Good morning,

The Padres overwhelmed and outlasted the Tigers with an abundance of talented options to earn a 6-5 victory last night.

The Padres came back from five runs down when No.7 hitter Jackson Merrill hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning and cleanup hitter Manny Machado drove in two runs with a single in the fifth inning. Then they won it in the 10th when lead-off hitter Luis Arraez was intentionally walked with two outs and a runner on second and Fernando Tatis Jr. walked it off with a single.

Tatis said he took the intentional walk as a “challenge.” But he also understood why Tigers manager A.J. Hinch would want to avoid the National League’s leading hitter.

“It’s just what this group is,” Tatis said. “We keep putting good at-bats behind good at-bats.”

And those at-bats mattered last night because, after Yu Darvish struggled in his first start in nearly 100 days and Yuki Matsui surrendered a two-run homer that had the Padres down 5-0 after four innings, six more pitchers came out of the Padres bullpen to keep the game where it was at.

Four of the final five of those relievers were throwing at least 98 mph. The Tigers got one hit in those final five innings.

“That’s what good teams have,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “They have depth in their lineup, they have good benches, and they have good bullpens. That’s what we have.”

Merrill and Tatis got the adoration last night. Machado’s at-bat in the fifth, which tied the game, was a magnificent comeback on its own, as he missed two pitches he was upset about nor doing damage on and then reached down to ground a two-strike changeup through the hole on the left side. Arraez is clearly a respected presence that affects the opponent.

But the Padres’ offense was given the opportunity to perpetrate the team’s fourth comeback victory in a game in which they trailed by five or more runs this season — tied with the Nationals for most in the major leagues — because of the bullpen’s fortitude.

Those four comebacks were made possible because pitchers (mostly relievers) worked a bunch of scoreless innings to keep the deficit from growing. (It actually goes deeper than just the five-run comebacks. The Padres have won 21 games in which they trailed by two or more runs this season. That is 13 more than they had all last season and two shy of the team record of 23 achieved most recently in 1998.)

Here is a look at how the four big comebacks this season were made possible by the bullpen:

According to OptaStats, the Padres are the first team since at least 2000 to have had four games in a season in which they were down by five or more runs and being shut out and then shut out their opponent the rest of the game while coming back to win.

You can read in my game story (here) about Darvish’s struggles and what he thought about the outing, as well as the other events leading to the victory.

Here Merrill’s take on what happened at the end:

“I wouldn’t walk Arraez to get to Tatis,” Merrill said. “I wouldn’t walk anyone to get to Tatis, but I get it. … Arraez is one of the best singles hitters in baseball. I get it. But go ahead, good luck walking him to get to Tatis.”

Kind of what Hinch was feeling as well, explaining his decision to issue the free pass to the left-handed-hitting Arraez and have Tatis face Jason Foley, the Tigers’ right-handed closer, thusly:

“It’s two of the better hitters in the league. Take our shot with the righty. … You’re not in a good spot either way.”

And here is an update on the chart I keep to track results that illustrate why the 2024 Padres, with 21 games remaining, are three victories away from surpassing last year’s win total:

Mutual admiration society

On the night Merrill tied Tatis for fourth most home runs ever by a Padres rookie (22), Tatis accomplished something for the first time that Merrill had already done twice.

Last night was — believe it or not — Tatis’ first career walk-off hit.

“Really long time,” Tatis said. “But it came in a special year. Happy it came today.”

Tatis, whose rookie season was in 2019, has been touting Merrill’s ability and predicting he would be a star since spring training.

“How do you put it into words?” Tatis said last night. “This kid has been doing it all year. He’s just showing up. He’s showing what type of player he is. I’m not gonna get tired of saying the talent that he is, how he came in spring, taking care of business. He is just getting in front of this line with the group and pulling that rope together with this group.”

Merrill loves all his teammates as if they were family members, but he appears to revere Tatis in a different stratum. He, in turn, spoke of Tatis rejoining the lineup two games ago following a 2½-month stint on the injured list with a stress reaction in his right femur (thigh bone).

“It’s like, you give a guy three months off, basically,” Merrill said. “… Getting him now at the strength he has and how healthy he is, is huge for us. And it’s not even like a fact of him producing in the game. Him being in the game is enough to put other teams off. Like his presence on the field, it speaks for itself. I think every team knows that they come in, and the first person to think of is Fernando Tatis Jr. His presence (alone), that helps us down the stretch.”

Perhaps, but …

Tatis producing will also help.

After going 0-for-4 and getting just one fly ball hit to him in his return Monday, Tatis was 2-for-4 and quite a bit more active last night.

He chased down a double in the corner and made a throw to second base that almost resulted in an out, ran to catch a fly ball practically in center field, ran and slid to stop a single and cut off a single in the gap and threw behind the runner to first base.

He also doubled and scored from second on a single.

“It’s getting better with the days,” Tatis said of his right leg. “I’m getting more fluid, getting that muscle memory back of running the right way. I feel good. I feel confident. Today was 100 percent when I was going home (from second base).”

Oh, and he looked quite healthy running around the infield being mobbed by teammates.

There was something in the air tonight. The stars were bright, Fernando ✨ pic.twitter.com/vYGuMUaxcr

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 5, 2024

Now, how did his jersey come off so that he ended up running around the field and doing his on-field interviews shirtless?

“It just happened,” Tatis said. “I saw dark, and then I had no shirt. It was beautiful.”

It appeared — and Tatis confirmed — that teammates tore off the shirt part of the way and he obliged with the rest.

It reminded me of a scene from A League of Their Own, the greatest baseball movie ever. In this scene, Madonna’s character, Dottie Hinson, wonders about a potential accidental occurrence that could come up during a game.

Yuuuuu loved it

The crowd at Petco Park welcomed Yu Darvish back with a sustained “Yuuuuu” when he ran on the field a little less than an hour before first pitch. They again cheered and yelled “Yuuuuu” when his name was announced at the end of the starting lineup introductions.

And they gave him a hearty ovation as he walked off the field with two outs in the third inning.

“I felt glad to be alive to experience that,” Darvish said through interpreter Shingo Horie. “You know, not just when I was starting the game, pregame or before the game started but when I was coming out of the game. Obviously, I didn’t pitch that well. Still the fans were calling my name and chanting and giving me a warm welcome, warm words. So it was really good. It was awesome.”

Secret to his success

Let’s update the chart we’ve run a few times the past week, because it keeps getting better.

Merrill was 3-for-5 last night with a double and a homer. The homer came on a splitter in the center of the strike zone and the double on a fastball in the center of the zone.

Merrill has essentially been hunting fastballs down the middle all season. That makes him ready for that pitch and any other meaty offering.

Recently, he distilled that focus.

“I’m only thinking in my head fastball middle-middle,” he said last night. “There’s no external thoughts about my swing. There’s no external thoughts about anything else. It’s fastball middle-middle and be ready to hit.”

The remarkable thing about the 21-year-old rookie’s season — and the reason the above numbers have remained so steady — is that Merrill has had just two mini-slumps. He went 0-for-19 over six games from April 24 through May 1 and hit .132 (5-for-38) from July 4 through 19.

“I think during the June I had, I was doing it,” Merrill said of his singular approach over a 20-game stretch in June in which he batted .342 with nine home runs. “I wasn’t thinking about anything. It was just see ball, hit ball. And then I went to July, and it was a little tough. It was slower. You know, it wasn’t my best month. But we worked through it. I put my head down. I think (around the) beginning of August, just like see ball, hit ball, get on time. Don’t think about your swing. Just trust yourself. You’re here for a reason. There’s no point to talk about your swing anymore.”

How he sees it

It really is a different way Merrill thinks.

He is not shy about his ability. He knows how good he is and usually has little problem talking about it.

But virtually every game he does something to help the Padres win, he talks unprompted about what others did as well.

When it was asserted last night that he seems to always be in the middle of rallies, he turned his answer into a celebration of reliever Jeremiah Estrada, who stranded the automatic runner in working a scoreless 10th inning.

“Sometimes,” Merrill said. “But the team was all there tonight. Everybody was there. … I can’t say enough about the bullpen, especially Estrada coming in and doing that in the 10th. That’s big time.”

Later, Merrill was asked about the significance of his breaking the franchise rookie RBI record Benito Santiago set in 1987 and what it might mean to him if his record lasted as long as Santiago’s did. The depth of Merrill’s answer was another example of how he sees things beyond himself.

“I hope somebody comes up next year and breaks that record,” he said. “We’ll take all the help we can get. We’ve got good young guys in our minor league system. (Ethan) Salas and (Leo) De Vries, I trust they can do the same thing.”

Lineup

Arraez was 2-for-5 with a walk, and Tatis was 2-for-6 last night.

It had been 11 games since the first two batters in the Padres’ order had multiple hits.

Last night was also the first time Arraez and Tatis batted back-to-back since June 21.

Shildt had almost his entire complement of options (minus the injured Ha-Seong Kim) available for the first time since that date, and this is what he went with:

Padres lineup vs Tigers RHP Keider Montero:

Mike Shildt sticking with L-R combinations in first game with Tatis, Profar and Cronenworth in same lineup since June 21:

L-Arraez DH
Tatis 9
S-Profar 7
Machado 5
L-Cronenworth 3
Bogaerts 4
L-Merrill 8
Campusano 2
McCoy 6

SP: Darvish

— Kevin Acee (@sdutKevinAcee) September 4, 2024

That top seven seems like it will stay the same unless Shildt decides to flip Cronenworth and Profar and/or possibly Merrill and Bogaerts.

Bogaerts walked three times last night but is batting .189 (7-for-37) with a .250 on-base percentage and one extra-base hit over his past 11 games.

The switch-hitting Profar hits left-handers (.317 with a .931 OPS) far better than righties (.262/.801). The left-handed-hitting Cronenworth is batting .267 with an .805 OPS against righties and .200/.530 against lefties.

I wrote last week (here) about the possibility the Padres could still move Merrill higher than sixth and why they have not yet done so.

The choice

Shildt made an interesting move with runners on second and third and one out in the seventh inning, pinch-hitting for catcher Kyle Higashioka with another right-handed hitter, Donovan Solano.

Because the crowd was so loud, Higashioka could not hear coaches calling his name as he walked from the on-deck circle. He made it all the way to the plate before noticing he was being replaced.

Solano ended up walking, which loaded the bases for No.9 hitter Mason McCoy. McCoy grounded into a fielder’s choice and Arraez grounded out to end the inning.

The result is not the only way to judge a manager’s decision in such an instance. In fact, his thought process is far more interesting.

Higashioka has seven doubles and 10 home runs but also 40 strikeouts in 132 at-bats against right-handers. He is batting .242 against righties, which is  45 points lower than Solano’s average against righties and 25 points lower than McCoy has hit against righties.

“Yeah, that was a tough one,” Shildt said. “… Got the open base, not sure what they’re going to do. Mac has been having good at-bats. Trust Higgy, too. It’s not a matter of that. But we’ve got a real bullet over there in Solano. You know, with one out, it’s hard … but just took advantage of what we saw in front of us, took a tough at-bat, worked a walk. So really, that was a tough one, because we could have let Higgy hit and then hit for Mac. So wasn’t a clearcut decision.”

It was a decision facilitated, too, by the fact the Padres are carrying three catchers.

Because Higashioka had come in to catch in place of Luis Campusano after David Peralta pinch-hit for him in the sixth, Elías Díaz took over behind the plate in the top of the eighth. In his Padres debut, he caught the final three innings and grounded out in the 10th inning in his only at-bat.

Tidbits

• The Padres placed Darvish into the starting rotation last night, pushing everyone else back a day — except Michael King. He got pushed back two days (plus Tuesday’s off day) and will start tomorrow on seven days’ rest after Martín Pérez goes tonight. Jeff Sanders spoke with King about how he feels and wrote about that in his notebook (here). King is a career-high 150⅔ innings into his season. I wrote (here) the other day about how pitching coach Ruben Niebla views King’s status.
• The Padres improved to 23-0 when Machado has multiple RBIs.
• The Padres were 4-for-14 with runners in scoring position. They are 33-3 when having at least four hits with runners in scoring position (20-1 when having exactly four).
• It should not be lost in all that happened afterward that the Padres might have had to come back from more than five runs down if Bogaerts had not made a diving play up the middle to stop a ground ball and flip the ball to McCoy covering second for a force out in the third inning. Instead of the Tigers two on with no outs, there was a runner on first with one out. The degree of difficulty was made greater by Darvish having made a stab at the ball.
• The way the teams in the hunt in the National League are going, it might take 90 wins just to make the playoffs:

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.

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