Good morning from Pittsburgh,
Some quality at-bats, then one that wasn’t. A rally extinguished against an excellent pitcher.
It has been the story of most of the Padres’ losses in this season that is far too young to make any real assessments.
It is precisely what happened in the sixth inning when the Padres mounted their only rally against Paul Skenes.
Xander Bogaerts would blast a home run through the cold night and into the seats beyond left field to chase Skenes an inning later.
But the sixth inning was the one time the Padres got something going. And it looked familiar.
Jake Cronenworth led off with a walk, Ramón Laureano hit a 105 mph grounder down the line but right at Pirates third baseman Nick Yorke, who went to a knee to backhand the ball and and then forced Cronenworth at second. Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a one-out single. Jackson Merrill then beat a 3-1 splitter on the outer edge of the plate into the ground toward shortstop to end the inning with a 6-4-3 double play.
“Kind of had him there,” Manny Machado said. “Made him throw some pitches. … It was a great battle between our teams, going out there and making him throw pitches. But, yeah, he’s a freaking good pitcher.”
That quote is in my game story (here) from last night’s 7-1 loss to the Pirates.
The score is not indicative of the way the Padres pitched.
The Pirates scored two runs against Nick Pivetta in the fifth inning on three groundball hits that had hit probabilities of 22%, 10% and 21%.
Then, the Pirates pulled away in a five-run eighth inning by taking advantage of some misses by reliever Adrian Morejón to poke some hits to places where fielders weren’t. Moreover, they took advantage of some porous fielding.
Morejón was charged with all five runs, four of them earned while recording just one out. But one of the singles could have been fielded by Gavin Sheets, and Bogaerts made an error two batters later.
“They hit a few of them hard tonight, but you could argue that we could have got out of (the eighth) inning without any runs if we’d have made a few plays,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “We’re not gonna make every single play. That’s part of baseball. But we’ve got to be ready in a cold game in the eighth inning, one-run game to be able to make some of those plays.”
And, absolutely, quality at-bats have to lead to more than the six baserunners the Padres had last night. But that is not always how it happens, especially facing the kinds of starting pitcher the Padres were last night and that they have faced a fair amount of nights this season.
They had won three straight games and had 23 hits and 13 runs in the previous two. After going down in order in 14 innings in the first four games, the Padres have done so 11 times in the past seven games. They saw a season-low 118 pitches last night, but that happens when you’re facing a pitcher with devastating pitches and the goal is to not fall behind against him. They continued to consistently not chase pitches outside the zone.
Here are some other numbers that indicate progress:
We should keep nodding along with Machado as long as what he says keeps making sense.
“We’re having competitive at-bats,” he said last night as he warmed up after the game. “It’s not just wasteful at-bats. We’re not just going out and it’s 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. I mean, we’re making these guys work and making them hit locations and make their pitches. And that’s stressful pitches for those pitchers. Whenever we can do that, we’re going to be in a good spot. Sometimes, you know, there are aces too. So they make their pitches, and you kind of just have to hang with them. But as long as you’re having those competitive at-bats and making them throw and making them hit their spots, and you’re going to be good. And we’ve been doing that as a team.”
Tough loss
The Padres had their No.1 starter going as well.
And Pivetta was matching Skenes for a while — until some really tough Pirates at-bats required him to throw 26 pitches in the fourth inning and the above-mentioned three groundballs in the fifth cost him.
His night is detailed in my game story.
“I didn’t make a pitch to Cruz, and he was able to get it through the infield,” Pivetta said of the final hit of that inning, an Oneil Cruz double grounded at 69.1 mph just inside the third base bag and just out of the reach of Machado. “And that’s just how it goes sometimes.”
Pivetta struck out eight batters in five innings for the second consecutive start.
Not yet
Jason Adam is eligible to come off the injured list today. But the earliest he will join the Padres is some time during their series against the Rockies that begins tomorrow.
The Padres want to see Adam pitch at least once more in Triple-A on his rehab assignment to see how he bounces back from pitching in back-to-back games Saturday and Sunday.
He told Stammen he felt in midseason form, which the manager said “is typical Jason Adam.”
Stammen was a big-league pitcher for a dozen seasons. His radar for players’ bravado is highly tuned.
Stammen has preached caution regarding Adam, whose season was cut short Sept. 1 when he suffered a ruptured quad tendon in his left leg and had surgery a couple days later.
“You look at what he’s done so far — has it been like a normal spring training?” he said. “That’s what you’re trying to create. With his injury, you probably want him to have a few more outings than what a normal spring training would be, just because he’s coming in not fully healthy. So we’ve got to be overly cautious. There’s no reason on April 7 to push a guy who had a major surgery that’s coming back a month earlier than he was originally diagnosed to come back. So we’re being smart. He’s being smart.”
The Padres have had three or four games already in which they deployed their bullpen differently than if they had Adam, one of the best setup men in the major leagues over the past four seasons.
But they want to make sure he can be helping them all through the year.
The Padres have a decision to make when it comes time to make room for Adam on the active roster.
With Ron Marinaccio pitching well and out of options and pitching, the decision would seem to be who to send down between left-hander Kyle Hart, David Morgan or Bradgley Rodriguez.
The issue with sending down Hart is both his handedness and his status as their long reliever. But Marinaccio and Morgan have worked two innings multiple times this season.
Adam will likely pitch for El Paso tonight, meaning the earliest he would be activated is Friday.
Unexpected
Morejón, an All-Star last season who finished among the MLB leaders in virtually every category in which a reliever can excel, has allowed at least one run or allowed an inherited runner to score in all four of his appearances.
But last night was illustrative of his season so far.
His ERA is 10.80 in five innings, but his xERA (expected earned run average) is 3.19. He has allowed a .400 batting average but an xBA of .283. And most significantly, he has yielded a .400 on-base average but an xOBA of just .285.
Expected stats measures amount of contact and the type of contact. These are metrics that purport to credit a pitcher with what “should” happen based on quality of contact and not what could happen based on factors like defense.
What is expected really doesn’t matter in the end. But this isn’t anywhere near the end of the season.
“It’s hard to say you’re off when you’re throwing 100 mph sinkers,” Stammen said of Morejón. “It’s a long season, and things will turn better for him. The last two games he’s pitched have kind of been just a little, balls are just going where we don’t have defenders.”
Joe update
I wrote (here) yesterday about the process Joe Musgrove is going through as he attempts to return from Tommy John surgery.
Musgrove was shut down in mid-March when he could not push through the discomfort enough to make the necessary pitches again and again.
“It’s not like this just popped up in spring and I was great all offseason,” Musgrove explained. “I was getting through in the offseason. But having not been there, I don’t know what is what. I don’t know what was pain and what was just part of the surgery. I was trying to kind of push it a little bit and hoping I would break through at some point in spring and I would kind of turn the corner and not be dealing with it anymore. And it just never came. It was kind of heading in the opposite direction.”
It was clear in talking with Musgrove the past few days that he felt the need to assert that he would be pitching if it were at all possible.
“I want to be back more than anyone wants me to be back,” he said.
Anyone who has been paying attention to how Musgrove has worked to get back from injury and how he pushed through 20 starts in 2024 with his elbow ready to give out at any time could not possibly question Musgrove’s desire to pitch.
Tidbits
The Padres put 73 bunts in play in 2025, more than any other team. Cronenworth’s attempt at a bunt hit last night, which resulted in an out, was their first bunt in play this season. Last year’s totals: 48 sacrifice bunts, 11 bunt hits and 14 bunt groundouts.
Marinaccio replaced Morejón and quickly got the final two outs of the eighth inning. That was after he threw 30 pitches in two innings on Monday. Since allowing two runs in his two innings in the season opener, Marinaccio has retired 17 of the 19 batters he has faced over 5⅔ scoreless innings in his past four appearances.
Bogaerts is 6-for-11 with a double, a home run and two walks in the past three games. He was hitless in the 16 at-bats that preceded this stretch.
Machado has reached base in 10 of the Padres’ 11 games. He was 0-for-3 with his 11th walk of the season last night and is batting .206 with a .400 on-base percentage.
No Padres player has an OPS higher than Miguel Andujar’s .757 mark in 28 plate appearances. That is the lowest OPS by a team leader in the major leagues.
All right, that’s it for me.
Early game today (9:35 a.m. PT) before a flight home.
Talk to you tomorrow.