BALTIMORE — Padres hitting coach Victor Rodriguez pulled out a sheet Friday that outlined the day’s focus during batting practice at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
Under the spot labeled “situational hitting,” it can say things like “man on second, no outs” or other scenarios that might arise during a game.
As the team prepared to face the AL East-leading Orioles, the spotlight was on “Petco Park hitting” despite being nearly 2,300 miles and three time zones away from the Padres’ home.
“Petco Park is not a field where you can focus on power,” Rodriguez said. “You’ve got to focus on hitting line drives, gap to gap. That’s how you’re going to be effective there. If you try to lift the ball in the air there, usually it’s an out.
“Even here (in Baltimore), Petco Park hitting is to eliminate fly balls and focus on line drives.”
The Padres keep bucking trends and piling up hits, including 13 on Friday in a 6-4 win against the Orioles. They have outhit opponents in all but one of their seven games since the All-Star break.
Those molding Padres bats this season are telling baseball’s new-school thinking to take a long stroll on a short Inner Harbor pier. All the analytics about getting the ball in the air and weathering the strikeouts that accompany so many all-or-nothing swings?
Nah, Rodriquez said.
The philosophy has created an effective blend of consistent contact while whittling down strikeouts. The Padres lead baseball in hits, a season after finishing 22nd.
Entering Friday, the Padres had the second fewest strikeouts, with just five more than the Royals. Kansas City, however, had played two fewer games.
More contact. Less strikeouts. Simple, right?
Not to many in baseball.
“I guess it’s old-school, because I’m very old,” said Rodriquez, 63, with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s old-school, though. To me, it’s the right way to play the game. Old-school, new-school, at the end of the day it’s about winning games. And we believe that’s the way to win ball games.”
In short, the boiled-down approach has shown less can become more.
“Stay low to the middle of the field,” said Padres utility plug-in Tyler Wade, asked to define the Petco-inspired reasoning. “Low line drives. Use the gaps, because we have big gaps there. I think when you try to elevate there, it just dies. It doesn’t travel like in hot humid places like Atlanta. If you keep the ball low there, good things happen.
“When you’re thinking that way, it’s funny how those turn into extra-base hits and homers.”
Some of the challenges include untangling the modern-day wiring of younger players, Padres manager Mike Shildt said. He recalled a conversation with Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith during the defensive-shift era.
“Ozzie said, ‘Hey, Shildt, you have all these guys standing on one side of the field and guys can’t hit a ground ball (to the other side),” Shildt said. “I said, ‘They can’t.’ ‘What do you mean they can’t?’ There are guys coming up with one approach, one basic swing plane. Even if they try to exploit that hole, they can’t do it.
“He said, ‘I’d have 4,000 hits if I was playing today and they tried to do that.’ “
Contact will increase when you insert a hit-generating machine like Luis Arraez into a lineup, of course. It’s more than that in 2024, though.
The philosophy change has been a cocktail of both the mental and mechanical. A season ago, the Padres watched a parade of players try to mash “five-run homers” as some in the clubhouse called it.
“Last year, I think everybody was putting a lot of pressure on themselves given the situation we were in, to try and make things happen,” infielder Jake Cronenworth said. “This year, it’s completely different.
“We have good players 1 through 9 with the ability to stack to quality at-bats no matter what the situation.”
Plate patience is stirred in, as well.
The more disciplined the at-bats, the more likely a player will run into the right hit to pitch. The Padres are plus-209 in strikeout differential, the best in baseball and tops in club history.
“It’s about passing the baton to the next guy in the lineup,” Wade said. “It’s having faith in the guy behind you. I don’t have to do too much. I can just go up and have a good at-bat and put the ball in play.
“And if I just saw eight pitches from the on-deck circle or the dugout, that just made my job a little bit easier.”
The Padres are muting conventional wisdom.
“When the situation comes, don’t try to do too much,” Rodriguez said. “Just focus on one run at a time instead of three or four runs with one swing. That’s when you lose focus on the making-contact part. You’re forcing the swing.”
Petco Park hitting, no matter the location.
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