Good morning from Cleveland,
The Padres could not have asked for more from their starting pitchers the past three days.
“Man, it was another good performance against us,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said after Michael King allowed two hits and just one run in the Padres’ 2-1 victory yesterday afternoon.
You can read about King’s day in my game story (here).
That followed Dylan Cease surrendering one hit in seven scoreless innings on Saturday and Matt Waldron giving up a run on six hits on Friday.
To help with that math: the three starters surrendered two runs on nine hits over 20 innings.
“I think it’s a good indicator of what we’re capable of,” catcher Kyle Higashioka said. “Baseball, though, is a sport about consistency. We’ve got to find that consistency going through the end of the year in order to make a playoff push — to make the playoffs and go far. It’s all about being consistently at our best.”
And that is where the Padres can ask for more from their starting pitchers.
This is not the first time Padres starters have been awesome this season.
In a six-game stretch from May 6-12, they allowed three runs on 15 hits over 35⅔ innings.
They had a 2.44 ERA over 73⅔ innings in a 13-game stretch from May 26 through June 8. And that included the May 29 game in which Yu Darvish was removed due to injury after allowing three runs in three innings.
The 13 games in which a Padres starting pitcher has gone at least seven innings while allowing one or zero runs are fifth most in the major leagues.
So that is the glass-half-full way to look at this rotation and the past three days by the trio currently atop that rotation.
“You’ve definitely seen flashes of it throughout the year,” King said. “… It’s very encouraging, and I think that coming in after the break, it’s nice to start off on a good note.”
The reality is that since Adam Mazur’s last start on July 3, which was followed by him being optioned to Triple-A, Padres starters have posted a 1.84 ERA in seven starts. Take out that Mazur start (five runs in 4⅔ innings) and go back 11 starts by the other four Padres starters, and they have a 2.36 ERA in that span.
However, the sobering take is that for all the good runs, there have been enough stumbles that the Padres rank 13th in starting pitcher ERA (4.03).
They have had a starting pitcher allow four or more runs while lasting fewer than four innings 10 times this season. The only teams with more starts that bad are the A’s, Angels and Rockies, who are a combined 65 games below .500.
What has happened lately might be encouraging.
“That’s what they’re capable of,” pitching coach Ruben Niebla said yesterday.
It is just four starters, though.
As we have talked about in this space, a fifth has yet to be found. And Joe Musgrove isn’t coming back for at least a month and Darvish might not return.
Randy Vásquez will start tomorrow’s series opener in Washington against the Nationals with Waldron and Cease to follow. King would be in line to start the first game in Baltimore against the Orioles on Friday before the Padres need a fifth starter.
It is possible they make a trade for a starting pitcher in the next few days and that pitcher starts Friday or Saturday. Otherwise, the options that have been discussed include a bullpen game or (more likely) calling up a pitcher from Triple-A.
Positive thinking
The Padres lost six of seven going into the All-Star break and dropped the opener of this weekend’s series 7-0.
Then they won the past two days to get back to two games above .500 (52-50) and into a three-way tie with the Mets and Diamondbacks for the final National League wild-card spot.
The Padres departed The Land with a series win over the team that had the best record in the American League (58-37) in the first half and had not lost a series at home since the Yankees took two of three at Progressive Field in mid-April.
“That’s why I’ll let other people overreact,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “You know, that’s fine. I know what this club is about, and I know this game can be a challenge some days. We just came in here with the club that’s leading their division, best record in the American League, best record at home and just won two out of three. … I’ve got complete confidence in our ballclub.”
I’ll just leave that there without further comment. It is possible that was the most Shildtish quote of the season. And I don’t think we need to discuss it further.
The other rotation
Xander Bogaerts’ return from the injured list has changed up what had been a fairly predictable lineup.
Donovan Solano has started just two of the past six games after starting 16 in a row. And that is just part of the positional musical chairs. Jake Cronenworth, who moved from first base to second while Bogaerts was out, is back at first (mostly). Luis Arraez, who started almost exclusively at first base while Bogaerts was sidelined, is still there (sort of) but has also been relegated to DH twice.
Bogaerts, who had played second base exclusively since returning from the injured list, served as the Padres designated hitter yesterday. He was the fifth player to do so in the past five games.
Solano, who is batting .292 overall and .303 against left-handed pitchers, will likely play a couple games against the Nationals, who are expected to start at least two left-handers.
Tidbits
- Bogaerts was 2-for-4 yesterday, his fourth two-hit game in the five he has played since returning from his 47-game absence due to a fracture in his left shoulder. Counting the final seven games before he went on the IL, Bogaerts is batting .348 (16-for-46) in his past 12 games.
- Higashioka’s second-inning double drove in the Padres’ two runs yesterday. It was his sixth game-deciding RBI, third most on the team behind Jurickson Profar (nine) and Jake Cronenworth (eight).
- Robert Suarez closed out yesterday’s game by retiring all four batters he faced. His 23 saves are tied for fourth-most in the major leagues. Yesterday was the eighth time he has gotten at least four outs to earn a save or win, tied with the Mariners’ Andres Muñoz for most among MLB closers.
- Profar was 2-for-4 yesterday to get his batting average back to .300 and avoid a hitless series.
- Machado reached base for the only time in 13 plate appearances in the series when he was hit in the back by a pitch in the eighth inning yesterday.
- Machado has faced 12 different pitchers in 17 plate appearances over the past four games. Six times in that span he has been the first Padres batter to face a new reliever.
- The Padres are 11-12 in one-run games in 2024, which is quite an improvement over last year’s MLB-worst 9-23 record in such games.
- King began yesterday’s game by retiring 10 straight batters. It was his team-leading fifth out streak of at least 10 batters.
- I wrote in my postgame notebook (here) yesterday about the success of the Higashioka-King pairing and the affinity Guardians slugger José Ramírez has for Padres hitting coach Victor Rodriguez.
- Bryce Miller is already in Washington and wrote (here) yesterday about how the Nationals view last month’s dust-up between the teams heading into this week’s series. Bryce will have a column posting later today on our Padres page revisiting the 2022 Juan Soto trade now that James Wood has joined CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore in the big leagues with the Nationals.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today. So no newsletter tomorrow.
Talk to you Wednesday.
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