PEORIA, Ariz. — The Padres showed some semblance of their prime time lineup on Friday.
In their first night game of the spring, a week after Cactus League games started, they intended to play most (and maybe all) of their regulars in a game against the Mariners.
“The stars aligned,” manager Mike Shildt said in the afternoon.
He referred mostly to Fernando Tatis Jr. being ready to make his spring game debut after working back from a nearly weeklong bout of the flu and the other regulars’ schedule.
“We’ve got a pretty good lineup we’re running out there today, and it’s exciting,” Shildt said.
The team that actually took the field was minus Manny Machado, who was scratched with what the team termed back tightness. The Padres called the move to withhold Machado “precautionary.”
The original grouping was most notable for the way Shildt literally aligned the team’s stars.
From lead-off batter Luis Arraez through Yuli Gurriel in the No.8 spot, the lineup alternated left-right.
Arraez bats left-handed, Tatis right-handed, Jackson Merrill left, Machado right, Jake Cronenworth left, Xander Bogaerts right, Jason Heyward left and Gurriel right. Nine-hole batter Martín Maldonado bats from the right side. (The new lineup had right-handed Eguy Rosario batting eighth, Gurriel sixth and Bogaerts fourth.)
Shildt talks about their being “no wrong answers” regarding how he might construct his lineup game to game and calls the order “fluid.” And dissection of a batting order can be extraneous.
But the fact is that Friday’s original lineup was reminiscent of what Shildt did almost every game in 2024, alternating left- and right-handed bats as much as possible.
From the time Arraez arrived via trade last season and was placed atop the order, the Padres alternated sides of the plate their batters hit from through at least the first five spots in the order the majority of the time. They did so the first four spots in the order all but 10 of the 127 games after Arraez played his first game on May 4.
The left-right balance is something the Padres did not have for years but have built over the five seasons in which they have been a perennial contender.
“I like it,” Shildt said. “I like it a lot. It creates some problems for other teams, which is why we’re here.”
Consider Friday night’s initial order a rendering of the ideal. There is no telling what will happen in terms of injuries, and the Padres could still swing a trade for a designated hitter/outfielder.
Shildt also provided this caution:
“Don’t read too much into the lineup.”
But …
“You’re going to see the players that will be in the lineup,” he said Thursday, previewing what he had planned. “It is going to be a good representation of a lot of our regulars. It’s like, ‘All right, where does everybody go?’ It’s fun.”
But the preference is to adhere to basic tenet of left-right in order to make it more difficult for opposing managers to be employing certain relievers at times that would provide an apparent matchup advantage, such as a right-handed reliever coming in able to face multiple right-handed batters.
“It’s really important because just at a very basic standpoint it doesn’t allow a lot of favorable matchups from the other side,” Shildt said. “And the best thing about the lineup is, part of our continued emphasis, is making sure that we don’t have anybody in our lineup that it feels like there’s a matchup on the same side. Having right, left, right, left, right, left, that creates a little bit of imbalance, not only for the pitcher that’s facing those guys — they don’t get comfortable facing the same side guy or opposite side guy — but also the strategy of (the other manager) can’t bring this lefty in this spot.”
Shildt went on to profess that the Padres’ lineup makes it difficult on opposing managers because of their relative strength hitting same-handed pitchers.
“Our lefties hit lefties and our righties hit righties,” he said. “I didn’t feel like that was a competitive issue for us.”
The Padres were actually about middle of the pack in terms of being balanced. They hit far better against right-handers than left-handers — an MLB-best .272 batting average and fourth-ranked .764 OPS against right-handers and .239/690 against lefties, both of which ranked 19th.
The differentials between their numbers against lefties and righties — 33 points in batting average and 74 points in OPS — were slightly higher than other top-10 offenses.
And their regular left-handed batters that return for 2025 — Arraez, Cronenworth and Merrill — were also significantly better against righties. However, Arraez and Cronenworth have historically hit righties better than they did in 2024.
The real anomaly was in their regular right-handed batters that return — Bogaerts, Machado and Tatis. They all had reverse splits in 2024, meaning they hit right-handers better than left-handers. All have hit better against lefties over the course of their careers, though Bogaerts and Machado are relatively even and last year was not the first time they were reversed.
Key to the ability to keep it left-right at the top is Merrill’s ascension to the No.3 spot, where he would essentially replace switch-hitter Jurickson Profar. He began last season batting ninth, moved up incrementally, spent a plurality of his games at sixth but batted fifth in his final 15 regular season starts and in the postseason.
“We’ll take a look at it, evaluate it,” Shildt said. “And as always, it’s fluid.”
The Padres could end up putting Bogaerts there. They could also swap Bogaerts and Cronenworth.
“I love the tough decisions,” Shildt said. “I love the fact that we have the ability to have conversations amongst our lineups. We have fun with it sometimes. I really enjoy it because it means we have options. There’s really nothing worse from my seat be like, ‘Wow, can we find somebody to hit here? Who’s gonna hit there?’ There’s a lot of options in these different areas.”
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