Padres Daily: Streaking into deadline; Merrill gladness; The Manny

Good morning,

This is how a team wants to go into the trade deadline.

You can read Jeff Sanders’ game story (here) from last night about how the Padres pulled away with another big inning and how Elias Díaz was a hero for the second straight game.

The 7-1 victory clinched a series win over the Mets, whose 62 wins were tied for most in the National League when they arrived in San Diego.

The Padres have won four straight after losing four straight.

They have added two games to their lead over the Reds in the past two nights and three games to their lead over the Giants in the past three nights.

All that serves to further illustrate that the NL pennant chase is wide open.

There is really no way to handicap the playoff picture at this point.

The expectation around the league is that the next day-and-a-half will bring a flurry of trades and that some of the contenders in the NL will look significantly different come Thursday night.

Whether they will prove to be significantly different is another matter. Trade deadline moves are often fool’s gold.

Whatever the Padres do to try to make their lineup better, they already are better.

They seem to be showing they are who they said they are.

“There’s been times where we haven’t been able to put it together,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said the other day. “But we’ve reestablished what our identity is.”

The Padres last night scored at least seven runs for the third straight game and for the sixth time in their 12 games since the All-Star break. They did not score that many runs in any of their final 28 games in the first half.

They had a five-run inning for the second straight night and have scored at least four runs in an inning in three consecutive games. They have scored at least four runs in an inning in five of their past 12 games after doing so five times in their previous 58 games.

They got nine hits last night, the sixth consecutive game in which they have had at least that many. They had at least nine hits in two of their first six games coming out of the break as well. They had that many hits in 18 of their 58 games leading into the break.

None of that means the Padres no longer need to add a legitimate hitter to lengthen their lineup (plus a pitching piece or two).

They do.

As has been the case all along, they continue to seek an impact bat via what will likely be more than one move. Because to get a player that truly has a chance to make them better, the word is that they need to clear some salary space.

The most obvious way to do that is to unload starting pitcher Dylan Cease,  who is owed about $4.5 million over the final two months of the season.

The Padres have always maintained a high price for Cease. Such a stance often changes in the final day or so before the deadline, which is 3 p.m. PT on Thursday.

There is also the possibility Preller makes a move (or moves) no one has forecast.

It is his aggressiveness and creativity that ownership is banking on as they have determined they can’t manage a big increase in a payroll that already ranks ninth in the major leagues.

Regardless, they can be confident after the team’s first four-game winning streak since early May that they are adding to a legitimate contender.

The Manny

The only major leaguer to have at least 28 home runs in nine consecutive 162-game seasons is on pace to make it 10.

Only if you didn’t know he was “f—ing Manny Machado” would you have doubted it.

Even on May 22 when he was sitting on three home runs.

As Machado has said many times, the back of the baseball card generally doesn’t lie. And his baseball card shows he has hit 30 homers, plus or minus a couple, for the better part of a decade.

The only season since 2015 that Machado did not reach 28 home runs was 2020, the covid-shortened campaign. He hit 16 in 60 games that season.

Machado, who homered three times in his first 180 at-bats this season and has 17 homers in the 235 at-bats since then, is on pace for 30.

In addition to his tracking toward the 28 homers for 10 straight full seasons distinction, Machado last night became one of just six active players with at least 10 20-homer seasons.

“It’s tough,” he said. “Working hard. Consistency. It’s not easy. It’s pretty cool. Pretty dope.”

Merrill gladness

Jackson Merrill arrived at third base laughing after his stand-up triple in the sixth inning.

He clasped his hands together and looked skyward. Then he looked toward the Padres’ dugout still sporting a big grin.

He had just bounced a 97 mph ground ball that hit the dirt in the batter’s circle about 10 feet from home plate, bounced over first baseman Pete Alonso’s head and rolled to the corner in right field.

Focus. Speed. I am speed. pic.twitter.com/9xibhKl906

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) July 30, 2025

“Are you kidding me?” Merrill said later. “Nobody deserves that type of triple more than I do. Nobody.”

He referred to the fact he has been getting out on a number of well-struck balls. For the season, Merrill is batting .382 on balls that he barrels or makes solid contact on. That is 174 points below the league average.

“For real, I thought it was funny,” he said. “Like, that’s how I’m going to get a triple and an RBI? I’ve been focusing on getting better with my approach, and that’s how it happens. It’s funny. I’ll take it.”

Merrill, whose triple broke a 1-1 tie, also drove in the Padres’ first run with a single and is riding a season-best nine-game hitting streak, during which he is batting .289 (11-for-38).

“I feel like since the break I’ve been way better,” said Merrill, who was batting .132 over the 19 games preceding his hitting streak.

“I honestly don’t know what it is,” he said. “I don’t want to even think about it. I feel like every time I start thinking about how ‘Oh, I’m doing good because of this (reason),’ then I start focusing on that, and I don’t focus on what’s important. And it goes down a rabbit hole again. So I think it’s just taking what I got, and I’m not thinking about it anymore.”

Easy does it

Jason Adam was warming up in the bottom of the seventh inning when Machado’s three-run homer bounced off the ribbon scoreboard next to the Padres’ bullpen.

“It was like, ‘Thanks for the vacation, Manny. Appreciate you,’” Adam said.

Machado’s home run gave the Padres a six-run lead, so Adam sat down and Ron Marinaccio pitched the eighth inning instead. Then Yuki Matsui worked the ninth instead of Robert Suarez.

The Padres have scored seven or more runs in six of their past 12 games. Moreover, last night was the fourth time in that span they won by a margin of at least five runs. The scarcity of such victories has contributed to Adam, Suarez, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejón working an abundance of games.

But Adam has worked just four of the Padres’ 12 games in (12 days) since the All-Star break. Suarez has worked just three.

Estrada worked his sixth game in that span last night, and Morejón his fifth.

For the first time since April, Estrada and Morejón are ahead of Adam on the games-pitched leaderboard. Last night was the 52nd appearance for both, one behind MLB leaders Tyler Rogers (Giants) and Tony Santillan (Reds). Adam has appeared in 51 games. Suarez, who has an MLB-leading 20 saves, has worked in 46 games.

Like every other reliever, Adam says he prefers pitching to resting. But he acknowledged it is good to get a break.

“It’s great,” Adam said. “Offense is clicking, putting up big numbers. We’ll take the rest. But I love pitching, and I’ll be ready.”

Making ‘em work

By the time Jake Cronenworth made the first out in the bottom of the fifth inning, Mets starter Sean Manaea had thrown 77 pitches.

Cronenworth had seen 23 of those pitches between his two at-bats against the left-hander.

“Nothing to show for it in the box score,” Shildt said of the two outs Cronenworth made on at-bats that lasted nine and 14 pitches. “But those are big at-bats. That counts and starts to drain the battery a little bit and also shortens the outing.”

Manaea retired the next two batters and was finished after 86 pitches in five innings, leaving a 1-1 game having allowed three hits and no walks.

The Padres proceeded to score a run in the sixth off José Buttó and five runs in the seventh off Buttó and Chris Devenski.

“Sean is super unique and (has an) interesting (arm) angle,” Cronenwoerth said. “It’s tough at-bat for a lefty. Just trying to find a way to compete and try to win. He won both of them. But the biggest thing is we got him out of there in the fifth inning and got into the bullpen.”

Cronenworth’s 14-pitch at-bat was the longest plate appearance by a Padres player this season. His 18 plate appearances of at least eight pitches are tied with Luis Arraez for most on the team.

“You just get into compete mode more than anything,” Cronenworth said. “You’re not thinking about anything else except trying to win that pitch.”

Bergert’s night

Rookie Ryan Bergert allowed three baserunners through four innings last night before issuing his third walk to start the fifth and then yielding a single and walking another batter to load the bases with no outs.

Estrada replaced him and allowed just one run to score, on a sacrifice fly.

Bergert, recalled from Triple-A to make his seventh start of the season and first since July 12, has a 3.13 ERA as a starter but has recorded an out in the sixth inning just once.

“Obviously, I want to go deeper into games,” he said. “I keep struggling around that fifth inning mark. Obviously, get through that, rolling through it, and then roll through the lineup a third time, I think is the next step for me. Just learning, maturing and everything, and just kind of learning how to do that at this level, I think it’s the biggest thing for me.”

Tidbits

• The Padres’ 32 sacrifice bunts are six more than any other team this season and on pace for the most by any team since 2021. Arraez executed one to help lead to their first run last night, but Bryce Johnson bunted into a fielder’s choice that resulted in a runner being thrown out at home and then failed to execute on two tries bunting in the seventh inning before Diaz’s double. If you think the Padres might slow their bunt roll, you haven’t been listening to Shildt.
•  Morejón worked a scoreless seventh inning to lower his ERA to 1.63 over 49 ⅔ innings this season, the sixth-lowest ERA among the 103 relievers who have thrown at least 40 innings.
• Machado’s 362nd career home run moved him out of a tie with Joe DiMaggio for 87th all-time.
• Arraez extended his hitting streak to 12 games, tying his season high. He was 1-for-2 with a walk last night and is batting .395 (19-for-48) during the streak. It is the longest active streak in the major leagues and is two games shy of tying the longest streak of Arraez’s career.
• Jose Iglesias was 2-for-3 with a walk last night and is batting .306 (15-for-49) over his past 16 games. One of Iglesias’ hits was against a right-hander. He is 6-for-27 (.222) against righties in those 16 games.
• Cronenworth is 6-for-19 (.316) during a five-game hitting streak and has scored at least one run in each of the past four games.
• Fernando Tatis Jr. was 1-for-3 with a walk last night. He is batting .319 with a .943 OPS in 20 games since July 6.
• Jeff Sanders’ game preview (here) details the move to make room for Bergert on the roster and the expectation Michael King will make a rehab start this weekend.
• The series win over the Mets makes the Padres 5-10-1 in series against teams with winning records.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.