I sat down to write something about this completely ridiculous 2024 Padres season so many times, but could never bring myself to do it due to the very real and utterly foolish feeling that I’d jinx the season.
This was even more true with Jackson Merrill.
I made a minor league trade for Merrill in fantasy baseball in 2023, and wanted to keep him around once it was announced he’d be the starting centerfielder for the Padres. Ya never know – kid could be worth it.
He was.
But, here’s what happened – I never brought him up to my major league roster out of fear that I would jinx him. I had this fear because in 2023 I brought up Elly De La Cruz after his first couple months of mashing and then he completely fell off a cliff. I didn’t want that for Merrill. My fantasy season be damned if it meant the Padres win it all.
They didn’t.
They ended their season on a gut punch so hard and unexpected it was on par with the 4th shot from the book depository. If you’re PadresTwitter 3.0 you can google that one. SafeSearch off.
Watching that last game of the Padres 2024 run was like watching Geostorm over and over and over again while listening to Sublime with Rome at the same time. It was punishment for a past life.
Well, if that gut punch was too much, the fact that Paul “Livvy Dunne” Skenes won the god damn rookie of the year award over Jackson Merrill’s quite improbable and unbelievable season, takes the cake. What an absolute crock of shit. And, I’m using that saying purposefully. It’s an old saying. Old timey. Something your grandpa would say and you’d roll your eyes at because that’s how out of touch he was – you know just like the BBWAA.
And, yes, I know there’s some young guys on there now and I’ll get to that in a second.
But, HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL? How did Jackson Merrill not win this award? HOW?! Was Nick Canepa there? WAS HE?!
I have two theories on how this Apocalypse level event transpired, but in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, maybe you work for the BBWAA, I’ll break this down using something I thought the old timers over there loved – stats:
Jackson Merrill hit .292 with 24 homeruns, 90 RBI, 16 SB, .500 SLG.
How about those pesky advanced stats that the who’s who of who at the BBWAA love to ash their cigars on? He finished with .826 OPS, 127 OPS+, .357 rOBA and sported a 4.4 WAR.
I know, I know, lots of letters and numbers there, grandad. What about those intangibles the old timers love so fucking much they have the word tattooed on their lower backs? He played in 156 games! He is 21 years old! And, oh yea – this was the first season HE’S EVER PLAYED THE POSITION! A position he only committed 3 errors in to walk away with a fielding percentage of .993! Oh, and he led his team – YES HE LED HIS TEAM – to a playoff run no one actually expected.
Now, let’s look at Paul Skenes. His WAR was better at 5.9, had a lights out ERA of 1.93 with 170 Ks and just 32 BBs. I won’t take away the fact that he had an incredible rookie season. On a team that didn’t make a run. In fact they finished DEAD LAST in their division. Sure, that wasn’t Skenes fault, but his skills did little to lead the team. In fact, he became the face of the team. A last place team. He’s 22 and only played in 23 games all year.
23 GAMES ALL SEASON LONG. That’s 14% of Merrill’s games. A fraction so small it ain’t even worth twenty-five scents.
And, oh yea, his intangibles weren’t enough to lead his team to a playoff run, or out of the cellar, or even a winning record. From where I’m sitting his intangibles were having a mustache in Pittsburgh and having a hot girlfriend who’s an “influencer”.
And, that is theory number one: Livvy Dunne. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that Skenes got votes from a bunch of creepy ass old men and young dorks in their parents basements who thought maybe – JUST MAYBE – If I vote for Skenes Livvy will find out and tweet at me, or maybe even DM me, and who knows maybe we’ll be friends and she’ll like me and we can be together forever and ever!!!!
People may think this is a dumb theory, and sure maybe it is, but I’ve worked with a lot of sportswriters and it ain’t as dumb as we all wish it was. And, MLB loooooooooooooooooooooooooooves Dunne. She was essentially the host of the All-Star Game. She was EVERYWHERE all season. She was a spectacle. Candy. Something to remind you that Paul Skenes is very good.
But, she’s also exhausting, and ridiculous, and MLB is trying so hard to make Skenes/Dunne the next Verlander/Upton that we might as well just accept it the same way we do when the family dog dies.
MLB and the BBWAA will do anything they can to make baseball relevant, and if they think this low-rent Kristen Bell will get the job done then so be it. And yes, I’m being irrationally harsh on Dunne, but oh well.
Without Dunne Skenes is basically Stephen Strasburg.
My second theory is something else that was out of Merrill’s hands: his team. And, this is two-fold. When most people think about the Padres they don’t think about Merrill. It’s Tatis or Machado or sadly Xander. I’d even say Yu Darvish and Musgrove might come to mind before Merrill. Maybe even Luis Arraez! He’s on a team surrounded by stars, and yes even though he outshined the majority of those stars in 2024, it doesn’t matter. He (for the time being anyway) isn’t the face of the franchise and Skenes is.
And that’s the other part of this theory – Skenes team is bad. Outside of Andrew McCutchen and MAYBE O’Neil Cruz, you really don’t hear much about the Pirates. But, they are truly one of the great MLB franchises that have seem to be lost in Never Neverland for decades. The Pirates aren’t folding, or moving, they are in Pittsburgh forever. They just aren’t good, and haven’t been for a long time. Their ownership doesn’t spend money, their fans are over it, and in the city they’re considered less relevant than the Penguins. Skenes changed that. His starts were sell outs. He was appointment television in Pittsburgh. And, yes Merrill experienced DOZENS of sellouts in San Diego this past season, but that wasn’t his single accomplishment.
Skenes had the chance to revive a franchise and he did. Merrill had the chance to fire up a very good team for a very rabid fan base, and he did.
I’m assuming this second theory was a very large part of why the BBWAA voted the way they did, but it was still wrong. Skenes did a lot, and was incredibly good, but what he did on the field didn’t ultimately matter, and he only played 14% of the time that Merrill did. The numbers just don’t compare.
They don’t.
The BBWAA just plain fucked it up. Maybe they did it cause they hate Manny. Maybe they did it to help revive the Steel City. Maybe they did it to get a hug from Livvy. Maybe they did it to retaliate for the Ken Rosenthal blackout. But, it was still wrong. It makes no sense. And, just like the Padres last two games of 2024, it feels personal.
So, here we are again, Padres fans. Gut punched. Pissed off. Over it. And, it seems like the God’s really do hate the Friars. Where do we go from here? I don’t know. Nowhere? Do I just stop loving this team? I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that the best thing Merrill can do is be even better in 2025. Not just for the Padres, but for my fantasy team. And, really that’s all that matters anymore – cause apparently the Padres can only succeed in a fantasy world.