Inside the Padres’ hot start: How stellar offense, lights-out pitching have combined for MLB’s best record

The best team in baseball resides in the NL West, though it’s maybe not the team you’re thinking. The San Diego Padres, at 9-2, have MLB’s best record in the early going this season. They won a franchise-record seven straight games to begin 2025 and have jumped over the favored Dodgers, who are 1-3 since their own historic 8-0 start.

“Credit goes to the players,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said after Monday’s win (via MLB.com). “They were really dedicated to winning their offseasons. We did that, came to spring training, got a lot of quality work in during spring training. Now the season starts and the group’s ready.”

Monday’s win over the Athletics (SD 9, ATH 2) gave the Padres their 9-2 record, which matches the best start in franchise history. San Diego also started 9-2 in 1984 and 1998. Those of course are the years the Padres won the only two pennants in team history. The Padres will take that good omen. They’re still searching for the franchise’s first World Series title.

Teams have great 11-game stretches all the time and it’s still too early to know whether the Padres will be among baseball’s best teams at the end of the season. These wins are in the bank though. They’ve improved the San Diego’s postseason odds from 32.9% on Opening Day to 51.3% now, per FanGraphs. The Padres surely dreamed of a start like this and they’ve done it.

Here now are three reasons the Padres have baseball’s best record two weeks into 2025.

1. The run prevention has been lights out

The Padres have allowed only 2.91 runs per game in the early going, second only to the Mets (2.20). San Diego has allowed three runs or fewer seven times in their 11 games and on two other occasions they’ve allowed four runs. Only twice all season have they given up more than four runs — seven runs both times, and they won one of those games.

Here are the team’s run prevention ranks:

San Diego’s bullpen in particular has been fantastic. Shildt has four relievers he leans on in the late innings (Jason Adam, Jeremiah Estrada, Adrian Morejon, closer Robert Suarez) and those four have combined to allow two runs in 24 innings. They’ve struck out 30 and put only 17 runners on base. The offense gives them lead, then the bullpen shuts the door.

When you average fewer than three runs allowed per game, you have a chance to win every night. The Padres have been able to do this even though ace Michael King has not yet gotten into a groove, and they have three starting pitchers on the injured list (Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Matt Waldron). San Diego’s 9-2 start has been made possible by their run prevention. 

2. Their stars are playing like stars

It sounds obvious, but your best players need to be your best players to play your best, which the Padres are doing now. Jackson Merrill signed a long-term extension last week, cementing his place alongside Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. as one of the faces of the franchise. Those three have been terrific to begin the season:

Add in his superlative defense, and Tatis is second among National League position players in WAR, trailing only Kyle Tucker (1.1 WAR), and behind just Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto in the MVP favorites (+750, per Caesars). Merrill is in the top 10 for WAR as well. When you invest big dollars and many years in players, this is what you want: top-of-the-line production leading to wins, and a cushion in the standings for the long season ahead.

With those three leading the way, the Padres have been able to weather relatively slow starts from Luis Arraez (.279/.319/.395) and Xander Bogaerts (.243/.364/.324), the latter of whom has a long-term deal himself. San Diego has also gotten very little from the revolving door they have in left field (.200/.256/.286). Left field is a real problem that must be addressed at some point.

Eventually Merrill and Tatis will cool down — they’re both great, though perhaps not truly this great — and the hope is Arraez and Bogaerts will have warmed up by then. For now though, the Padres are getting excellent production from their best players. Machado, Merrill, and Tatis have led the way offensively (and defensively) during this 9-2 start.

3. They’re winning the high-leverage battle

A funny thing about the Padres is they were so disappointing in 2023 (82-80) and then so great in 2024 (93-69), and yet they were the almost the exact same team in nine-inning games. Remove the kookiness of the automatic runner in extra innings, and look:

• 2023: 80-68 (.541) in nine-inning games
• 2024: 83-67 (.553) in nine-inning games

Extra-innings games are basically a coin flip. The Padres went 2-12 in extra-inning games in 2023 and the talk was about how unclutch they were. Then, last year, they went 10-2 in extra innings. Ultimately, nine-inning games tell us more about a team’s true talent level, and the 2023 Padres and 2024 Padres were about the same. The stuff about not being clutch in 2023 was just noise.

This year’s Padres have yet to play an extra-innings game in part because they are doing the job in the game’s most important situations in the first nine innings. Their late-inning relievers have been lock down. Their offense has also been timely. Here are San Diego’s numbers in high-leverage situations:

Padres’ hitters have baseball’s lowest strikeout rate in all situations at 16.8%, well below the 22.5% league average, and their hitters have been even better at avoiding strikeouts in the game’s most critical situations. Their pitching staff, meanwhile, has prevented major damage in high-leverage spots. Their hitters and pitchers have been both excellent in important situations.

Does this mean the Padres are clutch? Well, it means the Padres have been clutch to date. Whether that continues all season is another matter. I’m not one for clutch debates anyway. No one wins those. The Padres have performed extremely well in high-leverage situations. It’s a thing that has happened. They’ve also been great at preventing runs in general, and their star players have been so good early on. Put it all together and you have a franchise best 9-2 start, and baseball’s best record.