Good morning from San Francisco,
The Padres won yesterday for the 11th time in 14 games.
A team probably could not be feeling all that much better heading into a 13-game stretch in which it will play the division foe immediately behind it and immediately ahead of it.
“The additions we made, how deep the lineup is,” Jake Cronenworth said. “Bullpen, starting pitching is clicking. Nice to get Michael (King) back and (Yu) Darvish back and Nestor (Cortes) and the way Dylan (Cease) is going now. It’s a super important two weeks, and we need to take advantage of it.”
The Padres left Petco Park late yesterday afternoon for the airport and a short flight to San Francisco.
Today, they will play the first of 13 consecutive games against National League West opponents. Specifically, they will play seven games against the Giants and six against the Dodgers.
The Padres can overtake one. They can bury the other.
“That’s what you want; you want to be in the driver’s seat,” reliever Jason Adam said. “And when you’re playing in division, you’re in the driver’s seat. You don’t have to scoreboard watch or anything like that. You just get to play your games. Take it day by day, pitch by pitch, and try to win a ballgame.”
The Padres have improved their standing since the last time they saw the Giants and Dodgers
When they departed San Francisco the first week of June, the Padres were in the same position they are now — holding the fifth of six NL playoff spots – but were just a game ahead of the Giants.
Sunday’s 6-2 victory over the Red Sox put the Padres three games ahead of the sixth-seeded Mets. The Padres are seven games in front of the Giants, who have gone 24-31 since the teams last met.
The Padres play the next three days at Oracle Park, play Friday to Sunday at Dodger Stadium and then go home to host the Giants for four games and the Dodgers for three.
The Dodgers have come back to the Padres in the standings.
They Dodgers won five of the seven games the teams played in mid-June to get to 3½ games up on the Padres. That is just 1½ games better than they are now. But that advantage swelled to nine games by July 3.
The Padres are 20-12 since then, the Dodgers are 12-18.
“Any division game, obviously, is important,” Cronenworth said. “But I think having 13 of them in the next two weeks, it’ gonna be a battle. It’s gonna be a grind. Six on the road, seven at home, two good teams, and it’s gonna be similar to these games we just played here this weekend.”
You can read in my game story (here) how Sunday’s game went — with Cease lasting until the seventh inning and three relievers (including one outside the Big Five) locking down a victory that was powered by what Mike Shildt called “as consistent of an offensive game as we’ve had in a while.”
Bouncing back
On June 23, the Padres lost 10-6 to the Nationals in a series-opening game that wasn’t even as close as the score might suggest.
The defeat followed two victories, quashing the Padres’ chance to win a third consecutive game for the first time in nearly three weeks.
“The win streaks are nice,” Cronenworth said that night. “Starting off the season super smoking hot is nice. But winning series is more important at this point.”
The Padres won the next two nights to take that series before losing the next two series, at Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
They are 7-1-2 in the 10 series since then.
The past two, they have dropped the opener and won the next two games.
“Are we gonna answer back?” Fernando Tatis Jr. said yesterday. “We’re not gonna sit and feel sorry for ourselves. We’re gonna clean it up.”
The Padres did that pretty well.
After being stymied for six scoreless innings Friday by Walker Buehler, who had a 5.74 ERA and had not shut out a team over six innings since May 18, 2024, the Padres scored four runs in 4⅔ innings against Lucas Giolito on Saturday and five runs in 5⅔ innings against Brayan Bello yesterday. Giolito had a 2.45 ERA over his previous seven starts. Bello had a 2.66 ERA over his previous 14 starts.
“We get punched in the mouth (in) Game One,” Cronenworth said, “and then come back and have two really awesome games.”
Hanging in
Tatis had a productive weekend.
After going 0-for-5 on Friday to run a six-game skid to 2-for-26, he had two hits Saturday and two more yesterday and was also hit by a pitch, walked, scored twice and drove in a run.
The 94 mph fastball that Bello got Tatis with yesterday, nailed him square on the left hip. It was one of the more straightforward and least-scary of the many inside pitches he has seen this season.
Tatis grimaced, walked it off and headed to first base.
Not so much because of that pitch but because I had been meaning to since Friday night, after the latest of the up-and-in fastballs that knocked him down, I asked Tatis yesterday for the first time in a while about how tired he was of being pitched inside.
Quite tired, it turns out.
“Yeah,” he said. “I could charge the mound. But there’s a reason why I’ve been holding myself. If I go out there, it’s not like I’m just going to talk to him. If I go out there, I’m probably going to lose it. And at the end of the day, I’m probably going to lose more than what I can accomplish by doing that. So, I’m just trying to stay in the game and find a way to beat them.”
That was the focus this weekend.
“Just finding a way to beat them,” he repeated.
Asked if he thought pitchers had succeeded in messing with his head to some extent by pitching in on him, Tatis allowed more than he had before.
“Probably,” he said. “Because in the areas I’ve been hit in my hand, some of them have still been there, still hurt. Obviously, you baby flinch when you’re at the plate. But I’m not putting that as an excuse. I just gotta find a way to go out there and perform. Find a way.”
While Tatis has a .407 on-base percentage over his past 35 games, he has homered just twice and has a .394 slugging percentage in that span.
Asked if he has physically been hindered by any of the times he was hit, he said, “Probably strength-wise a little bit. But not much. Nothing too crazy.”
Rarity plays
There were times yesterday that Cease’s slider didn’t so much look like it fell off a table when it reached the plate as much as it appeared to have been vacuumed downward.
But maybe that was something of an optical illusion.
“I think because I was able to show it less,” Cease said. “Because I’ve showed other stuff, it plays up as well. The slider was really good. But when you mix in a bunch of different stuff, I think it keeps them off of it. Because if they see the same pitch a bunch, then it’s easier for them to recognize it.”
Yesterday was the second straight start in which Cease used his slider and fastball less than 70% of the time. He had in each of his 18 starts before that used those two pitches at least 80% of the time. In 10 of those 18 starts, he used the fastball and slider at least 90% of the time.
“I had a good mix today,” Cease said. “I threw a lot of variety of pitches for strikes.”
He used his sinker a career-high 15% of the time yesterday and his sweeper a season-high 9% of the time.
Cease had become essentially a two-pitch pitcher because the fastball and slider were the pitches he felt comfortable with, and the slider is among the best pitches anyone in the major leagues possess.
He held the Dodgers to three hits over seven scoreless innings on June 10 throwing his slider 49.5% of the time and his four-seam fastball 42.7% of the time. That is how good those pitches are.
But he also had a 4.79 ERA before his past two starts.
The results the past two Sundays — no runs in five innings on Aug. 3 and two runs in six-plus innings yesterday — suggest he is finding his groove being less predictable.
Stepping up
Mason Miller was throwing alongside David Morgan in the bullpen as Adrian Morejón walked Alex Bregman to start yesterday’s eighth inning.
What happened next would determine which of the two right-handers entered the game to protect a four-run lead against one of MLB’s top offenses — the prize of the trade deadline who has saved 49 games over two seasons or the rookie who has worked almost exclusively in games the Padres have trailed.
“(Morejón) was going to need to get one of the two,” Shildt said of what was required to keep Miller in the bullpen.
Morejón got the next batter, Jarren Duran, to ground into a fielder’s choice. So in went Morgan.
He struck out cleanup hitter Trevor Story on three pitches and ended the inning with a Masataka Yoshida groundout.
Morgan then went out and retired the Red Sox in order in the ninth inning on 12 pitches, the last of them a 98.5 mph fastball that finished off a strikeout.
“He’s got a really good arm,” Shildt said. “… He’s got real weapons. And the biggest thing is he’s not going to make it bigger than it is. He’s going to go out and he’s going to be on the attack.”
Morgan threw 14 strikes among his 19 pitches, including a first-pitch strike to all five batters he faced.
“Such a stud,” Adam said of Morgan. “Just a great head on his shoulders coming in there. Huge situation, getting multiple outs. He’s gonna be a stud for a long time.”
Miller was the only one of the five highest-leverage relievers available late yesterday after Morejón and Adam already worked. Robert Suarez and Jeremiah Estrada were not available due to their recent workload, including throwing more than 20 pitches apiece on Saturday.
Given that the Padres have needed to stretch their relievers so much, yesterday might have been another step toward Morgan getting the call more often in close games.
Said Shildt: “Morgan is turning into that guy that we can clearly trust.”
I wrote last week (here) about Morgan’s propensity for throwing strikes. And if you missed Annie Heilbrunn’s Q&A with Morgan this week, check it out here.
Also, Tom Krasovoc wrote (here) yesterday about the Padres’ bullpen, why it is good and how it might play up even more in the postseason.
Tidbits
- Morejón entered yesterday’s game with the bases loaded and two down in the seventh inning and struck out Roman Anthony. Morejón has inherited 34 runners and allowed just four to score. His 88% strand rate is best in the majors among the 42 relievers to have inherited at least 25 runners.
- By getting the first two outs of the seventh inning, Adam ran his scoreless streak to nine innings over his last nine outings. Adam and Morejón are tied for third in MLB with 57 appearances, and Adam’s 1.73 ERA in 57⅓ innings is third best among the 47 relievers who have thrown at least 50 innings.
- Cronenworth was 1-for-2 with two walks yesterday to extend his season-best on-base streak to 15 games. He is batting .286 with a .435 on-base percentage during the streak. This is Cronenworth’s 16th career on-base streak of at least 10 games. That is most on the team since 2020, one more than Manny Machado and two more than Tatis.
- Cronenworth’s eight-pitch walk was his team-leading 20th plate appearance this season that lasted at least eight pitches.
- Luis Arraez was 2-for-5 yesterday. It was his third consecutive two-hit game, and it follows a three-game stretch in which he was 1-for-14.
- Xander Bogaerts stole his 19th base, which matches his career high set in 2023. He is the only player in the major leagues this season who has attempted at least 20 steals to have been caught just once.
- Freddy Fermin was 2-for-4 yesterday and is batting .391 (9-for-23) in seven games with the Padres.
- The 189-point difference between the Padres’ home winning percentage (.655) and road winning percentage (.467) is fifth-highest in the major leagues. They are 38-20 at home and 28-32 on the road.
- Yesterday was the first time in their past six games that the Padres scored first. They are 41-27 when scoring first, the fourth-lowest winning percentage (.603) in the major leagues. Their 25-25 record when their opponent scores first is best in the majors.
- Yesterday’s game lasted three hours. Just 22 of the Padres’ 117 games have lasted 2:59 or longer, and five of those have come in the past seven games.
- Get ready for some tension. Of the 43 games the Padres and Giants have played at Oracle Park since the start of 2020, 21 have been decided by one run. That includes all four here in June. The teams split that series. The Padres are 11-10 in one-run games here since ‘20.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.