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Victor Rodriguez has been the hitting coach for the San Diego Padres since December of 2023. He came to San Diego and took the role after spending time in the Cleveland Guardians organization as their assistant hitting coach. In two seasons with the Padres, the results have varied, but 2024 was by far the more productive season for the San Diego lineup.
There were different players on each roster, but I think when the Friar Faithful compare the 2024 team and the 2025 team, the most glaring difference is in home runs and slug. The losses of Jurickson Profar, Kyle Higashioka, Ha-Seong Kim, David Peralta and Donovan Solano did not seem to be significant at the time, but the drop off from last year to this year said different.
It has been reported that Rodriguez preaches contact, putting the ball in play and doing the little things like bunting and hitting sacrifice flys to score one more run than the other team. That approach was trumpeted by manager Mike Shildt as well and seemed to work in ’24 when the Padres led MLB in hits. However in ’25, they dropped to the middle of the league. At the same time, San Diego batters walked less in ’24 and the Padres were near the bottom of baseball rankings in that category, but in ’25 they walked more and moved up to 16th. That would seem to indicate that they were not getting pitches to hit OR they were less aggressive at the plate.
The most obvious and most talked about difference from last season to this season was the drop-off in power and slug. The Padres hit 152 home runs in 2025 compared to 190 home runs in 2024 and the difference in slug caused them to fall 15 spots from one season to the next, placing them near the bottom of the league.
So which season was the true offensive identity under Rodriguez? Maybe a third season would be the difference to illustrate which year was the anomaly. Perhaps a third season might continue the offensive decline, and the numbers will continue to gradually slip. Of course, this could all be a moot point because a new manager may want to bring in his own hitting coach.
That leads us to the Padres Reacts Survey Poll for this week. Do you think Rodriguez should remain the hitting coach in San Diego? The results will be posted later in the week.
Stats and rankings for this article were taken from statmuse.
