Padres snap skid on Freddy Fermin blast, then stumble Sunday against Mets

The San Diego Padres carried a simple storyline into Sunday after Saturday night’s result against the New York Mets: hope that the offense might be turning the corner. It lasted one game. On Saturday, Freddy Fermin delivered a two-run, go-ahead homer to lift the Padres to a 3-2 victory and end a six-game losing streak. By Sunday, the Mets answered that optimism with a 7-3 win in the series finale, leaving San Diego with another disappointing chapter in a stretch that Padres officials have acknowledged has been bigger than one unit.

Saturday’s turnaround began with a roster decision and a player finding his swing in a spot where he had struggled. Fermin is a defense-first catcher, and the club had often left him on the bench in high-leverage moments. But manager Craig Stammen stuck with him, and Fermin responded by taking Austin Warren’s first-pitch sinker into the left-field seats for his first home run of the season. The Padres then held on for the 3-2 win, a result that official game coverage framed as production arriving from an unexpected place at the bottom of the order.

Even with the win, Padres fans had to treat the weekend like a test of consistency, not a reset button. Sunday’s starter, Randy Vásquez, ran into immediate trouble and did not escape the middle innings with the game close for long. According to the Padres’ postgame assessment, Vásquez lasted four-plus innings and allowed four runs on eight hits. The Padres also got hit by a late relief surge when Yuki Matsui entered with a very low ERA and surrendered a pair of home runs, according to the team’s recap.

San Diego’s own bats were not absent on Sunday, but they were not enough to change the trajectory once New York pulled away. Fermin again provided a highlight, launching a no-doubt two-run homer and then adding an RBI double in the ninth, a sign that his power had returned just in time for the series. Yet the Mets’ lineup answered with its own burst: Marcus Semien homered, MJ Melendez went deep, and Carson Benge powered the evening with a five-hit performance that included a homer and an RBI triple. New York’s 7-3 margin ultimately came from combining multiple long balls with timely scoring rather than one isolated inning.

For the Padres, Sunday underscored a problem the organization tried to narrow earlier in the season. In their own recap, the club’s message shifted from a purely offensive slump to a broader funk, noting that the rotation and bullpen needed to be sharper as well. The team also pointed to recent form as evidence, noting it suffered its 11th defeat in the last 13 games. Offensively, the Padres highlighted that two of their key everyday hitters, Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill, have not yet returned to the level expected of them this month, with their production still hanging near or below the.600 OPS range mentioned by the team.

In the background is the kind of injury and roster reality that can make a slump harder to escape. The Padres’ recap cited Luis Campusano as being on the injured list with a toe fracture, while also noting that other important arms remain unavailable, without naming them. With trade season approaching, San Diego’s catching production has become more than a day-to-day question, because the organization wants stable offense from its receivers even while it evaluates needs elsewhere. The question now is whether Fermin’s two-game stretch against the Mets becomes a pattern, or stays as the kind of brief flare-up that disappears once the pitching matchup changes.