The Padres are in the midst of a brutal losing stretch of baseball right now.

Fingers can be pointed in just about any direction on this team for who to blame.

The catcher position, however, is one that the Padres have failed to figure out for more than a decade, not just in 2026. 

A look through Padres history

The Padres’ all-time (WAR) Wins Above Replacement leaderboard is littered with catchers. It includes quality starters like Gene Tenace, Terry Kennedy, and Benito Santiago.

The problem?

None of these guys played for the team in the 21st century. For the most part, the position has been a turnstile ever since Carlos Hernandez served as the backstop for the 1998 NL championship team. Since 2000, only three catchers have accumulated more than 1,000 plate appearances for the team: Nick Hundley, Derek Norris, and Austin Hedges. 

Austin Hedges produced the most fWAR out of this group with 6.2, barely surpassing one season of Fernando Tatis Jr. (6.1 fWAR in 2025) despite having double the amount of plate appearances. Although Hedges led the way in WAR, his abysmal offensive production created a black hole at the bottom of the lineup and prevented him from ever becoming a legitimate franchise player.

Derrick Norris, the first significant acquisition of general manager A.J. Preller’s tenure, put up 4.2 WAR in two seasons with the Padres. To this day, Norris remains the most productive catcher Preller has ever acquired (Hedges was drafted before Preller’s tenure). His hustle, solid bat, and crazy beard stood out in an otherwise disappointing stretch of Padres baseball.

Nick Hundley saw the field more than any catcher since 2000, playing in over 500 games in his six and a half seasons in San Diego. However, his 1.4 WAR grades out as very average. 

Consistency remains elusive

Since Austin Hedges was traded in 2020, the Padres have failed to find a consistent, controllable catcher.

Preller traded for 30-year-old Austin Nola at that same deadline, but Nola failed to come close to matching the production he had with Seattle in the first half of that year. After posting an extremely average and declining OPS+ in each of his following years, along with subpar catching ability, the Padres let him walk after the 2023 season. Nola’s offense made him a valuable contributor in the 56 games he was able to play in 2021, but his steep decline in 2022 and 2023 made him one of the worst starting catchers in baseball, and led him to eventually lose that job.

The Nola trade ultimately proved to be a loss for the Padres, as Andres Munoz soon became a dominant closer, and Ty France, although he eventually returned, developed into an All-Star player in Seattle. Even catcher Luis Torrens, also shipped to Seattle in that trade, has become a serviceable catcher for the Mets. Unfortunately, this was not the last time the Padres traded for an overvalued catching commodity on the wrong side of the catching production age curve. 

Former top 50 prospect Luis Campusano looked like he would be the future beyond Austin Nola. However, struggles with confidence, strange mechanical tweaks, injuries, and a lack of manager trust in his ability to call games have kept the now 27-year-old from ever really getting a genuine opportunity to find his way in San Diego. An offseason improvement in his defensive game and a confident, decisive approach at the plate led to him looking like the starting catcher he was once projected to be at the start of this 2026 season. Hope quickly faded again, however, when the injury bug struck Campusano again, leaving the team still searching for a reliable and productive catcher. 

Freddy Fermin was the latest catcher Preller acquired in his quest to find a true starter.

Fermin put up back-to-back 1.9 WAR seasons in 2023 and 2024 while backing up Salvador Perez in Kansas City. His consistent bat-to-ball ability, all-around elite defense behind the plate, and soft-spoken leadership ability made him a highly regarded contributor within that organization. Despite being 30 years old in just his third full year in the big leagues, the Padres were desperate for a catcher and subsequently willing to meet the Royals’ high price tag. Preller agreed to move young starting pitchers Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek to acquire Fermin at the 2025 deadline, who immediately earned the starting role. His 72 OPS+ down the stretch was far from ideal, but it was still better than Martín Maldonado and Elias Díaz, and it came with plus defense. 

Heading into 2026, the starting catching role was Fermin’s to lose.

Unfortunately, for most of the season thus far, he has done everything he can to make that happen. Even after a very recent and rather miraculous three-game home run streak, Fermin still has an atrocious slash line of .154/.241/.274, and his OPS is the tenth worst in all of baseball (minimum 100 plate appearances). His arm remains a strength behind the dish, but he has been average at best with the new ABS challenge system, spotting a 55% win rate. With Campusano’s injury, Fermin has still managed to maintain the starting role over minor-league journeyman and rookie Rodolfo Duran, but the Padres are once again searching for reliable and productive catching options.

Plan B has been far more successful than Plan A

Despite the inability to find the true franchise-caliber player that they have found at every other position in the Preller era, the Padres have generated a pretty impressive resume when it comes to finding veteran backstops to bring in for a year.

Jorge Alfaro came in 2022 and immediately became a fan-favorite, delivering a myriad of clutch hits in the first half of the season as well as a memorable, albeit not repeatable, quote. He posted a better OPS, wOBA, wRC+, and Fielding Run Value than the struggling starter Austin Nola, but never earned the full trust of manager Bob Melvin. After not seeing the field during the entire 2022 NLCS run, Alfaro and the Padres parted ways.

Nola’s struggles continued in 2023, and Luis Campusano suffered a thumb sprain, prompting the Padres to place a waiver claim on Gary Sanchez in late May that season. Sanchez had just been released by the Mets after a quick seven plate appearances, but had compiled consecutive years of decline before his New York pit stop. He mashed two home runs in his very first series as a Padre and went on to be a bright spot in an otherwise shockingly bleak season for San Diego. Sanchez hit 7 homeruns in his first month and posted a 113 wRC+ and OPS+ overall, by far the best offensive metrics of any Padres catcher in the last decade.  His 1.7 WAR also remains the most of any team backstop since 2020. “The Kracken” certainly made a huge splash in his short tenure in San Diego. 

The stopgap trend continued in 2024, when part of the return for Juan Soto stepped up to replace the struggling Luis Campusano. Kyle Higashioka was another veteran backstop with one year of control remaining who came in to back up the presumed starter. After Campusano’s offensive collapse in his first full-time opportunity, Higashioka took over in June and began raking.

Despite having never been a prolific power hitter for the Yankees, he went on to have quite the year in the pitcher-friendly Petco Park, hitting a career high 17 home runs and once again becoming a fan favorite. His ability to pull the ball in the air consistently despite lacking substantive raw power allowed him to pepper the left-field stands in Petco, prompting fans to coin the phrase “The Higgy Bank” when referring to that part of the stadium. When combined with his solid framing ability, Higashika’s newfound power helped him finish with 1.6 WAR, earning him a start in every 2024 playoff game for the team.

2025 was a little bit different, as the Padres essentially employed three backup catchers throughout the year, including the aforementioned Freddy Fermin after he was acquired at the deadline. Elias Diaz was the true designated starter and had his moments, but Fermin was ultimately better on both sides of the ball down the stretch. This was the season when the lack of a long-term solution behind the plate really became apparent and inevitably hurt the team. Neither Martín Maldonado nor Elias Díaz was physically suited to be a starting catcher at their age. The team’s distrust of Luis Campusano became glaringly apparent, as the still young slugger was raking in El Paso all year but was granted a measly, scattered 27 plate appearances (in which he could not generate a single hit). 

More of the same in 2026

When I started writing this article, Freddy Fermin still had no home runs in June, and now he has three!

It is funny how baseball seems to change in sudden waves despite literally no signs of hope. Maybe my next article should be on Manny Machado. That being said, the fact remains that the Padres’ starting catcher is once again one of the worst in the league. Luis Campusano was poised to continue the backup catcher superiority trend before his toe injury, so hopefully, he can get behind the dish soon. 

Ultimately, the Padres have had difficulties evaluating and developing catchers over the years, but also had their share of strokes of genius (or luck) when finding veteran contributors on the margins at the position.

Time will tell if top prospect Ethan Salas develops into the magnum opus of A.J. Preller’s tenure with the San Diego Padres. For now, his renowned scouting prowess has continually proven to fall short at just one position – catcher.

Jacob Larose

Jacob grew up with Padres season tickets and walls plastered with Khalil Greene memorabilia. He has dedicated all of his young professional career towards becoming baseball’s next AJ Preller, having already worked with minor league and college teams in different roles. He is always scouring the Baseball Savant page to find the next little nugget that might help his hometown Padres (or his fantasy baseball team).