Good morning,
It turns out the Padres are not invincible.
Because that is not how baseball works.
The thing about creating a “super bullpen” and supposedly lengthening the lineup and integrating new players into a team is that games still have to be played.
Things looked about as good as they could for the revamped Padres for all of Friday’s game and through three innings last night in what ended up an 8-5 loss that stopped a winning streak at six games.
They scored in each one of those three innings and led 4-0 against a pitcher they tagged for seven runs in 4⅔ innings six days earlier.
Then the Cardinals scored four times against Randy Vásquez to tie the game in the fourth.
Padres manager Mike Shildt sent Vásquez out to start the fifth and pulled him after he allowed a lead-off single.
Jeremiah Estrada, one of the Padres’ highest-leverage relievers was the first man out of the bullpen.
This was not entirely unprecedented. Estrada was brought in to protect a one-run lead in the fifth inning on Wednesday. Adrian Morejón was deployed in the same situation twice on the last road trip.
And going to Estrada in that situation was also entirely in line with what the Padres expect to be able to do more often now that they have added Mason Miller to what has for most of the season been MLB’s best bullpen.
Waiting to go to Estrada until seeing whether Vásquez was going to be able to work his way through another inning was also easily explainable.
“I have to make it very clear right now,” Shildt said, “we cannot pitch five innings every night out of our bullpen with 50 games to go. You just can’t do it.”
The Padres have four more games before a day off. As it was, had they been able to keep the game tied and eventually taken a slim lead, they were going to have to use Miller and Robert Suarez for a second consecutive game. That would be fine to secure a victory, but it can’t be the answer on too many nights in the regular season.
Now Miller, Suarez, Morejón and Jason Adam are rested.
That is because Estrada walked a batter, struck out the next two and then allowed a two-run double, as the Cardinals took a 6-4 lead.
No other high-leverage relievers were needed.
The Padres, who were 7-for-18 to start the game, went 2-for-16 the rest of the way. Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy ended up retiring the final five batters he faced and finished six innings.
“We’ve been scoring,” Shildt said. “We scored four runs. I thought we’d score some more runs.”
The way they were knocking McGreevy around, that seemed a safe bet.
This wasn’t one of those many games they have had where the offense did virtually nothing for nine innings.
But it was one of those many games where after an early burst, they went down quickly. The Padres rank third from the bottom in runs scored after the fifth inning.
It was a mixed night for the new offensive players.
Left fielder Ramón Laureano drove in the Padres’ first run with a triple and scored their second run on new catcher Freddy Fermin’s groundout in the second inning.
Laureano finished 1-for-4. Fermin hit an RBI single in the ninth inning.
Ryan O’Hearn, who served as designated hitter in his first start, was 0-for-3 before being lifted for pinch-hitter Jose Iglesias in the eighth inning when the Cardinals brought in a left-handed reliever.
A team doesn’t play anything close to perfect every night. That is not to excuse Fermin not catching a relay throw from Manny Machado or Machado making an ill-advised attempt at turning a single into a double or O’Hearn swinging at three pitches nowhere near the plate.
But those things happen.
Last night’s result doesn’t portend bad things any more than the Padres winning Friday in their first game after the trade deadline meant they would never lose again.
It just means this season probably still has some twists and turns remaining.
That is what is great about sports and about the crazy game of baseball in particular.
Vásquez’s services
You can read in Jeff Sanders’ game story (here) about the plight of Vásquez, who is expected to be optioned today to make room for Nestor Cortes.
Last night was the first time the Padres had lost in Vásquez’s past seven starts, and they are 14-8 in his starts. That is the same record the Padres have when Nick Pivetta starts.
Vásquez has been about all the Padres could have asked for from a back-end starter. The right-hander has a 3.92 ERA over 107⅔ innings in his career-high 22 starts. In 10 of those starts, he went at least five innings while allowing three or fewer runs. That is plenty good enough for a No.4 or No.5 starter who is 26 years old and 47 starts into his big-league career. Teams win 65% of the time when they get that from a pitcher.
In what might have been his final start of 2025, Vásquez did something last night he had not done since May 21. He figured in the decision of a game he started.
The 11 starts between decisions were a franchise record.
Cortes has not pitched in the major leagues since the first week of April due to an elbow flexor strain. He reached the maximum 30 days on his rehab assignment yesterday, and he is expected to be activated today.
That means the left-hander will start for the Padres this week.
It appears Yu Darvish and JP Sears, the other lefty acquired at the deadline, will start the first two games in Arizona in some order with Cortes likely slotting in for the finale.
Morgan strikes again
David Morgan has a four-seam fastball that averages 97.7 mph. He has a pretty good curveball and slider and has developed a two-seam fastball on the fly.
But he has stuck around because he throws strikes.
Morgan worked two scoreless innings last night and has a 1.23 ERA over his past 12 appearances (14⅔ innings).
Since his major league debut on May 26, while mostly working in games in which the Padres trail, the rookie right-hander has a 1.93 ERA in 24 appearances (26 innings).
While Morghan issued his 10th walk last night, which would suggest he is not throwing strikes, he is actually among the biggest strike throwers on the team.
His 54.3% rate of being in the strike zone trails only Robert Suarez (57.8%) and Adrian Morejón (56.4%). Morgan’s first-pitch strike percentage (67.6%) is fourth on the team behind Morejón (69.7%), Wandy Peralta (69.2%) and Estrada (68.7%).
With his high rate of being in the zone, Morgan has a penchant for quick innings.
On July 19 in Washington, he entered in the eighth inning with a runner on first and one out. He threw one pitch, which was grounded to shortstop to start a double play that ended the eighth inning.
Four days later, he took over with a runner on first and nobody out in the eighth. Four pitches later, the inning was over on a pop out and a double play.
There is a certain amount of good fortune involved in such efficiency. But Morgan is making a habit of quick innings because he throws strikes.
He came in doing so, getting two outs on six pitches in his major league debut on May 26. He is averaging 16 pitches an inning and throwing strikes at a 65.5% rate.
“He has got a good arm,” Shildt said recently. “There are good arms all throughout baseball. … But this guy has two really good qualities that complement his arm. He’s not going to back down; he’s going to trust what he does. And he’s going to do it in the strike zone. That’s a big separator between being a big-league player and staying and being consistent and contributing and guys who have good arms and can’t get outs in the strike zone. Because more or less, that’s where (outs) take place.”
It is a rarity for a pitcher to come up and immediately settle into consistently throwing strikes. There are the famous outliers. But a middle reliever who comes in with the command and confidence of a veteran and continues to show it is rarer.
“I know hitting is hard,” Morgan said. “The odds are against you as a hitter. My stuff is good. Let’s battle.”
Morgan was the guy at the plate not that long ago. He played on the left side of the infield and outfield in college and did not convert to pitching (while also continuing to play in the field and hit) until his senior year of college, at NAIA school Hope International University in Orange County.
Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla thinks Morgan’s late conversion might have helped instill in him an adherence to one of baseball’s oldest adages.
“What is the first thing they tell you when you start pitching?” Niebla said. “Throw strikes.”
Tidbits
- Luis Arraez went 2-for-4 last night to extend his hitting streak to a career-best 15 games. He is batting .417 (25-for-60) during the streak. I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter about the discipline Arraez has shown at the plate recently.
- Peralta worked a 1-2-3 sixth inning last night. He has 0.98 ERA over his past 11 appearances (9⅔ innings) and a 1.80 ERA over his past 20 appearances (20 innings).
- Yuki Matsui’s 10.5% walk rate and 3.1% home run rate this season are not ideal. Last night, he introduced something new. He hit a batter for the first time in his two major league seasons.
- Estrada’s scoreless streak ended at 17⅓ innings. Last night was the first time he was charged with a run since June 17, a span of 17 scoreless appearances.
- Jackson Merrill homered last night for the first time in 15 games. He was 2-for-4 for the second straight night and is batting .300 (15-for-50) over his past 12 games.
- Last night was the fourth time this season the Padres have lost after leading by at least four runs. That is tied for third most in the majors behind only the Rays and Diamondbacks, who have lost five such games.
- The Padres fell to 33-11 when scoring at least five runs. They are 9-4 when scoring exactly five runs.
- Updated accounting: The Padres got the contracts of Laureano and O’Hearn paid down by the Orioles to at or near the MLB minimum. We already knew the Brewers did that with Cortes’ contract. So that means the Padres upped their payroll even less than we thought. With every player they acquired at the deadline making less than $300,000 over the season’s final two months and accounting for the salaries of Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek, the additional commitment amounts to less than $1.5 million. That makes what I wrote yesterday about spending money to make money even more pertinent.
All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (1:10 p.m. PT) and then a flight to Phoenix.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Originally Published:
Source link
