I'm using Dji Neo 2 follow feature to track my sprint workouts. It's been mostly reliable. It happened few times that it would loose track of me and just hang in the air while I would be running away from it 😀 but this is rare. In most cases it tracks well. This allows me to work on my sprinting form.
Settings: follow mode, mid distance, flat, position right
Jackson Merrill has struggled, both traditional and advanced stats show that. He’s chasing a little more but is not making as much contact and has more whiffs. Even when he makes contact he is not getting the bat on the ball productively. This is shown by a drop in his expected wOBA on contact (xwOBACON) to be 379 vs 438 and 421 in 2024 and 2025, to indicate that even when he makes contact (which he is doing less), the way he hits the ball is not at velocities nor launch angles that result in good things for him or the Padres.
One thing that’s gone wrong is he has lost the ability to hit right handed pitching. In his inaugural season Merrill mashed righties for 311/344/547 with a 147 wRC+ (47% better than league average) while being poor against lefties; understandable for a rookie. This year he has reverse platoon splits and is terrible against right handers and average against left handed pitchers (97 wRC+). Merrill currently has a 68 wRC+ against righties, where the median qualified lefty has a 111 wRC+ against right handers this season. This makes Merrill the 9th worst lefty against right handed pitching. His batted ball profile has changed from his rookie year to this year where previously against righties he was all fields spraying medium and hard line drives around and now he’s a pull hitter but it’s ending up on the ground softly more frequently.
Jackson Merrill does well down and in. Against righties, in 2024 down and in out of the zone was his most productive region swinging the bat with a 0.714 wOBAcon (wOBA on contact) and even this year with a broken hit tool he’s wOBAconning a fine 0.396. I choose wOBAcon to focus on hit tool rather than eye at the plate. The takeaway here is of all the quadrants, he’s the most comfortable down and in.
To counter this, right handers have limited throwing Merrill sliders, starting at 11% in 2024, down to 9% and now 7%. Left-on-left sliders have increased by 3.5% year over year and sweepers from both handed pitchers has stayed relatively constant (this analysis depends on statcast correctly identifying sweepers vs gyro sliders). For righties the biggest gain has been on curveballs.
Despite right-on-left sliders disappearing, there’s still 90% of pitches that Jackson used to be fine with that he is struggling with. Checking out Statcast’s bat tracking metrics, Merrill seems like he is swinging harder with more loft; 2* of tilt and another tick on his swing. One way to think of it is he has a more uppercut swing and he’s swinging harder, the thing old-timers / our dads complain about with the modern game.
From the Batting Stance section on Baseball Savant, we see Merrill is getting out in front of the ball more, based on the “Intercept Point” columns. He is hitting the ball 3.3 inches in front of the plate now vs 1 inch into the plate in 2024. Getting the ball out in front of the plate generally results in more power if you make contact since your bat has more time to speed up. Where I’m less certain is in 2025 he also was in front of the ball but not swinging as hard, but that is confounded by his injuries. Still, the Attack Direction columns above indicates this year he’s gone to 1* pull when being 1* oppo the last two years, which is indicative of an approach change of trying to pull, and based on tilt and bat speed, I'd estimate trying to pull for power.
All this said it seems that Merrill had an all fields approach in 2024 and was fine with slightly above average bat speed, but is now shading more towards trying to pull for power. A reason for this could be league-wide, pulled barrels do better than opposite field barrels (which is Tatis’s problem, he’s going oppo on his barrels which have worse outcomes), but you also cannot barrel a ball you don’t get good contact with, which going back to his xwOBAcon and hitting more soft groundballs this year despite going "out in front."
The “All Fields” approach in 2024 vs the current “Pull for Power” can be seen in his spray chart where if you squint and ignore homers it seems like 2024 is balanced where 2026 is more dense to his pull side, right field.
Overall I don’t know the gameplan or the reasoning behind this, if he’s hurt again, if this is the team's approach or what. I don’t know if Jackson’s hit tool has degraded or if he’s “in between” fast ball and offspeed. It does seem like this year he is trying to attack pitchers more and that doesn’t seem like it’s working given that he is straight up bad against righties. Pitchers have stopped throwing him right-on-left sliders that he excelled at, so he doesn't get enough backfoot slider to demolish to boost his numbers. It also seems like he made an offseason change to his approach that hasn’t worked out. He hit 24 homers his rookie season and this year he’s only on pace for 16, so if he is intentionally trying to get more power maybe he should rethink this.
I do think he wants to succeed and is ultimately AA aged and if he hadn’t been accelerated to MLB and was figuring this out in San Antonio or El Paso I wouldn’t be writing this, but in MLB the pitchers are so good they will make an adjustment to you and if you can’t adjust back that is trouble. If he comes out of the All Star Break more willing to let the ball travel returns to an all fields approach, that may help get him back on track. The projections all have him as a 105ish wRC+ total for the rest of the season (probably a 115 vs RHP and 90 vs LHP breakdown), but I think if he can get to average against right handers again that may be more realistic and it would be significantly more useful than what he’s done thus far.
