What has changed since June when the Padres were hitting a league-low .225 as a team? Fernando Tatis is smacking homers again. He has 11, but didn’t hit his first until May 30. Manny Machado is hitting .212 rather than his season-low .166 on June 8.
Add 23 homers and 70 RBIs for Machado, and he leads the team by far.
The Padres at 62-57 are winning again and their .237 team batting average has moved up to 20th in Major League Baseball, which has a lot to do with it.
“They have a track record of hitting,” batting coach Steven Souza Jr. told Times of San Diego in a recent exclusive interview. “The timing of the funk we went through was the combination of a bunch of things. We faced some really good arms and guys were in really bad spots.”
What changed?
If you listen to both Souza and manager Craig Stammen, it was the veteran players buying into what the staff was trying to teach them. You have to want the help.
“Both had no experience in the jobs they are doing,” said general manager A.J. Preller, who hired them knowing that was the case.
Stammen was a former relief pitcher with 55 wins, six saves, and a 3.66 ERA to show for his 13 big-league season, the last six with the Padres, ending in 2022. He came directly out of the club’s front office with no field experience.
Souza was a .229 hitter for eight seasons with six teams, his last the Mariners in 2022. He had no experience in his current job.
Stammen, at least played with Tatis and Machado in San Diego, so there was familiarity and some friendship, but that ended there. Souza had no relationship with the Padres’ biggest stars. Machado is the team leader and for good or bad, how he goes, Tatis and the rest of the team follows.
As a new coach, Souza said he didn’t have a complete spring training to learn the personalities of these players, who were gone for part of camp to play in the World Baseball Classic.
“The WBC is a great thing,” Souza said. “But as a new coach it put a wrench in things. I didn’t get a chance to spend time getting to know the personalities of Tatis, Manny and [Xander] Bogaerts, learning who they are. And so, it’s hard. It takes a lot of time to build relationships. You can’t come in and throw your philosophy at anyone.”
The result was almost predictable. Before the July 14 All-Star Game in Philadelphia, the Padres were hitting .226 with a .302 on-base percentage, .672 OPS, 379 runs scored and 709 hits, all league lows. They were a .500 team at 48-48, and the season was on the brink.
“Our hitters had a lot of success and have things they’ve done they believe it,” Souza explained. “And it’s (me) learning where you can give, where you can take. How they handle different things, how to communicate with them. It’s an art that just takes time.”
In the 22 games since then, the results have been diametrically different. The Padres have batted .290 with a .363 on-base percentage, an .815 OPS and won 14 of those games through Monday, when they open a three-game series with the Brewers. They are right there in the battle for the last two National League Wild Card spots, a game behind the D-backs and Phillies.
Again, what changed?
On Manny: “In my perspective he’s one of the easiest guys to deal with because he has such an idea about hitting,” Souza said. “And I’m very convicted in what I think. And so, I trust him, and when he’s ready to listen I try and go say something.
”He’s not satisfied yet. When he was hitting a buck-sixty in May, his perseverance through all that said a lot about his character. He didn’t sulk. He showed up for every meeting. He didn’t pull anyone down with him. From the coaching staff, we just needed to remind him how good he was every day.”
On Tatis, whose been hitting a pretty steady .283 since June 17 despite the power outage: “He was trying to pull everything and didn’t have the ability to stay inside [the ball] and drive it,” Souza said. “Fernando is actually one of the best pure hitters I’ve been around. If he wanted to hit .350 he could.
“But these guys have expectations of hitting 30, 40 homers. And then you start hearing the noise. That creeps in there. And you’re swinging to hit homers. When he let that go, that’s when the power numbers began to get going.”
Hitting, after all, is dealing with bundles of failure. For example, Tony Gwynn, who finished with a .338 batting average during his 20 years, all with the Padres,, was unsuccessful 66% of the times he went to the plate. Souza was unsuccessful 77% of the time.
Even with all the analytics at Souza’s fingertips that weren’t around in Gwynn’s era, it still comes back to one of Tony’s most simple dictums: “See the ball, hit the ball.”
Souza had to start from square one.
“I had a lot to learn early on. I’m still learning a ton,” Souza said. “Whenever you get a group with these high expectations, they’re going to be guarded. It forced me to be super prepared. It probably took me a good month and a half. Doing this with a young group you can try some stuff. Doing it with this group, you better be on it.”
Souza is now on it, the data obviously shows. There are 43 games left in the season to see how it all plays out.
