Good morning from Atlanta,
Not to diminish what was accomplished yesterday by Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill and Dylan Cease and four relievers or anyone else on the Padres, but …
Where would this team be without Gavin Sheets?
They would probably be 0-9 instead of 2-7 since May 16, for one thing.
You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres came back to beat the Braves 5-3 yesterday to finish off a bad road trip with a good feeling.
It was Sheets who hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning to tie the game 3-3.
It was his fourth home run in four games and fifth home run in eight games.
The Padres have scored 16 runs in the past nine games. Sheets has driven in nine of those runs.
Sure, most of those RBIs ended up being inconsequential in of affecting victory.
But he hit one of their two home runs in Friday’s 2-1 victory against the Braves before coming through again yesterday with his third two-run homer in four days.
And his two-homer, five RBI day in Thursday’s 7-6, 11-inning loss in Toronto may well be looked back on as the thing that kept the Padres from sinking further than they have during this period of scuffling. In what looks like it will be a fight to the finish for playoff spots, that could be huge.
Yes, that Thursday game was their sixth consecutive loss.
But it was also the first time they had scored more than a single run in any game during the losing streak and the first time in three games they had scored at all.
They scored in both extra innings that day — once on a single by Sheets – and left Canada feeling more like themselves.
Sheets’ penchant for the big moment goes back to opening day when he hit a game-tying pinch-hit home run in the seventh inning and the Padres went on to beat the Braves for the first of seven straight victories to start the season.
Four nights later, Sheets went 3-for-3 with a pair of two-run doubles in a 7-2 victory over the Guardians.
He has not gone more than a handful of games all season between contributing a key RBI.
Sheets leads the Padres with 31 RBIs in all. And that is with his being mostly a platoon player until 2½ weeks ago. His 5.13 at-bats per RBI ranks 14th in the major leagues.
His eight game-tying RBIs are five more than any other Padres player. Six times, he has driven in a game-deciding run, also most on the team.
“Just overall what he’s been doing all year,” said Machado, who knows a bit about carrying a team. “… He’s comfortable here around the guys. I know playing for a last-place team kind of sucks.”
Those last two observations by Machado are important. Sheets has praised the mentality of the Padres coaching staff and his teammates and frequently shouts out teammates who have helped him. And while never ripping the White Sox, who have lost more than 100 games each of the past two seasons and did not tender him a contract this winter, Sheets made it clear back in spring training that he was thrilled to be on a contending team.
“The most important thing is winning,” he said yesterday. “And I think when you put focus on winning and how you’re gonna do that every single day, it’s just, it’s a better brand of baseball and it’s an easier way to play baseball. And that’s been the biggest thing for me — just how are we gonna win today, how am I going to help contribute. And you look at the end of the game, you look back at your stats, like, ‘Man, I had a pretty good game.’ But, you know, it was about how we’re trying to find a way to win, and that’s how you play baseball.”
Hitter … with power
Another observation Machado made regarding Sheets: “I love his swing.”
Padres manager Mike Shildt has been adamant that Sheets is a pure hitter more than a power hitter, something Sheets keeps giving him an opportunity to talk about.
Sheets impressed with his reaching down to volley an RBI single into center field on Thursday. Yesterday, his home run came on a compact stroke he used to get to an 0-2 slider down and in that he drove 423 feet to right-center field.
“Sheets Is a hitter, man,” Shildt said yesterday. “He has power, but he’s a hitter. He just sweet-stroked that ball. Tough pitch, not trying to do too much, just hit a little 2-iron out of there. What a nice piece of hitting.”
Gavin Sheets – San Diego Padres (10)
pic.twitter.com/e1HM5o4e0g— MLB HR Videos (@MLBHRVideos) May 25, 2025
Sheets’ 10 home runs in 171 plate appearances this season match his total in each of the past two seasons. (He had 344 plate appearances in 2023 and 501 plate appearances in ‘24).
Sheets, who hit .244 in his first two big-league seasons and .220 the past two seasons, has made his stance more upright and altered his swing path through work over the winter and into this season. He is batting .283 this season.
Every bit of the 6-3, 235 at which he is listed, Sheets’ strength is undeniable. He is just utilizing it with a more consistent swing and approach.
“That’s something that I take pride in,” he said. “Try to put the ball in play, try to (make) , try to go to all fields. Obviously, hitting for power right now, which is great, but I think that’s just because I’m putting the right swing on the right balls — being short to it, being simple, not trying to do too much in situations.”
Manny on the path
Let’s talk about the underrated part of Machado’s game before we talk about him starting to do the thing that everyone expects of him.
Machado is among the league’s savviest baserunners. He is also sneaky fast, especially for a big guy (listed at 6-foot-2, 218 pounds) with a big lower body.
And he showed both the speed and the savvy in hustling up the Padres’ first run yesterday, scoring from second base in the first inning on Merrill’s single to right field.
Jackson gets us on the board! pic.twitter.com/Sw0t0Vt4ei
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) May 25, 2025
The remarkable thing about him scoring was that he did so despite the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. fielding the ball relatively shallow and firing a 104.9 mph throw to the plate — tied for the second-fastest by a major league outfielder this season.
“One-oh-four? Damn. (Shoot),” Machado said. “He’s got a hose, man. I mean, I’ve been a part of that before, trying to run out a double, and I learned my lesson. I was trying to get him this one and I got him. Now we’re even.”
Machado slid in on the foul side of the line and reached his left hand out and touched the plate just before the tag by Braves catcher Drake Baldwin.
“I thought I was gonna get thrown out, I’m not going to lie,” Machado said. “But I was like, “(Forget) it. I’m gonna go.’ I mean, he’s hosed me a couple times. And (it was) a hard-hit ball right at him. I was just trying to get a good secondary. I got a good secondary, and I was able to get that good jump off of it and get that one beat to get in there.”
Machado’s secondary lead was not good. It was sensational — 21.7 feet off of second base. He reached a top sprint speed of 27.7 feet per second.
By the way, for some insight into how Shildt and his coaching staff operate, one of the things highlighted in the team’s daily pregame “ball talk” yesterday afternoon was a play from Saturday night’s game in which Machado laid out to try to catch a ball after the Padres had fallen behind 7-1.
“He’s just playing the game right, and great at-bats today,” Shildt said. “… The slide is another indicative point to just Manny being a really, really good baseball player, good baserunner.”
Power play
After hitting his first home run in more than two weeks on Friday, Machado went back to merely being the Padres’ best hitter.
And the Padres were fine with that.
“I really like where he’s at, what he’s being doing,” hitting coach Victor Rodriguez said Saturday morning.
As he spoke, Rodriguez motioned with his hands to illustrate how Machado has been hitting line drives to all parts of the field.
And then he homered again.
Machado was 2-for-2 with two walks on Saturday and doubled to get on base for Merrill in the first inning yesterday and homered in the eighth inning to give the Padres an insurance run.
While that was just his fifth home run of 2025 — tied for fewest through the first 51 games of any of the 13 seasons he has played that many games — Machado’s 16 doubles are tied for second in the National League, his .321 batting average is fourth and his .390 on-base percentage is seventh. His OPS has risen 50 points, to .877, over the past five games.
Still, he is making the money he does mostly because of the virtual assurance he will provide significant slug. He is the only player in the major leagues to have hit at least 28 home runs in every one of the past nine 162-game seasons.
I wrote in Saturday’s newsletter how Machado was in a joking mood regarding his lack of home runs so far — and that he can afford to be.
He had just five home runs through 51 games last season before finishing with 29.
“Guys like that, they just take off,” Rodriguez said. “There is going to come a time this year where he is going to have a bunch of them.”
Working it
Cronenworth struck out his first two times facing Spencer Schwellenbach yesterday.
The second strikeout, a 10-pitch battle in which Cronenworth fouled off four two-strike pitches, might have helped with what he did in his third at-bat.
On the seventh pitch he saw from Schwellenbach in the seventh inning, Croneworth hammered a slider thigh high and in the center of the plate 382 feet to right field for a home run that gave the Padres a 4-3 lead.
Jake Cronenworth – San Diego Padres (4)
pic.twitter.com/ROdZ6eYGnh— MLB HR Videos (@MLBHRVideos) May 25, 2025
“That guy is tough,” Cronenworth said. “I felt like I had been seeing a lot of this stuff and put myself in good position the next at-bat. Obviously, he had won the first two, and the second at-bat was a battle. And then. …”
Cronenworth also doubled in the ninth inning to finish 2-for-4.
He is batting .253 with a .388 on-base percentage on the season.
Never before
Perhaps the most incredible thing that happened yesterday occurred in the first inning when Luis Arraez struck out on three pitches — all missed swings.
He had never done that in his career.
The only other at-bat in which he missed on three consecutive swings was on June 27, 2019, in his 57th career plate appearance. (Those misses came after he took a ball.)
Yesterday was his 200th career strikeout, and all the others involved at least one called strike or foul ball.
“It had to happen sometime,” Arraez said yesterday.
Growing
By the measure of his major league debut with the team, Adrián Morejón has been a Padre longer than any other current member of the team besides Fernando Tatis Jr. and Machado.
That might skew what is expected of him, because largely due various physical maladies, he has pitched in just 134 big-league games since his debut in July of 2019.
A lot was expected of the Cuban who got a record $11 million bonus in 2016, at age 17.
Even when healthy, there have been some fits and starts for Morejón. A number of times, it has seemed he was about to become a lockdown reliever only to endure a period in which he surrenders an abundance of runs.
This year, he has had periods of excellence and also been at the center of some bullpen letdowns.
But anyone who has watched him closely in the past knows that Morejón might not have come back to pitch the crucial innings he did this weekend in previous years.
Morejón was on the mound in the seventh inning Wednesday in Toronto when Machado committed three errors and Cronenworth bobbled a ball that might have prevented a run. The left-hander ended up recording just one out while being charged with four unearned runs.
He came back Friday, entering a 1-1 game at the start of the seventh inning and got five straight outs in 19 pitches. And yesterday, Morejón took over with one on and nobody out in the seventh inning and got a fly ball out and a double play to end the inning.
“I feel like even from last year, I matured so much coming into this year,” Morejón said Saturday. “And I feel like I’ve been able to recover, not just physically but mentally. And I’ve been working on just the mental aspect of my game since then, and I feel like I’ve been able to do that so much better this year.”
Heyward move
If you missed the news over the weekend, the Padres placed Jason Heyward on the injured list with a strained left oblique. (You can read about it here.)
It felt for a few days that the end of his time with the team was rapidly approaching. Now that has been delayed.
Regardless, the Padres simply cannot abide the lack of production they are getting from their left fielders. Sheets started there yesterday while Luis Campusano, called up to take Heyward’s roster spot, served as designated hitter. Sheets going 2-for-4 with the home run lifted the team’s left fielders’ collective batting average to .189 and their OPS to .514, both second-worst in the major leagues. Heyward is batting .176 with a .494 OPS.
Sheets is not considered the long-term solution in left. He is seen as a DH who can fill in at first base and left field.
It is not known what level of salary the Padres can afford to take on, but they are seeking an upgrade via the trade market. (They did save $768,768 by trading Connor Joe.)
The trade of Joe to the Reds and the release of Oscar Gonzalez hint at the Padres’ intentions for left field. They did not see either of those players as the solution there and believe they can improve with an acquisition.
Stopped
Cease was in good position to possibly pitch into the seventh inning for a fourth consecutive start before having to throw 31 pitches in the Braves’ two-run fifth inning.
That took him to 88 pitches for the day.
“He could have gone back out (for the sixth),” Shildt said. “But that long inning in the fifth — just didn’t make as much sense.”
Cease allowed six hits, walked one and struck out eight.
Tidbits
- You can read in my story (here) from yesterday about starting pitcher Michael King being placed on the injured list with shoulder inflammation and the expectation regarding how much time he might miss.
- With yesterday’s victory, the Padres (29-22) avoided falling out of the sixth-and-final NL playoff spot. The only significance, given that there are 111 games remaining, is that it would have been the first time all year that was the case. And they had the best record in MLB (25-13) on May 10.
- May 10 is also the last time the Padres had double-digit hits in a game. To that point, they led the majors with 20 games in which they had at least 10 hits. They fell one hit shy yesterday.
- When discussing what Campusano’s role will be, Shildt was sure to say how much the Padres “love” the work Martín Maldonado and Elias Díaz are doing behind the plate working with pitchers. And Maldonado, save for a wild pitch he probably could have stopped, was magnificent in blocking a half-dozen balls in the dirt yesterday. But there does have to be some floor the Padres have in mind for his offense. Maldonado was 0-for-3 yesterday and is hitless (with seven strikeouts) in his past 11 at-bats. He is batting .176 with a .491 OPS.
- Thank you, Dylan Cease. The Padres wore their splendid brown road tops yesterday for just the fifth time this season. They are 2-3 in them.
All right, that’s it for me. Early flight back to San Diego and early-ish game today (5:40 p.m. PT).
Talk to you tomorrow.
