The San Diego Padres entered the 2025-26 offseason with questions abounding throughout several aspects of their roster. Corner outfield was not among those questions, however. 

On one hand, it helps when you have Fernando Tatis Jr. holding down one side of the outfield grass. While it didn’t come without frustrating stretches, Tatis reestablished himself as one of the premier players in Major League Baseball courtesy of a 6.1 fWAR figure that ranked 10th among big league regulars. The other side of the outfield remained a struggle for much of the year. What began as a platoon between Jason Heyward and Connor Joe quickly devolved. Neither was long for the roster, and the Padres spent much of the rest of the first half watching the adventures of Gavin Sheets and a rotating cast of other reserves. 

At the trade deadline, A.J. Preller was able to address the spot with a move that stabilized the position in the form of Ramón Laureano. While Laureano would miss the postseason because of a finger injury, he turned in strong enough numbers down the stretch that made exercising his $6.5 million club option an easy call. 

That’s the duo bookending Jackson Merrill for much of 2026. Unlike last year, though, the team actually boasts some depth. Each of Sheets, Miguel Andujar, and Nick Castellanos can handle a corner for a spell, with the team also aiming to expand the versatility of Sung Mun Song to get his bat in the lineup as frequently as possible. As far as positional groups on this roster go, the brass shouldn’t have a difficult time feeling confident about this group.

Padres Corner Outfielders At A Glance

Starters: Ramón Laureano (LF), Fernando Tatis Jr. (RF)
Backups: Gavin Sheets, Miguel Andujar, Nick Castellanos, Bryce Johnson
Depth: Alex Verdugo, Sung Mun Song
Prospects: Tirso Ornelas, Braedon Karpathios

LF fWAR Ranking Last Year: 21st (1.3)
RF fWAR Ranking Last Year: 5th (6.1)
LF fWAR Projection This Year: 19th (1.8)
RF fWAR Projection This Year: 2nd (5.4)

The Good

The outfield corners might just represent the most stable aspects of the 2026 roster. Everywhere else you look, there are significant question. The infield has them. The pitching staff certainly has them. Outside of the bullpen, you have to feel the best about what this duo in the corners offers the team. 

Tatis finished a season healthy. While he may have been held back by a nagging injury or two in the summer, he appeared in 155 games, hit 25 homers, stole 32 bases, and brought elite defense to right field. If he can recoup some value on the power side — and indications are that some mechanical settling should help him to do just that — then the momentum he built up for Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic could very well carry over into the regular season. 

The same could be said of Laureano. His 2025 season was his best across the board since 2019, including an isolated power figure that was 35 points better than any individual mark he’d posted in the years since. If his growth in the approach is for real, it could yield real power dividends for a team that needed to scrape it from anywhere they could find it last season.

The improved depth also marks a positive for this group. The following is a list of players that appeared in either corner for the Padres in 2025 beyond their two projected starters: 

Gavin Sheets (64 games in LF)

Jason Heyward (30 games in LF, four games in RF)

Brandon Lockridge (30 games in LF, three games in RF)

Bryce Johnson (26 games in LF, 10 games in RF)

Tyler Wade (17 games in LF, three games in RF)

Oscar González (14 games in LF, five games in RF)

Tirso Ornelas (five games in LF)

Trenton Brooks (two games in LF)

Jose Iglesias (one game in LF)

Connor Joe (one game in LF)

Three of those players remain in the organization. The combination of Sheets, Andujar, and Castellanos may not offer much on the defensive side, but each raises the floor of this position group significantly in the event of an injury or a day off. There’s also a chance that Sung Mun Song could provide a higher quality of defense once he gets a little more work on the grass, as the team has expressed a desire to maximize his versatility. 

The Bad

As stable as the group looks on paper, there’s a certain streakiness and a mild uncertainty that could manifest for the Padres’ corner outfielders in 2026. After a torrid start to last year, Tatis’ wRC+ in May was just 74. He recovered some offensive value in June, but with an ISO of just .102. He repeated the trend between July and August before tapping back into his aggression and posting big power numbers in September. 

While Laureano wasn’t prone to the same type of month-to-month variance, he did bookend the year with a brutal showing. His wRC+ with Baltimore in April was 74 before posting an 83 in September, after which point the finger injury shut him down. 

Any player is prone to a stretch of poor production. That’s not unique to Tatis or Laureano. The reason you worry is because neither has a recent track record of genuinely sustained success. In fact, their career paths are somewhat similar given injury and prior suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs. You feel good about Tatis given where the upside was before 2022 and what the skill set has always been. You feel less sure about Laureano given the career stagnation that unfolded between 2019 and 2025 before he broke back out in the latter season.

The defense represents a much more tangible concern, at least in left field. Laureano’s metrics don’t look nearly as favorable as they did early in his career, bottoming out with a -9 Outs Above Average that sat in just the second percentile. Only five outfielders graded worse by way of OAA than Laureano did, even if his arm strength remains potent. Perhaps even worse is the fact that Nick Castellanos was one of those five, tying Juan Soto‘s -12 OAA as the work mark among all outfielders that qualified. If we were to expand that to a minimum of 50 outfield attempts, Andujar’s -3 led the group in being ranked 135th out of 183, while Sheets’ -5 ranked 160th. It’s not as if the Padres are a reputable defensive club to begin with, but it’ll be interesting to see how well the offensive upside can compensate for the defensive shortcomings. 

The Bottom Line

That the concerns are rooted in the abstract and hypotheticals more than any tangible concern speaks to the strength the San Diego Padres feature in the corners of their outfield, especially in comparison to what the situation looked like last year. Corner outfield defense doesn’t bear the same negative impact that it may in other areas, so even that doesn’t represent a significant reason for worry over what the pair of starters and their trio of reserves could look like in 2026. 

Ultimately, when you’re talking about a position that features one of the 10 or so best players in baseball and another coming off a breakout season, you’re in a good spot. The Padres are, in fact, in a good spot here. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s stock is pointing up after a good season and an even stronger showing in the WBC, while a full season with a healthy Laureano should be massive for the lineup at large.

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