Freddy Fermin’s season line still looks rough, but the Padres may finally be getting the version of him they were hoping for.
San Diego brought Fermin in at the deadline last year knowing the glove would be there. The bigger question was whether the bat could give the lineup any real help, because the Padres needed production behind the plate in the worst way. Fermin showed a little of that down the stretch in 2025, including an extra-innings walk-off hit that sealed a postseason spot, but that spark was nowhere to be found for most of the first half of 2026.
By the time July rolled around, he was hitting .148. That wasn’t the result of one ugly stretch, either.
He opened April 7-for-31, then slumped to 5-for-51 in May and 7-for-37 in June. At that point, it looked like the whole Fermin experiment might be running out of runway.
Then July changed the tone. Fermin hit .292 that month, and that surge carried into a seven-game hitting streak that stretched into August. The overall numbers are still going to look harsh when the season is done, but the recent production is hard to ignore with the Padres trying to make a real postseason push.
In the first five games of August, Fermin went 8-for-19 with two doubles, one home run and five RBIs. That stretch alone made up nearly a quarter of his extra-base hits for the year and almost a third of his RBIs.
So is this the start of something real, or just a hot week buried inside a bad season? The safer bet is the latter.
Even so, Fermin’s climb out of that early hole says plenty about what he can still offer San Diego. Entering August 15, he was sitting on a 65 OPS+ and a .589 OPS, numbers that are plainly disappointing.
He’s earned the criticism for how much he struggled. But the Padres also have to notice what he’s doing now, because it’s arriving at exactly the right time, with fewer than 40 games left and the postseason chase tightening.
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