Nick Pivetta put his hands on his head as Wilyer Abreu\u2019s fourth-inning drive sailed over the right-center field wall.<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 right-hander had endured only a handful of poor starts this year, but Friday was not an optimal time for an \u201coff\u201d night.<\/p>\n
For one, the team that allowed Pivetta to leave as a free agent was in town.<\/p>\n
The Padres were also looking for as much length as possible from their best pitcher on the eve of Michael King\u2019s return. So six innings in a 10-2 laugher at the hands of his old Red Sox friends was at least a small victory for Pivetta.<\/p>\n
A victory, yes. But a small one.<\/p>\n
After all, Pivetta had spent the previous four seasons with the team that knocked him around in the middle innings in front of a sellout crowd of 44,061 at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
Even he didn\u2019t try to downplay the proverbial revenge start against the Red Sox even after giving up five runs in six innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcited,\u201d Pivetta said of facing his former team. \u201cI have a lot of love and respect for those guys over there. So just want to put my best foot forward and give them a challenge. Obviously, they were able to get the better of me today.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would have been easy to let his emotions take over.<\/p>\n
Pivetta had a serviceable 4.29 ERA over parts of five years in Boston, good enough for the front office to extend a $21 million qualifying offer and so-so enough to wonder if he might accept the hefty one-year salary.<\/p>\n
But Pivetta was looking for a bit more security and finally got it when the Padres came to him in February with numbers that made sense both for a fiscally-conscious team and a pitcher wading into the open market for the first time.<\/p>\n
A four-year, $55 million deal is paying Pivetta $4 million this year and another $19 million next season. He\u2019ll get the rest over the ensuing two years if he doesn\u2019t opt out after either the 2026 or 2027 season. Given his success, a two-year stay in San Diego is a real possibility, too.<\/p>\n
Pivetta\u2019s 11 wins are already a career-high, he\u2019s flirting with the first sub-4.00 ERA campaign of his career (he\u2019s at 2.94 even after a rough Friday night) and he\u2019s generally keeping the ball in the yard more than he ever has.<\/p>\n
So Friday was indeed a rare \u201coff\u201d night.<\/p>\n
For both Pivetta and a Padres offense that managed little off former Dodgers right-hander Walker Buehler (6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 2 BBs, 4 Ks) and was already in an eight-run hole when it finally scored off Boston\u2019s bullpen in the eighth.<\/p>\n
The Padres scored runs that frame on a groundout from Ram\u00f3n Laureano and a single from Jake Cronenworth, but Fernando Tatis Jr. struck out with the bases loaded and Luis Arraez flied out to left.<\/p>\n
Pivetta had retired eight in a row when Alex Bregman singled through the middle of the infield to start the fourth inning.<\/p>\n
From there, Pivetta made things worse on himself.<\/p>\n
He walked the next two batters to load the bases and would have been happy to escape with just one run allowed on Masataka Yoshida\u2019s sacrifice fly to center.<\/p>\n
But a second run scored when Pivetta threw wildly to first base on a pickoff and Abreu opened up a 4-0 lead when he yanked a hanging curveball 423 feet to right.<\/p>\n
It was just the fourth home run that Pivetta had allowed over his eight starts.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox strung together two more hits in pushing across a fifth run in the fifth inning, but Pivetta at least retired three straight hitters after Yoshida\u2019s double to start the sixth inning, ensuring that the bullpen would only have to cover three innings.<\/p>\n
He finished with three strikeouts and five runs allowed on five hits and three walks. He threw 68 of his 103 pitches for strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got myself into some into some damage,\u201d said Pivetta, who at least completed six innigns for the 16th time in 23 starts. \u201cI walked guys, didn\u2019t locate pitches, allowed them to get back into ABs and they were able to execute on the pitches that I missed on. Was just a day that\u2019s a day, and just move forward from here and just looking forward to seeing Michael come back tomorrow, and pretty excited for that one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yuki Matsui recorded four outs after Pivetta\u2019s exit, but Sean Reynolds \u2014 the ninth reliever and the likely roster casualty when King comes off the injured list Saturday \u2014 coughed up three runs on four walks and a Connor Wong\u2019s bases-clearing double in the eighth and surrendered a two-run homer to Yoshida in the ninth.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 8, 2025 at 9:38 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Pivetta put his hands on his head as Wilyer Abreu\u2019s fourth-inning drive sailed over the right-center field…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":131071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-131070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114997450721696328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}