Good morning from my layover,
They made it.
Yesterday was the Padres’ 26th game in the past 27 days and their 35th game in the past 37 days.
They finished 13-13 over the 26-game stretch that began May 30 and 17-18 going back to May 20.
“We can always do better, but glad it’s over,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “We’re getting an off day and keep finding a way.”
That about sums it up.
How they won yesterday was both impressive and worrisome, which also just about sums up the state of the Padres after 80 games.
You can read in my game story (here) about their 1-0 victory over the Nationals, built on a walk, a wild pitch and two singles in the second inning and preserved by Nick Pivetta, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrián Morejón.
It was the Padres’ 13th shutout victory, four more than any other team.
We will get into what this pitching staff has done to navigate the past 35 games.
Let’s first acknowledge that the Padres have won two consecutive series after losing three straight.
They lost Friday’s series opener against the Royals and won the next two games. They lost Monday’s opener against the Nationals and won the next two games.
They are now 44-36 and in playoff position.
Also before we get to the pitching, let’s talk about this offense that the Padres keep telling us is good but on most days doesn’t seem to be very good.
MacKenzie Gore deserves credit for limiting the Padres to a run over six innings, for sure. The left-hander, once expected to pitch like that in Petco Park a lot, has developed into one of the better pitchers in the National League.
But aren’t we tired of talking about all the good pitchers the Padres have faced?
Mike Shildt shook up the top of his lineup for the second time in four days.
Luis Arraez hit leadoff for the first time since April 9 (a game Tatis missed with a shoulder malady) and went 3-for-4 and drove in the game’s only run. Machado, who had hit only third all season, was 0-for-4 in his first turn in the two-hole. Merrill, almost exclusively the clean-up hitter before batting second the previous three games, was 0-for-3 with a walk while batting third yesterday. Tatis, moving from leadoff to fourth, was also 0-for-3 with a walk.
In that Shildt and others in the organization have maintained since the start of spring training that the top four are interchangeable and that it doesn’t matter where they bat, this latest shakeup is really nothing more than an attempt to shake something loose for an offense that rank in the bottom five offense in the major leagues over the past month-and-a-half.
I will have a story on our Padres page later today taking stock of the team at the midway point of the season. Much of that will be a look at the offense.
For now, here is what Shildt said about his lineup switch:
“Luis can hit regardless of circumstance. I like him leading off, I like him hitting four. … As we look at the lineup and started to explore, pretty much right now, at the exact halfway point of the season, it just made some sense (to) get him back to a spot he’s been productive in, which is every spot. And then look at Manny. He was taking great at-bats. Let’s look at Jackson. And he can pretty much (hit) anywhere. He’s in a good spot.
“Tati, he’s a little bit of a lynchpin to all this. He’s a guy that can legitimately hit anywhere in the lineup. … It really is a good feeling to turn (the lineup) back over and there’s Tati, but it’s also a good feeling to turn it back over and there’s Louie. It’s also a good feeling to have Tati have some traffic in front of him, be able to see some pitches and go down that road. So, I like the look of it. It’s always going to be a little bit fluid.”
With all due respect, that is Grade-A gobbeldygook. Shildt is simply trying something, anything to get his offense going.
Ode to the pen
Pivetta came through in a way the Padres needed him to yesterday.
His working seven innings meant all the Padres needed was an inning apiece from the two high-leverage relievers that were available.
“I think it’s really pivotal in those moments to try to pick up the bullpen as much as they can, because they picked us up a lot this year,” Pivetta said. “Everybody knows here how dynamite they’ve been, how consistent they’ve been.”
Even through some recent struggles, the Padres’ relief pitchers have demonstrated how true that is.
The bullpen has survived the most arduous portion of the season. By some measures, it has thrived.
Yes, the relievers lost five of the 21 leads with which they were entrusted during this stretch of 35 games in 37 days.
But Padres relief pitchers also collectively ranked in the top 10 in ERA (3.21), batting average allowed (.238) and percentage of inherited runners stranded (65%) in that span.
They did this while making 87 of their 124 (70%) appearances in games that were within two runs and pitching four innings or more in 16 of the 35 games.
It was a lot.
“It’s not just the back end of the bullpen,” Shildt said. “It’s the bullpen in total, all eight guys. And we’ve had a little bit of interchangeable parts.”
Here is a look at the Padres relievers over the past 35 games:
Estrada, Morejón and Yuki Matsui joined closer Robert Suarez in getting saves during this stretch.
While the Padres did rely on their four highest-leverage relievers — especially red-lining setup man Jason Adam — they also had to turn to Wandy Peralta, Sean Reynolds and Matsui in games they led or were tied.
“The availability,” pitching coach Ruben Niebla said. “We tried to take care of them, and we were watching the workload. But when one was down, it’s like we still have other options. And most important, these guys are always willing to take the ball.
“And having guys that we can rely on — guys like (rookies David) Morgan and Reynolds that we were able to use in ‘up’ games at times — that was a big key. And obviously, occasionally we need the starters to go a little bit deeper, and they actually responded well to some of those games.”
If you want to know how taxed the bullpen has been, just look at how Shildt let Randy Vásquez work through a career-high seven innings in a close game Sunday when Shildt had previously been pulling Vásquez earlier despite manageable pitch counts.Dylan Cease going 6⅔ innings on Saturday was big, too, since Stephen Kolek could get through just 4⅓ innings Monday and Ryan Bergert was knocked from Tuesday’s start after three innings.
One aspect that explains how the Padres relievers are able to work as often as they do — Adam leads MLB with 40 appearances, Estrada with 39 and Morejón with 38 — is their efficiency.
Morejón’s 13.8 pitches per inning are seventh fewest in the major leagues. And five of the Padres’ other eight-most-used relievers average 16.6 pitches per inning or fewer. (The MLB average for a relief pitcher is 16.6 pitches per inning.)
“I do feel like we passed the ball around,” Shildt said. “I mean, guys are carrying a little bit more of the weight than maybe we would like in some instances, but we’ve also been really efficient.”
Moves
As expected, Suarez began serving his two-game suspension yesterday for what was deemed his intentionally hitting the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani with a pitch last Thursday.
And, as forecasted in yesterday’s newsletter, Bergert went on the 15-day injured list and Reynolds was recalled.
The 103 mph line drive Bergert took off his forearm Tuesday caused nothing more than a bruise. But he was not going to be able to do his between-starts work on schedule.
Reynolds being back means the Padres have the full complement of eight relievers during Suarez’s suspension and will likely have nine on Saturday and Sunday in Cincinnati.
That is, unless they call up someone earlier to start against the Reds over the weekend. At the latest, the Padres need to recall a starter for Monday’s game in Philadelphia.
That could be Matt Waldron, who allowed the Phillies one run on five hits over seven innings at Citizens Bank Park last June 19.
Swinging freely
With his MLB-leading 12th three-hit game yesterday, Arraez extended his hitting streak to 12 games. That is two shy of his career high set last season.
Arraez has raised his batting average 15 points to .288 during the streak. That is still 25 points lower than his previous career low 74 games into a season.
I wrote yesterday about Arraez’s low batting average on balls in play and how his unique hitting style and ability mean he cannot be judged by traditional metrics like exit velocity or launch angle. Or chase rate.
Arraez is chasing pitches outside the zone at a 35% rate, up slightly over last season and well above his career rate of 27.7% entering 2025.
But that is not what has diminished the three-time batting champion’s average.
Two of Arraez’s hits yesterday came on pitches outside the strike zone, and he is batting .315 in at-bats that end on pitches he swings at outside the zone.
Check out this comparison between how Arraez is faring this season on at-bats that end with pitches outside the zone versus inside the zone and how the rest of Major League Baseball is faring:
Tidbits
- Jeff Sanders wrote (here) about the shoulder soreness that caused Xander Bogaerts to be scratched from yesterday’s lineup a day after a collision at home plate. Bogaerts acknowledged that sliding headfirst is not the right move as he tries to navigate this season with what it seems is an ongoing issue with his left shoulder. Also in that post by Sanders were the details on Yu Darvish’s simulated game.
- Merrill hit a ball 379 feet to the left of center field that the Nationals’ Jacob Young ran 92 feet to chase down and catch as he leaped against the wall in yesterday’s third inning. It was the third time in four games that Merrill has driven a ball at least 370 feet and gotten out. (I wrote in spring training about Merrill having led the league in long fly ball outs last season. In that story, Merrill said he had gotten stronger over the offseason but that he was still a ways away from getting his “man strength” that would turn those outs into home runs. Merrill turned 22 in April.)
- Tatis stole his 16th base yesterday, two days after hitting his 15th home run. That puts him on pace for the first 30-30 season in Padres history. Now, Tatis hit 13 home runs and stole eight bases in his first 52 games and has two homers and eight steals over his past 26 games.
- Gavin Sheets was 0-for-4 yesterday, bringing an end to what had been a 15-game on-base streak that was the longest of his career.
- Merrill also had his hitting streak end at eight games.
- Jake Cronenworth got the day off after starting 43 straight games at second or first base. No Padres player had started as many consecutive games in the field, and only Machado had played in more consecutive games. Machado is the only Padres player to have started every game this season (five as the designated hitter).
- A day after Martín Maldonado homered, Elias Díaz was 2-for-3 yesterday. Maldonado and Díaz have combined for the sixth-lowest average (.214) and eighth-lowest OPS (.616) among all teams’ catchers.
- Bryce Johnson was 1-for-3 yesterday. He has a hit in all four of his starts and is batting .417 (5-for-12) since being recalled on June 16.
- Yesterday was the Padres’ third consecutive victory by one run after having lost four straight and seven of their previous eight one-run games. (Yesterday’s newsletter had the wrong record for them in one-run games. Sorry. They are 17-12, which is eighth best in the MLB.)
- The Padres won their fourth consecutive challenge yesterday. They were 6-6 on replay reviews before that.
- Yesterday was the Padres’ 8,942nd game as an MLB team. It was the 110th time they have won a game by a score of 1-0. So that means we saw something that happens slightly more than 1% of the time the Padres play.
- Pivetta is the first Padres pitcher since Joe Musgrove in 2021 to throw at least seven scoreless innings in three games in a season at Petco Park. He is just the 10th pitcher to do so since 2000. Chris Young (six in 2007) and Jake Peavy (four in 2007 and ‘08) are the only pitchers to do it more than three times in any of the past 25 seasons.
- Here is the updated shutout list:
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today. So no newsletter tomorrow.
I will post the midseason report story on our Padres page later today.
The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Saturday after the opener against the Reds.