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6 hours ago
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As a team, it's unfair to suggest that the San Diego Padres have played bad baseball throughout the year.
With all the injuries the pitching staff has faced, as well as some other challenging issues, the Padres sitting at 52-44 and 5.5 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West isn't too big of a deal.
Ultimately, the Padres will have an opportunity to turn things around in the second half, and there's no reason why they can't, considering they should be getting healthier in the near future.
For others, however, there have been some disappointing results on the diamond. That includes second-year star Jackson Merrill, who was one of the brightest young players in baseball a year ago.
Unfortunately, Merrill has struggled to get into a rhythm, hitting just .260 with seven home runs after hitting .292 with 24 the year before.
He hasn't been horrible, with a 106 OPS+ and above-average defense, but it isn't up to his standards.
When speaking to reporters, Merrill was very disappointed with how he had played early on and made an NSFW remark about his play.
“It helps me as a human more than it helps me as a baseball player. … I mean in baseball, the goal is to win and play good. So it's not helping to play like s**t. But as a human being, just knowing that you're gonna mess up and you're not perfect, that helps. Because once you realize that, you take that in with you to the game,” Merrill said, per Annie Heilbrunn of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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For the Padres to be the team they're looking to be in the second half, they need guys like Merrill to step up.
If last year showed anything, it showed that he has the ability to change games.
Hopefully, he’ll rebound from this sophomore slump, but it's something that many players around Major League Baseball deal with at some point, so even if the struggles continue, it's tough to blame him too much.
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