After escaping elimination in the National League Division Series against a San Diego team they considered their toughest October competition, the Dodgers scampered toward the pitcher’s mound to celebrate in front of their home crowd. Minutes into the revelry, the visiting Padres dugout had emptied, save for a 21-year-old who stayed behind to survey the scene.
Jackson Merrill’s arms hung over the railing as he looked stoically ahead. He wasn’t ready for the Padres’ year to end.
“I don’t want to feel that feeling again,” Merrill said, recalling the moment this spring. “So I was taking in as much as possible, you know? Take in as much as possible, that feeling, so you can avoid it the next time.”
Entering his second year in the big leagues, Merrill is ready to turn the page — certainly from the way 2024 ended, but also from the extraordinary success that was his first year in the big leagues.
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“It was fun,” Merrill said, “but it’s all said and done with.”
At this time last year, Merrill was a 20-year-old shortstop prospect getting an opportunity few saw coming in center field, a position he had never played at any level. Talent evaluators liked his athleticism and ability to hit to all fields. The power, some figured, might eventually follow as the top-20 prospect strengthened and packed weight onto his 6-foot-3-inch frame. He finished the 2023 season with a .770 OPS and 15 home runs between High-A and Double-A.
A year later, he would wrap up a 2024 All-Star campaign with an .826 OPS and 24 home runs in his first season in the big leagues, winning a Silver Slugger Award and finishing ninth in MVP voting as the Padres’ starting center fielder.
“Some of the things we thought were coming in the future, he went and did it year one,” president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said.
There was no luck involved.
In fact, his underlying numbers suggested his statistics probably should’ve been even better. His remarkable ascension came at a vital time for San Diego. The Padres needed someone from within to emerge.
They had traded away Juan Soto and Trent Grisham and, facing payroll limitations, entered last spring with two of the three outfield spots unsolidified. Some affordable help arrived in the form of free-agent Jurickson Profar, who turned a one-year, $1 million deal into a career year at 31 years old. In an All-Star season, Profar solidified the corner spot opposite of right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.
But the most important of the three outfield spots still remained a question.
José Azocar was the only other outfielder on the roster. Prospects Graham Pauley and Jakob Marsee were options. So was Merrill, a 20-year-old top prospect who had never played above Double-A.
The Padres knew Merrill would have a chance to compete for a spot on the team. Preller had moved shortstops to the outfield in the past — most notably bumping Tatis full time to right field in 2023 and watching him win a Platinum Glove — and figured Merrill was capable of handling a similar switch, though playing center brings more responsibility than a corner spot.
Even Preller couldn’t have known how seamlessly Merrill would handle it.
“He went and took it,” Preller said. “For us, we talk about accelerating the process of the gifted, but those guys have to go do it.”
Despite his inexperience, Merrill never seemed overmatched at the plate or with his opportunities in the outfield in spring. Prior to the 2024 season, only two players in the last 50 years — Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones — had started on Opening Day in center field before turning 21.
On March 20 at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, Merrill would add a third name to that list.
“I didnt think about it too much,” Merrill said. “I really didn’t care if it was hard or not.”
Months later, Marsee was sent to Miami in a deal to acquire Luis Arraez. At the deadline, Pauley was also dealt to Miami to acquire Tanner Scott. By then, Merrill had gone from trying to make the team, to solidifying the outfield vacancy, to building a case for Rookie of the Year. He began the year in the nine spot in the lineup and ended it in the five. He was productive to start the season, but he took off with a power surge a couple months into the year.
From the start of June through the end of the season, Merrill ranked 11th among all players in FanGraphs’ version of wins above replacement, providing more value to his club than anyone on his star-studded team. In that time, he also ranked 10th in the majors in OPS. Among the players ahead of him on that list, the only ones with a lower strikeout rate were Yordan Alvarez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ketel Marte, Juan Soto and Bobby Witt Jr. His fWAR total also spoke to his spectacular work in center, where he did not look like a player learning on the fly.
“Anywhere on the field feels natural to me,” Merrill said. “It wasn’t a huge challenge, but it definitely was one I was excited to go at. I’d been playing short for so long that, yeah, it sucks getting moved off. But at the same time, it’s a new opportunity.”
Among rookie position players, no one came close to Merrill’s production. He led all qualified rookies in hits, RBIs, batting average and slugging and was tied for first in home runs and triples.
Perhaps even more incredibly, he also graded out exceptionally well in his first year as a center fielder He ranked seventh in outs above average and third in ultimate zone rating among qualified players at his position. It was an all-around clinic from a player who had logged just 46 games above High-A entering the 2024 season.
It was his poise at the plate, though, that set him apart.
“You see 0-for-4 or 0-for-8, and people go down,” Padres hitting coach Victor Rodriguez said. “He didn’t.”
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Rodriguez attributed that consistency to Merrill’s self-confidence. After enduring a six-game hitless skid at the end of April and early May, Merrill never again went more than three games without a hit.
“Besides that, the team around him supported him and really believed in him,” Rodriguez said. “When you have that, that goes a long way. The guys really like what he brought. They liked his energy. They liked the way he wanted to win.”
And, more often than not, he made his hits matter.
Merriill’s six game-tying or go-ahead homers in the eighth inning or later were tied with Frank Robinson for the most in a season by a player 21 or younger in the last 100 years. Among them were two walk-off home runs. His sustained production in the second half helped the Padres surge to the postseason with a league-leading 43-20 record after the break.
Then, in his first playoff experience, he doubled and tripled in the wild-card series and homered in the NLDS.
He finished the season worth 5.3 fWAR, the highest mark of any rookie. Had he played in the American League, he would have been the runaway winner of the Rookie of the Year Award. Only a historic pitching season from Paul Skenes would stop him from winning the award in the National League.
Not that he seemed to care, especially after watching the season end at Dodger Stadium.
“It was really such a side award,” Merrill said. “My focus the whole year was to win. And we didn’t win the World Series. After we lost the Division Series, Rookie of the Year went out of my mind.”
After playing more games than he had at any point in his life, Merrill knew he needed a break. He took a month of downtime after the season to allow his body to reset. He stayed in San Diego for a bit before heading home to Baltimore for a month. But he was antsy to get back. He returned to Arizona shortly after the calendar turned to January. By the time the full squad reported for spring training, Merrill had already been there for more than a month.
“I’m here to break camp with the team,” Merrill said before Cactus League play began. “I’m not here thinking I’m already on the squad.”
To anyone else who watched him last season, a roster spot was never in doubt. He had already established himself as one of the best outfielders in the sport.
The question now: Where does he go from here?
“He’s talked about it, he’s a guy that’s never satisfied,” Preller said. “I think him going and doing it again, obviously last year he was a prospect name that people knew, so he wasn’t somebody totally below the radar. But major league teams now, when they go prepare for the Padres — it changed as the year went on last year — he was a guy that was one of the top guys you had to be ready to compete against. That’s going to be everywhere he goes.”
Preller knows there are areas that Merrill wants to focus on in year two. Defensively, he can work on his reads in center field. On the basepaths, Merrill hopes to utilize his speed to steal more than the 16 bags he swiped last season. And, perhaps most importantly to reach his ceiling, he knows he can be more selective at the plate.
Only five players swung at a higher percentage of pitchers last season. A high chase rate and low walk rate meant fewer times on base and fewer opportunities to add to that stolen base total he hopes will increase. The Padres want him to stay in the zone more in 2025, but they also don’t want him to sacrifice the aggressiveness that made him such a force. It’s a delicate balance to strike, one that Rodriguez believes Merrill will learn with time.
“We’ve got to be careful with that,” Rodriguez said. “But overall, I think it’s a kid that’s smart, and he understands the things that he needs to do to be productive, and he understands that controlling the strike zone, swinging at good pitches, is going to get him in a better place.”
How much that will change remains to be seen.
Merrill expressed some frustration that he didn’t record a single free pass this spring, but he also slugged .543 with four homers in 46 plate appearances.
“When I hit it, it sounds a little different than it did last year,” Merrill told reporters at the end of spring training. “I think I just know my swing better than I did last year.”
That’s a good sign for a Padres team looking to capitalize while its core is still productive and intact.
This offseason, Profar went to Atlanta, Scott went to the rival Dodgers and shortstop Ha-Seong Kim went to Tampa Bay.
Still, even as the Padres have taken hits to their depth, the presence of Merrill, Tatis and Manny Machado in the middle of the lineup provides a nucleus capable of keeping the window of contention open. Over the last five years, the Padres have made the playoffs three times, but they only advanced out of the first round once.
After the way last season’s run ended, with his head resting on his arms on the railing of an empty visiting dugout at Dodger Stadium, Merrill — who knocked in four runs Thursday in the Padres’ season opener — hopes to change that in 2025.
“Win a World Series, that’s always the next step,” Merrill said. “I mean, I could have personal achievements all the live long day, but it doesn’t matter if we’re not winning. That’s how I’ve played the game since I was born — it doesn’t matter what I’m doing on the field if we’re not winning.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
Jackson Merrill
San Diego Padres
Major League Baseball
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