PITTSBURGH — The overseers of baseball’s most contact-prone offense first met more than four decades ago at Crockett Park in Charlotte, N.C. There, as he worked in various capacities for his hometown ballclub, 12-year-old Mike Shildt got to know Double-A infielder Victor Rodriguez.
Shildt would take an unconventional path to a managerial career and become a devotee of the teachings of St. Louis Cardinals cornerstone George Kissell. After his playing days ended, Rodriguez went on to coach the likes of David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia and José Ramírez.
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Last offseason, his first as Padres manager, Shildt leaned on strong recommendations and some familiarity in selecting Rodriguez as San Diego’s lead hitting coach. The fit quickly felt natural.
“We shared a lot of space years ago but hadn’t spent a lot of time in the professional game together,” Shildt said. “When we finalized (Rodriguez’s hire), he’s like, ‘You know, my friend, we just need to score one more. That’s the goal every day.’ And it was like, man, that’s my dude.”
For years, and for different organizations, Rodriguez and Shildt had distilled a universal objective into a simple catchphrase: Score one more run than the other team. In 2024, the two men are sharing both space and that message, one that has resonated with a collection of hitters ranging in age from 21 to 36.
“I think our philosophy is more about, ‘You have a better chance if you make contact,’” Rodriguez, 63, said. “I know at times you’d rather even strike out than make contact into a double play, but I realized that that part of hitting has been going. It’s gone.”
And that makes the Padres something of an anomaly.
Less than a year ago, a touted lineup finished the most disappointing season in franchise history with decent overall numbers and miserable results in close games. A significant amount of it was poor luck. But, as the losses mounted, the team’s offensive approach left much to be desired.
“We were just trying to make something happen,” infielder Jake Cronenworth said. “It’s a tough hole to be in.”
Now, in an era when getting a big-league hit feels as difficult as ever, the surging Padres rank first in the majors in batting average, contact percentage and strikeout rate. In FanGraphs’ definition of high-leverage situations, San Diego leads the league in average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
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“It’s just a different team, different year, different vibe,” third baseman Manny Machado said. “We compete whether we’re doing bad or we’re doing great. … We’re not going to give you anything easy.”
Thursday at PNC Park, the Padres did it again despite a weary bullpen. Trailing by a run in the ninth, they got an infield single from second baseman Xander Bogaerts. A pair of walks loaded the bases. Then catcher Kyle Higashioka put the ball in play for a potential game-ending double play.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, though, threw the ball away as Higashioka hustled to first base and two runs scored. Moments later, Arraez doubled to secure a two-run lead. The Padres held on in the bottom of the inning for a 7-6 win and their 14th victory in 17 games.
They didn’t earn many style points, but once again, they scored one more run than the other team.
Jurickson Profar (right) and Luis Arraez have helped the Padres to the best batting average, contact rate and strikeout percentage in the majors. (Geoff Burke / USA Today)
Soon after he was named manager in November, Shildt began visiting the team’s core players to initiate conversations about a collective offensive identity. The discussion continued into spring training, where, on the first day of camp, a key talking point was “Petco Park hitting.” In 2023, the Padres were repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to slug for power inside their generally pitcher-friendly home stadium.
“If you want to hit homers, it’s going to be tough,” Bogaerts said, recalling a part of the message. “Manny Machado, he’s going to hit 30-something because that’s who he is. (Fernando Tatis Jr.) can swat 40. But other guys, if you want to have that same 20, 30, 40, you might end up hitting .220. So it’s probably not the best way to approach hitting, playing at Petco.”
This season has since produced at least one oddity: The Padres rank fourth in the majors with 81 home runs at home. Yet they have not striven to hit baseballs over walls. Instead, they have accepted more than a few happy accidents while lowering their sights at the plate.
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“We really focus on what is the approach that we need to have there. And it’s gap to gap, line drives,” Rodriguez said. “And even the (other) places that we go, we always practice that.
“If you put the ball in play, you have a better chance to do something, especially with men in scoring position. I think from day one we have preached, ‘Let’s score one more run than the other team.’ And how we’re gonna do that is by knowing situational hitting, by having a two-strike approach, an approach in which it doesn’t matter if you have two strikes; you still have a chance.
“I don’t believe in just making contact,” Rodriguez added. “I believe in being in a good position to get a good pitch to drive the ball.”
Players say the affable Rodriguez has achieved and maintained buy-in largely through constant positivity and mental reinforcement. “A lot of ‘Trust your hands, trust your work,’” said Bogaerts, who spent almost eight years with Rodriguez in the Boston Red Sox organization. “With him, it’s a lot about trust, besides the fact that obviously you’re working on mechanics and so forth.”
It has helped, maybe immensely, that the Padres employ hitters predisposed to a line-drive-oriented plan of attack. The departure of MVP candidate Juan Soto in December weakened the offense, but it also preceded a run of ultimately invigorating additions.
In February, San Diego re-signed Jurickson Profar in what has become the bargain of the offseason. In March, star rookie Jackson Merrill debuted on Opening Day. In May, president of baseball operations A.J. Preller traded for two-time batting champion Luis Arraez, citing a desire “to put pressure on the other team.” The same month, the Padres promoted big-league veterans Donovan Solano and David Peralta from Triple A.
“I don’t dig into old school, new school, whatever,” Shildt said. “Guys with just that philosophy, the more of them you have together, the more they entrench our identity.”
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“I think this system we have is mostly because the players believe that that’s the approach that we need, and the front office (does too),” Rodriguez said.
Solano, a 36-year-old and a career .281 hitter, sat through spring training without a big-league offer. The Padres signed him to a minor-league deal in April. Since his return to the majors, he has hit .311 and served as a weapon against left-handed pitching.
“I try to keep the same approach because I’m not a power hitter,” Solano said. “And that’s one of the reasons they bring me here.”
The contributions of Solano and other newcomers have buoyed a lineup that lost its best power hitter, Tatis, to a stress reaction in late June. The Padres have responded to Tatis’ absence by going 24-12 and averaging 5.25 runs per game. In the same span, they are tied for second in the majors in sacrifice bunts.
“I believe in, as Mr. Kissell used to say, ‘The game calls for a lot of tools and having as many tools in your toolbox as possible,’” Shildt said. “I believe in that and believe in competition. But you also need to be aware of what kind of club you have. And then you adjust to your personnel.”
Of course, last season’s personnel was different. It’s hard to say what the 2023 Padres would have accomplished with this year’s offensive game plan.
“Last year was very weird,” Bogaerts said. “Obviously, (the Padres) had a nice run in ’22, went almost to the World Series. So expectations were high, a lot of pressure. You can get a little tense, you know? Everyone wants to do good. They want to do great. They want to help. And when it’s not going good, you try to do a little too much, and that’s where you start going a little bit more backwards. … I don’t know if this approach would have worked the same last year, because we didn’t have the same team.”
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Still, it seems safe to say it could have helped.
A little more than a decade ago, Rodriguez was a first-year assistant hitting coach for the Red Sox when Ortiz bashed 30 home runs but also hit .309 with only 88 strikeouts. That October, the slugger went 11-for-16 on his way to being named the 2013 World Series MVP. Three seasons later, on the verge of retirement, a 40-year-old Ortiz led the majors in OPS while striking out 86 times.
In Rodriguez’s mind, the late-career Ortiz remains an optimal template for blending power production and contact ability.
“The teams that I’ve been on that won World Series and have been in the playoffs, that’s what they do,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not my philosophy. It’s the philosophy that I’ve seen that I believe works. It’s about getting one more run than the other team. That’s it. And how we’re going to do it.”
(Top photo of Xander Bogaerts: Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)
