campusano has only 17 plate appearances and was clearly being coached in El Paso to hunt the long ball. Time will tell if he’s going to be coached differently if he sticks with the big league club, but his 0.5 missing home runs aren’t the source of the Padres anemic home run numbers.

Among the starters, Gavin Sheets seems to have actually benefitted from the coaching he’s received in San Diego in terms of getting to home run power. And the specific way in which Luis Arraez and Jackson Merrill have struggled recently, swinging wildly at pitches way out of the zone, is clearly not something they’re being coached to do. Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado are the big underperformers from the starting cohort and we’ve discussed why coaching doesn’t seem too likely to explain their underperformance. Your mileage may vary here which is fine, it would be wonderful if Bogaerts and Machado could combine to hit 50 home runs by simply changing the hitting coach.

The one player above to watch as it pertains to swing coaching is Fernando Tatis Jr. Because he has already had a serious launch angle slump, this season, and has been the player most out of sorts at the plate amongst the Padres regulars who are underperforming their power projections, and he tinkers with his swing constantly. Still, Tatis is only 0.7 HR behind his expected pace, and was well ahead of his career averages 10 days ago. But he hasn’t looked right of late. And it does seem like Tatis could benefit from some coaching around his recent approach. Teams have been attacking Tatis in a very specific way during his recent slump, and he’s been struggling to adapt. He’s had a lot of at bats recently that follow this general pattern:

He’ll get a pitch or two early in at bats, but if he doesn’t put them into play, pitches later in the at bat are often being located down, out of the zone altogether. Pitchers are daring Tatis to chase. And he’s been obliging. There was one at bat in Toronto that suggested he may just not be seeing the ball well, especially spin. In the top of the 10th Thursday Tatis faced Blue Jay’s leftie Brendan Little and saw six straight knuckle curves and still couldn’t make contact:

Here’s the at bat:

You don’t want to draw any long term conclusions over a small stretch, because virtually no hitters can go all season without scuffling badly for a week or two here and there. But watch for teams to keep daring Tatis to swing at pitches low and out of the zone, at least in the near term, because we saw it a lot over the last 10 days:

Keep The Powder Dry?

It’s almost certain that AJ Preller is looking to address the team’s weaknesses through trade. And that is sensible if the rest of the team is likely to perform well. But the news of an injury concern for Michael King should affect what he’s willing to trade to acquire short term value:

Media statements about injury really do need translation:

Scapula = The bone in the shoulder which the four muscles that are collectively referred to as the ‘rotator cuff’ are attached.

Inflammation = an entirely non-specific, non-falsifiable clinical diagnosis. The diagnosis does not require imaging confirmation, nor does clean imaging rule the diagnosis out. The term inflammation can be invoked to mean anything.

Whether Michael King has a significant injury has major implications for how aggressive the team should be in addressing the structural weaknesses in left field, backup catcher, and bench. And while it’s wise to not overreact to stiffness or soreness in such a taxing sport, when it’s in specific regions like that of the ‘scapula’, it’s wise to keep the powder dry until the severity of the ‘inflammation’ is better characterized.