If the Padres ever decide to create a baseball-themed logo to complement the irreplaceable Swingin\u2019 Friar emblem, there\u2019s little doubt which positional unit should be recommended to artists.<\/p>\n
A high number of Padres reliefs corps and especially relief aces, including the current Mason Miller-led bullpen that figures to advantage San Diego (24-16) in a roadtrip that begins Tuesday in Milwaukee, have spun off high-value returns for the small-market franchise, which entered the big leagues in 1969.<\/p>\n
Suggesting to logo artists a silhouette of Padres reliever trotting in from the bullpen, then, wouldn\u2019t be out of place.<\/p>\n
Few if any crowds get more excited over the home team\u2019s closer entering game than in San Diego, where bullpens tend to\u00a0provide\u00a0outsized relief.<\/p>\n
Several Padres relievers who came to San Diego as relative no-names turned into late-inning bullies. They buoyed their teammates and a fan base that hasn\u2019t seen many high-powered offenses wear the \u201cSD\u201d cap.<\/p>\n
In any environment, many Padres relief stars, among them a trio of Hall of Famers, a Cy Young winner and now Miller, would\u2019ve thrived.<\/p>\n
San Diego\u2019s reliever-friendly atmospherics helped out, too.<\/p>\n
If prone to frustrating many Padres sluggers, the region\u2019s cooler night-time air and coastal marine blanket have served as a second-best friend to many Padres relievers beyond their pitching excellence.<\/p>\n
Whether the locale was Mission Valley or the East Village, many batted balls didn\u2019t go as far as they do elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Petco Park played much larger early on.<\/p>\n
A lights-out Padres bullpen delivered a 2010 season that, while not very entertaining as a whole, led Padres then-GM Jed Hoyer to grade it as superior to any relief season he\u2019d been around. The\u00a0comparison included World Series winners in Chicago and Boston.<\/p>\n
In this era, Padres home conditions, while generally helpful to pitchers, don\u2019t provide such a pronounced edge.<\/p>\n
A.J. Preller, like Kevin Towers in the 1990s and 2000s, knows how to assemble powerful bullpens.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s Preller-built group began with a 34-game run of dominance that likely would\u2019ve worked in high-altitude Denver. No other big league bullpen kept up. Fueling a 23-11 start, Padres relievers launched the team toward 90 wins and a wild-card playoff berth.<\/p>\n
But in that playoff series, Miller and mates couldn\u2019t overcome the Padres\u2019 insufficient hitting<\/p>\n
While this year\u2019s bullpen hasn\u2019t matched that white-hot start, the team\u2019s .600 win rate owes more to the relief corps leading the majors in win shares, than any other positional unit..<\/p>\n
Miller belongs in his own category.<\/p>\n
Since Preller got him last summer in a trade with the Athletics, the right-hander has led all relievers in win shares, strikeout rate and average fastball velocity. He\u2019s tied with Raisel Iglesias of the Braves in win probability added, a stat respected by MLB front offices. Miller\u2019s 0.86 ERA in 42 innings trails only Cuban power pitchers Iglesias (0.26, 34 1\/3 innings) and lefty Aroldis Chapman of the Yankees (0.84, 32 innings).<\/p>\n
Around Miller, 27, the bullpen has improved in recent weeks. It regained\u00a0Jason Adam and an improved Jeremiah Estrada, while lefty Adri\u00e1n Morej\u00f3n continued to provide triple-digit heat, if less dominance than last year.<\/p>\n
With Miller unavailable Sunday, others shone.<\/p>\n
Contributing four scoreless innings to the 3-2, 10-inning victory, Ron Marinaccio, Bradgley Rodriguez, Estrada and Morej\u00f3n shut down Cardinals hitters.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of those guys would probably be closers,\u201d manager Craig Stammen said. \u201cAnd the way Ron pitched, he could close for some teams, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve just got a lot of good guys down there that we can trust in the bullpen,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cIt\u2019s very comforting in close games like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is also true: a bullpen can do only so much.<\/p>\n
The Padres won\u2019t get near a trophy, unless their\u00a0hitting improves a lot.<\/p>\n
But the expanded playoff format accentuates a fast start to the season, as does Preller\u2019s track record of improving playoff-contending Padres teams via summer trade acquisitions. Led by a bullpen that trails only the Dodgers in fielding independent ERA, the Padres have overcome ultra-sporadic hitting and put heat on rival players and front offices to play catch-up in the wild-card race.<\/p>\n
Bullpens are notoriously volatile, and can burn out.<\/p>\n
Preller sees the long game. He has bolstered several bullpen with in-season trades. Tanner Scott and Adam sparkled often after joining the Padres in 2024. Adapting fast, Miller allowed no runs in 21 of 22 regular-season games and struck out eight of\u00a0nine Cubs in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t love seeing bullpens\u2019 ever-increasing importance in baseball.<\/p>\n
But the era is the era.<\/p>\n
Among the relief-savvy franchises, the Padres belong high on the list.<\/p>\n
Preller counts Hoffman among his advisers, as he did Stammen, the ex-reliever he installed as manager last offseason.<\/p>\n
If the Padres someday win the trophy, expect the feat to spell r-e-l-i-e-f twice over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Padres ever decide to create a baseball-themed logo to complement the irreplaceable Swingin\u2019 Friar emblem, there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":789958,"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-789957","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\/116558947108632114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789957","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=789957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}