ARLINGTON, Texas — For a number of years, and not that many years ago, a Honda Odyssey took them from town to town.
Now it is mostly airplanes that shuttle Josh and Jennie Merrill around the country to see their son play baseball.
Petco Park. Fenway Park. Citi Field. Citizens Bank Park. Almost everywhere he has played so far in his rookie season. Same as they would do, packing into the minivan for trips to and from tournament sites in towns big and small around the South.
“Seeing him on the field feels normal to me,” Jennie Merrill said. “That’s where Jackson belongs. Then I look around at the 40,000 people watching him, and that’s a totally different ballgame than our travel ball team going to Georgia.”
Hardly more than three years ago, Jackson Merrill graduated from Severna Park High School, played his final game for 5 Star, a travel team based in North Carolina, and was drafted 27th overall by the Padres.
This week, he is at the MLB All-Star game, a member of the National League roster after batting .278 and hitting 12 home runs.
It was just 53 weeks ago that Merrill played shortstop in the Futures Game, two days before last year’s All-Star game in Seattle. The next week, he was promoted from Single-A to Double-A, where he finished the season.
Over the winter, he put on an outfielder’s glove and worked to make a transition that would see him become the third-youngest center fielder to start an opening-day game in a half-century.
“It’s definitely fast,” he said. “Really fast and pretty cool.”
That’s about as self-congratulatory and reflective as Merrill gets.
What he also said Monday afternoon while seated on a high chair in front of a small table in the outfield at Globe Life Field, answering a stream of questions from members of the media was this:
“It’s really special, but I’m just here to play baseball.”
San Diego’s secret
The Padres haven’t won anything other than a few playoff series under A.J. Preller.
But one thing they can undoubtedly do, it is acknowledged throughout the industry, is scout.
And in finding the kid who intends to be a big part of making the Padres a winner, they certainly scouted.
Merrill played soccer through his sophomore year of high school and rec league basketball all four years. He did not travel the “showcase” circuit with the nation’s top high school baseball players. He simply wasn’t invited.
Maryland is not known for baseball. And while Merrill eventually committed to Kentucky late in his senior year, his initial commitment was to Army.
As recently as a month before the 2021 amateur draft, Merrill wasn’t publicly being talked about as his state’s best player. His agent, Drew Hardee, recalls him being the 10th-ranked player in Maryland at the time.
Well before then, the Padres had sent more than a dozen people to watch Merrill play in high school and travel tournaments. Preller would go and try to hide.
The first time Merrill’s parents met the Padres President of Baseball Operations was out beyond the outfield fence at a high school game. Preller was only there because he had been kicked out of the neighboring football stadium bleachers, where he had been trying to surreptitiously watch Merrill play.
It seemed every time one of the Padres’ scouts went to a game, Merrill did something like hit two home runs. There was one time he hurt his ankle before a game, and it appeared he would not play. Many scouts left. The Padres scout stayed. Merrill played and homered.
If the Padres could have shipped Merrill to the wilds of Alaska ahead of the draft, they would have.
Regional scout Jake Koenig and area scout Danny Sader would tell the Merrills all the time that it was OK not to talk to any other teams. They were sort of kidding.
“I posted a picture with Danny on Instagram one time, and he got pissed off,” Merrill recalled.
They secret could not be kept forever, and by the time Merrill’s high school team made the state playoffs there were more than 50 scouts in the stands.
In the weeks before the draft, interest from other big-league teams picked up. The Merrills had originally invited friends and family to their house for the second day of the draft; it soon became clear that they had to change that party to the first day.
The Yankees were hot for Merrill, though not as hot as they were for college shortstop Trey Sweeney, who they ended up taking 20th. Merrill fell to the Padres, which was exactly what he wanted.
“They were the first team to talk to me,” he said. “They were always the easiest and straight-up with me and talked to me the most and made me feel the most comfortable.”
Growing up
Geography was not the only factor in Merrill being overlooked. Physiology played a role.
Merrill was almost always the youngest player on his teams, owing to an April birthday. He was also usually the smallest.
Merrill was about 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds as a high school sophomore and only a little taller as a junior.
He was a good hitter who slapped the ball around the field but rarely hit homers.
Wendell Wright, his travel coach at 5 Star, sat Merrill down as a 16-year-old and leveled with him. He needed to get bigger and stronger and work on his swing or he was going to struggle when making the jump to the next age group.
Merrill told him he would do what it took to be ready.
“He comes back the next summer and everything ticked up,” Wright said. “Some of that was coordination and getting older. But he went and worked on his swing. … From that day, I was like, ‘This guy means it. When he says he is going to go work on it, he means it.’”
Thanks to a growth spurt, hard work, and a diet consisting largely of omelets, rice and chicken, Merrill transformed his body heading into his senior year. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and school was virtual, Merrill spent an abundance of time at trainer Juan Palacios’ facility.
Josh Merrill coached his son’s teams most years until he was 16.
“He was serious as hell,” Jackson said of his dad.
But Jackson Merrill credits Palacios with truly teaching him what hard work was.
“He was a skinny, skinny, lanky boy with a lot of hunger to get better,” Palacios said Monday.
Palacios recalls the first time the Merrills came to his facility and how Jackson took to drills without really being instructed. Afterward, Palacios told Josh Merrill: “I haven’t seen hands like that since I worked with (Mets star Francisco) Lindor. I haven’t seen a swing like that since I worked with (Twins star) Carlos Correa. I think we have a first-round pick here if we do a little work with the swing.”
Merrill spent eight hours a day at Palacios’ facility, taking 400 swings and 200 ground balls.
“I just started working hard every day,” Merrill said. “I didn’t really go a day without baseball for a solid year. I just was like really, really locked in on the development.”
Merrill wouldn’t be where he is without growing to his current size of 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds. But he wouldn’t be where he is now if he wasn’t also that small kid.
“If you just have absolute power out of the gate,” he said, “you’re not gonna learn how to go the opposite way and figure out the other simple parts that make you a good hitter.”
Merill stopped quickly to make sure it was understood there is nothing wrong with being big and hitting a lot of home runs.
“That’s good,” he said. “We love guys like that. That helps a team win.”
Will to win
That is Merrill’s extra tool.
For the athleticism that helped him make the nearly seamless transition to center field, for all the ability to make contact and the burgeoning power, Padres people say Merrill has succeeded so quickly at the major league level because he is most focused on winning.
Merrill’s swing doesn’t change when he hits nine home runs in a 16-game span, like he did last month. He listens intently but also isn’t afraid to talk. And he has a team-leading nine RBIs on outs, achieved by simply putting the ball in play when it’s needed most.
“He doesn’t focus too much on all the other stuff,” Padres hitting coach Victor Rodriguez said. “He isn’t worried about his swing or mechanics. He is out there thinking about how he can help the team win.”
That’s always been there.
Wright recalled a tournament when one of 5 Star’s teams had been eliminated from the championship round and had only a meaningless game to play in Raleigh, N.C., a six-hour drive for the Merrills.
Teammates wondered why Jackson was still there. His answer was that there was a game to play — and he wanted to play it.
That prompted another memory, one about a consolation championship game in Indiana.
“It was eight hours away. We didn’t have any more pitchers,” Merrill said. “So I threw a seven-inning shutout. It was fun. That’s so fun. That’s just a cool win with your team.”
Anyone who has been listening since Merill walked into the Padres’ clubhouse in spring training is familiar with his singular focus on being part of a winner.
But here among the game’s best players, Merrill was asked if there was even a moment where it hit him that he is an All-Star at 21 years old.
“I thought I was gonna have a moment when I got called up and debuted and stuff,” he said, “And I never did. I told one of my friends last week, ‘I always want more.’
“I’m here, but I want to win.”
Originally Published: