Good morning,

The Padres kept themselves relevant the first two-thirds of the season by doing the small things consistently well.

Now, they are doing everything well.

“We’ve played a lot of really good baseball,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Pitching has been good. Defense, baserunning. I’ve been really pleased the last week or so about the offense dictating the game. … I feel like we’ve continued to pitch well, continue to play defense, continue to do all the little things that are required to help you win a ball game, but the offense is really dictating and setting the tone and really taking over the game.”

It certainly did in yesterday’s 11-1 victory over the Giants, which you can read about in my game story (here).

But that was merely a continuation of arguably the best stretch of the season.

Of course, a team would have to be playing extremely well (and the team they were chasing playing extremely poorly) in order to gain 10 games in the standings in a span of 35 games.

That is what has happened between the Padres and Dodgers, who went into play on July 4 with a nine-game lead in the National League West and now trail the Padres by a game.

Maybe the most important thing said in the Padres’ clubhouse yesterday was this by Ryan O’Hearn when he was asked about this weekend’s three-game series at Dodger Stadium:

“Got a month-and-a-half to play.”

Yes. This weekend will be the biggest regular season Padres-Dodgers series since the one at the end of September and until the one next weekend at Petco Park.

What the Padres have going for them is that if they do what O’Hearn asserted next, they will be fine.

“We’re gonna play just like we played the Giants,” he said.

The Padres’ victory yesterday was the Padres’ fifth straight and their 14th in their past 17 games.

What do you know? That matches their 14-3 start to the season.

That is the stretch we all worried had been  misleading. As the Padres played at a .471 clip for three months, it became easy to wonder if the way they began the season had been a tease and whether they could ever really be that team again.

And now, they are that team again.

Those are some pretty similar numbers.

Given that it is later in the season and we have more context, this version of the Padres actually seems more complete.

For one thing, nine of their past 14 victories have come against teams that are .500 or better. Of their first 14 victories, 10 came against teams that currently have one of the six worst winning percentages in the major leagues.

For another thing, the current Padres lineup has a full-time left fielder who has a .901 OPS after 340 plate appearances this season and a catcher who plays almost every day and has a .680 OPS after 242 plate appearances.

The left fielder, Ramón Laureano, has hit in the seventh spot in the majority of his 11 starts with the Padres. The catcher, Freddy Fermin, has hit ninth in all eight of his starts.

“This one through nine is outstanding,” said Jake Cronenworth, who has hit seventh or eighth each of the past 12 games and is batting .316/.416/.447 in that span. “It seems like the at-bats from the top to the bottom, no matter the situation, everybody is giving it their best.”

The renaissance at the bottom of the lineup, which I wrote about in yesterday’s newsletter, did not continue yesterday.

It mushroomed.

Laureano, Cronenworth and Elias Díaz combined to go 6-for-11 with four walks and four RBIs.

The 7-8-9 spots in the order are producing at a preposterous rate in the 12 games since the trade deadline, batting a collective .289 with a .390 on-base percentage and 24 RBIs.

“The guys we got at the trade deadline,” Nick Pivetta said, “I think it’s just built a really killer, killer, killer offense.”

Here is who has hit in the 7-8-9 spots since Aug. 1, the day after the deadline.

The bottom third was actually beginning to make the lineup less top-heavy in the week prior to the deadline. The players in those spots hit .290, got on base at a .347 clip and drove in eight runs over the final six games in July.

Before the past 18 games, the 7-8-9 spots were hitting .206 with a .269 OBP and averaging a little better than an RBI a game.

The focus is on the guys who joined the team at the deadline. But it can’t be ignored that the Padres’ surge began before the trades.

It is the best-case scenario.

They were winning. They got players to shore up their weaknesses. And they kept winning.

The real difference lately is the offense’s ability to score more than one run at a time and win by more than one run.

“The little things give you every opportunity to stay competitive and stay in every ballgame and win on the margins,” Shildt said. “But also, when you have crooked numbers offensively, it creates more breathing room, and so it’s just really the best version of it.”

Savage

In the daily Padres hitters meeting known as “Ball Talk,” coaches made a big deal yesterday morning about an at-bat by Laureano in Tuesday’s  second inning.

Not even a couple hours later, Laureano went out and put together another tone-setting plate appearance in the second inning.

Among his three hits yesterday was a two-run homer in the fifth inning that gave the Padres a 10-0 lead. He also scored their final run after a single in the seventh.

But his day began by being the straw that stirred the second inning again.

On Tuesday, he led off the second inning with a single on the ninth pitch he saw from Robbie Ray and scored when Jose Iglesias homered on the next pitch.

“He’s really in the middle of everything,” Shildt said Tuesday night.

Yesterday, his 10-pitch walk against Kai-Wei Teng loaded the bases with one out immediately before a single by Cronenworth drove in the first of what would be seven runs by the time the inning was finished.

“He’s up there trying to freaking kill the ball, and also while  having great zone discipline,” Cronenworth said.

Laureano is batting .333 (15-for-45) with a 1.000 OPS with the Padres.

His OPS is the second-highest ever in a player’s first 12 games with the Padres after being acquired via a July trade. Only Milton Bradley’s 1.042 OPS over his first 12 games in 2007 was higher.

“He’s just a savage,” said Ryan O’Hearn, who came to the Padres in the same trade as Laureano. “Just gets in there and gets after it. Not afraid of anybody. … He’s just a hard-nosed, tough player. He’s really talented on top of that.”

Laureano has scored (nine) or driven in (10) nearly a third of the Padres’ 64 runs this month.

Said Manny Machado: “He’s had really good at-bats, some big hits for us.”

Getting after it

Fernando Tatis Jr. was 2-for-3, walked twice, drove in three runs and scored once yesterday.

And he made this catch (on a 103.5 mph line drive that was spinning away from him) with the Padres leading 10-0 in the fifth inning:

“We’ve still got a game going,” Tatis said. “You have a guy on the mound that’s going for something special. If you’re in the field, you can never be asleep on your feet.”

Not just quality

Yesterday was Nick Pivetta’s 12th start this season that ended with him having gone at least 6⅔ innings while allowing no more than four hits and no more than one run.

That is second most in the major leagues behind the 13 such games by the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal.

Pivetta, who has 15 quality starts, ranks seventh in the NL with a 2.87 ERA, second with a 0.95 WHIP, first with a .192 batting average allowed and eighth with 141⅓ innings.

I wrote last week (here) about Pivetta’s intensity and the changes he has made to affect the immense improvement in his results.

One of the things I did not include in that story was Pivetta’s response when I asked him about betting on himself in the offseason when he turned down a qualifying offer from the Red Sox that would have paid him $21.05 million

“It’s a lot of money,” he said. “So I think anytime that you get offered $21 million to play for one year, it’s life-changing money for the year. But it’s not about the one year. It’s about multiple years. It’s about, where I am going to be in five years, where I am going to be in six years, how I am going to set myself up for success in those years and continue to make money, which I will, and it’s going to be fine. I’m not worried about the money. I’m still making stupid amounts of money. But I’m always willing to bet on myself. I like to gamble, I like to have fun, and I believe in myself a lot.”

Pivetta has been quite a bargain for the Padres — at least in the immediate term. He is making $2.5 million in 2025 in the first season of a four-year deal that could end up paying him $55 million if he plays it out.

Pivetta will make $20.5 million next year and then he can bet on himself again. He can opt out instead of making $14 million in ‘27 and has another opt-out before he is scheduled to make $18 million in 2028.

Rare down time

Yesterday was the first time since July 27 that the Padres did not use at least one of their five highest-leverage relievers in a victory.

With today being an off-day, this will be just the second time in three weeks (since July 22-23) that all of their back-end relievers will have gone two consecutive days without pitching. Jeremiah Estrada and Mason Miller will have had three days off by the time the Dodgers series begins.

“It’s important,” Shildt said of yesterday’s blowout allowing for that rest. “We’ve got the off day, which we knew we were going to (have) to reset anyway, but we had some guys down last night that now we’re getting three days. And then the guys that carried the mail (Tuesday) — (Adrian) Morejón, (Jason) Adam and (RObert) Suarez — them being able to get their full two (days) and everybody rested full bore.”

Tidbits

  • The Padres’ seven-run second inning yesterday was their largest inning since they scored a season-high eight runs in the fourth inning of their 21-0 victory over the Rockies on May 10 at Coors Field. Yesterday was their fifth inning scoring at least five runs in their past 25 games. They had one such inning in the 42 games before that.
  • Tatis was 5-for-12 in the Giants series, is 9-for-20 during a five-game hitting streak and ranks sixth in the major leagues with a .418 on-base percentage over his past 38 games (since June 29).
  • Cronenworth extended his on-base streak to 18 games by going 2-for-3 with two walks yesterday. He has a .440 on-base percentage during the streak, which is one game shy of the career high he set in his rookie season (2020).
  • Machado’s double yesterday was his 30th of the season, tying his total from last season.
  • Yuki Matsui retired all six batters he faced yesterday, as he worked the final two innings. It was just the second time in his past 20 outings that he did not allow at least one baserunner.
  • From 1961 through last year, 56 MLB teams won exactly 69 of their first 121 games (as the Padres have). Of those 56, 42 finished with at least 90 wins and another eight won at least 88 games.

All right, that’s it for me. I have an early flight.

The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox on Monday morning. I need to attend to a family matter and will miss the first two games at Dodger Stadium.

Jeff Sanders will have the coverage on our Padres page until then.

Talk to you Monday.