Good morning,

The Padres completed a sweep of the Giants.

The Mets lost. The Braves lost.

It will take quite a change of direction for the Padres to not make the postseason.

We will take a day off from the “if ..” charts we have been running. But suffice it to say that even if the Padres were to finish as poorly as 5-7, the Mets would have to go 9-4 or the Braves 10-3 to knock the Padres from a wild-card spot.

But even a team in conrol of its own destiny at this point in the season lives with a certain amount of peril looming over it.

You can read in my game story (here) about the Padres’ latest bit of working through the bad to grab the good, their continued resilience and their ongoing issue at the very back of their very good bullpen.

Robert Suarez, the workhorse closer, has not been all that reliable for about three weeks.

Suarez converted 29 of his first 32 save opportunities while also getting a hold and six wins (that did not involve a blown save). But he has allowed at least one baserunner in his past eight appearances and at least one run in four of those, including the game-tying homer he surrendered in the ninth inning yesterday before the Padres secured a 4-3 victory in the 10th.

There just isn’t a relief pitcher who makes it through a season without at least a little skid. And the Padres could celebrate in the moment the fact their bullpen is so deep it covered five innings yesterday and allowed two runs in 11 innings in the series and has yielded an MLB-low .144 batting average in September.

But that bullpen depth — with another All-Star closer in Tanner Scott and setup man Jason Adam, who yesterday worked his 10th consecutive scoreless inning and has allowed one run in his past 21 innings — also makes it more feasible for the Padres to make changes they deem necessary.

So while there is little doubt Mike Shildt intends to follow through on his postgame declaration that he “will take (Suarez) tomorrow in a one-run game,” changes will be necessary soon if Suarez throws more straight fastballs to the heart of the strike zone.

Heliot Ramos ties it up in the 9th with a splash hit!

It’s the first splash hit EVER by a right-handed hitter 🤯 pic.twitter.com/T87Hw9Jsy4

— MLB (@MLB) September 15, 2024

Nothing extra

It is pretty remarkable that the Padres are 9-1 in extra innings this season. That is best in the major leagues, and it represents an 18-game improvement (from 10 games worse than .500 to eight games better than .500) over last season’s 2-12 mark.

But it is also fairly easy to explain.

The above chart shows the Padres are getting more hits, striking out less and moving runners over better in extra innings this season.

Just like they are for the most part in the first nine innings of games.

They are better in extra innings because of their overall identity.

“It’s about execution, right?” Shildt said. “You get into close games, it’s about execution. You got guys that are looking to play the game right, as ‘Tati’ would say, do what the game calls for. It’s all about the situations and being able to execute. That’s what this is about.”

Fernando Tatis Jr. has talked frequently since he was a rookie about “doing what the game tells you” to do.

“Since (before) I can recall, you know, that’s what my dad has preached to me,” Tatis said yesterday. “There (are) so many different ways to win this game, and if you really pay attention, if you really want to play the game the right way, you do what the game is asking you to do at the time.”

Shildt has appropriated the phrase, because it fits.

“It’s beautiful,” Tatis said. “It’s amazing. I haven’t seen nothing like how good we have been this year on those occasions.”

Here is an update of the chart I keep to illustrate some of the key differences that explain why the Padres are 85-65 this season after finishing 82-80 in 2023. (This version includes only categories that apply to yesterday’s game.)

It is like a 180-degree turn from last season, when the Padres acknowledged they often felt the need “to hit a five-run homer” in clutch situations.

“I think the biggest thing is we’re not putting that pressure on ourselves to make it happen,” Jake Cronenworth said. “It’s just a continuation of the game. We go out there and have good at-bats. … It’s not like it’s turning into this thing where guys make it bigger than what it is.”

Leader of the band

The idea of taking what the game gives you and giving what the game is asking for aligns with a story I posted yesterday (here) about how the Padres are about to break the franchise’s season record for home runs at home. In the story, I write how they are hitting all these homers without explicitly trying to do so.

The focus on a mindset of taking what comes was established by Shildt and hitting coach Victor Rodriguez.

But on the field, the guy leading the charge is the greatest contact hitter currently in the game.

Luis Arraez, who leads the National League with a .322 average, extended his season-high hitting streak to 13 games and extended his run of plate appearances without a strikeout to 140.

His hitting streak is the second-longest active streak in the major leagues. His streak of not striking out is the longest in the major leagues in 20 years.

Not since Juan Pierre went 147 plate appearances has any big-league ballplayer gone longer without going down on strikes.

The next-closest active streak is the Angels’ Anthony Rendon’s 31 plate appearances. The next-longest streak at any point in 2024 was Steven Kwan’s 74 plate appearances.

Arraez went 72 plate appearances without a strikeout before doing striking out in back-to-back games on Aug. 9 and 10. He has not struck out since.

He is batting an MLB-best .279 with two strikes this season and .259 during the streak. He has missed on an MLB-low six percent of his swings this season and less than four percent during the streak. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact Arraez has taken a first-pitch strike in  41 percent of his plate appearances this season and 43 percent of them during the streak.

Arraez’s one-out double in the 10th inning yesterday, which moved David Peralta to third base and into position to score on a groundout, came on a  2-1 count. But his single leading off the sixth inning, after which he scored the game’s first run on Manny Machado’s sacrifice fly, came on a 1-2 count.

“I trust myself,” said Arraez, who is 30 plate appearances shy of matching the Padres record set by Tony Gwynn in 1995. “I trust myself, and I just want to make contact.”

Resting ready

Tatis got the day off yesterday, save for the one pitch he saw — and hit 400 feet to give the Padres a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning.

“I was a man on a mission,” Tatis said with a laugh about his one-pitch pinch-hit at bat. “… Just be ready, you know. I talked to the manager. He told me there’s a chance for me to be called late into the game. He said, ‘Let’s go.’ And I was gonna be ready no matter what.”

NANDO OFF THE BENCH!

Fernando Tatis Jr. homers on the first pitch he sees to give the @Padres the lead! pic.twitter.com/mImulMWSXR

— MLB (@MLB) September 15, 2024

Tatis said he did not know before the series that he would get Sunday off. But the team’s decision makers planned for it.

“We’ve got a loose calendar of what this looks like,” Shildt said. “We were able to follow it. We knew going into this series that today was a day he was likely to get off and then be ready to go until the next day off, depending on how he feels.”

Tatis had started nine of the Padres’ 10 games since returning from a 2½-month IL stint while allowing a stress reaction in his right femur (thigh bone) to heal. The team’s schedule did provide three off-days in that span. They also have a day off Thursday and one next Monday before finishing the regular season with six consecutive games.

“We’re just doing a holistic way of looking at this and making sure we keep him fresh and we stay ahead of it,” Shildt said. “Because we don’t want it to go backwards, obviously.”

Good chance to win

The Padres improved to 7-1 in Martín Pérez’s starts.

Almost no matter what happens or how he feels, they win.

Yesterday, he was not at his strongest after nine days off. But the left-hander allowed his only run on a home run by Donovan Walton leading off the sixth inning. Pérez was replaced after that and finished his day having allowed two hits and walked one batter.

“I was available to compete,” said Pérez, who became a father to twins on Wednesday and rejoined the team Friday. “That was the first thing that I have on my mind. Because I think too many days rest, you don’t feel the same, that same power. But at this point in my career, I just got to go out there and compete, no matter how many days they give me. So I was just going to do my job.”

The only time the Padres have lost a game Pérez started was his previous start, when he turned in 6⅓ scoreless innings against the Tigers before Suarez surrendered a grand slam in the ninth.

Pérez has a 2.72 ERA since being acquired in a July 30 trade with the Pirates, seventh best in the NL in that span.

Both ways

Even before he got his first hit in the series, following two 0-for-5 nights, Cronenworth had made two defensive plays at second base that kept Pérez from facing any traffic.

Cronenworth ran to his right and backhanded a ball up the middle and threw to first base for the second out of the first inning. And he caught a 99 mph low line drive for the final out of the second inning. And after getting a single in the top of the third inning, Cronenworth made a diving stop in the grass and threw out the runner for the final out in the bottom of that inning.

“It’s frustrating no matter how good you’re playing on defense,” Cronenworth said of struggling at the plate. “I wish they would cancel out, but they don’t.”

Cronenworth finished 1-for-3 with a walk and is batting .246 (16-for-65) with a .364 on-base percentage over his past 18 games.

Tidbits

• The Padres have reached 85 wins for just the 10th time since the franchise’s inception in 1969.
• They are 20 games over .500 for the first time since being 87-67 near the end of the 2010 season.
• The Padres’ six pinch-hit homers this season are their most since they had 10 in 2019.
• Yesterday was just the 38th game this season in which the Padres did not have at least seven hits and just the 10th game they won this with six or fewer hits.
• Catcher Elías Díaz is 1-for-10 since joining the Padres, but he threw out a runner trying to steal yesterday and on Friday made an athletic play to reach for a throw and then lunge to tag out a runner trying to score.
• The Padres are giving away Arraez bobbleheads tonight, though this one is available only to those who purchased a “theme game” ticket. There are just 10,000 of the dolls. The giveaway was not planned when the season began since Arraez  was not acquired until May 4 in a trade with the Marlins. But the Marlins had planned a giveaway. The dolls had not been painted yet, so the Padres acquired them and had them painted in the team’s City Connect colors.

All right, that’s it for me.

It’s been a long day made longer by yet another canceled flight.

(This time was 100 percent my fault. As I was leaving the clubhouse after yesterday’s game, Padres photographer Matt Thomas wished me safe travels. I replied by saying something to the effect of how we were finally on the West Coast, so this would be a breeze. I knew the second it was out of my mouth I had made a horrible mistake. And 20 minutes later came the alert from Alaska Airlines. I booked a new flight on United, which ended up being delayed. Again, totally my fault. It is OK to talk about no-hitters while they are in progress. That jinx is not real. But you don’t ever tempt fate by confidently talking about your upcoming flight.)

Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.