Good morning,
Walker Buehler walked quickly off the mound, into the dugout, past teammates and coaches offering encouragement for a job well done and threw his glove against the far wall of the dugout.
Maybe you saw the clip from his exit in the sixth inning last night.
Walker Buehler wasn’t happy with the way his outing ended pic.twitter.com/6wypUlM8Hv
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) April 17, 2026
He was unhappy about how his night had ended, a couple changeups ruining what he later acknowledged was a pretty nice outing.
“To be honest with you, I feel like I’m closer than close,” he said. “I mean, the first five innings are kind of what I’m trying to do. … Just frustrating to not put the finishing touches on it, I guess. But, you know, all in all the two starts that I made here in the homestand, I’ll be very happy with.”
And that is the takeaway from last night’s 5-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners — that Buehler might be the steal the Padres were hoping for when they signed him to a minor-league contract at the start of spring training.
The Padres offense has been reassuringly impressive during the team’s eight-game winning streak, but it is stability in the pitching staff that remains uncertain as the Padres look down the long road of the remaining 143 games in this season.
The performance of their starting pitchers has been in some ways highly encouraging. Michael King appears to be inching closer to his 2024 excellence. Randy Vásquez just had his first clunker on Wednesday after allowing two runs over his first three starts. Germán Márquez and Buehler, who will make a combined $9 million this season even if they earn every performance bonus by pitching as much and as well as possible, have been mostly adequate.
But among the three pitchers they expected to be atop their rotation, the Padres are down to King, as Nick Pivetta earlier this week joined Joe Musgrove on the sideline for an indeterminate period.
The Padres hope/expect both will return at some point. They hope/expect Griffin Canning will join the rotation in May and be as effective as he was for the Mets last season before tearing his Achilles. They hope/expect Matt Waldron, who is taking Pivetta’s spot in the rotation, will pitch like he did in 2024 and in spring training and throughout his rehab assignment. They hope/expect the new owner (who will likely be in place in the coming weeks) will approve the additional funds that could be required to make improvements via trade.
But hoping and expecting in that manner is not the kind of uncertainty a World Series contender wants to be living with.
So the Padres need Buehler to be every bit as good as he has looked in his past two starts.
Before yielding three straight singles to start the sixth inning last night, he had run his scoreless streak to 11 innings. He was mixing his three-fastball combination with four other pitches to great effect. His velocity remained trending upward.
There was even a point that he resembled the guy who had a 2.75 ERA over 94 starts for the Dodgers from 2018 through 2021. After a pair of singles to start the fourth inning, Buehler set down the Mariners’ 3-4-5 hitters in order. His seven strikeouts were more than he had in any of his previous 17 starts and the most he had in a five-inning outing since 2021, before his second Tommy John surgery.
“I think I used to have a little bit of kind of that, you know, everyone says it, a little bit of ‘f—k you’ that I can get out of situations like that,” Buehler said. “And the (fourth) inning, I think was a little bit representative of that. And being able to punch some guys out. But we’ll see. We’ll keep kind of growing and evolving. But when I feel healthy and feel confident, I feel like good things are coming. So yeah, another good step.”
What he did last night is arguably good enough.
As long as the bullpen is rested, a Padres starter getting into the sixth with a lead is a good foundation for victory.
“That’s our recipe for winning,” manager Craig Stammen said. “We’ve got a great bullpen, and we’ve just got to get the ball to them somehow, some way with the lead, and then I feel good with us closing it out and figuring it out from there. I always compare it to a (football) team that’s got a really good running game. You get the lead and they can just run the ball, run the clock out. … And that’s kind of our strategy. Score early, get ahead and then hand the ball off to all the guys that throw 100 miles an hour.”
Back on track
Yes, we will talk about Mason Miller continuing his streak of scoreless innings with stunning dominance.
But another significant component of the recipe Stammen referred to is back to normal.
Adrian Morejón had his second Adrian Morejón-like game last night after beginning the season with a half-dozen mostly un-Adrian Morejón-like appearances.
After Bradgley Rodriguez inherited two runners from Buehler in the sixth and allowed one to score on a single, got an out and loaded the bases with walk, Morejón came on and ended the inning by getting two outs in six pitches. He then worked a 1-2-3 seventh in 11 pitches.
That was reminiscent of the guy who ranked among the best relievers in the game in virtually every category in 2025.
“I feel really good right now,” Morejón said. “My confidence is in the sky right now.”
That wasn’t the case a little more than a week ago, even though much of the trouble Morejón has had this season has been attributable to bad luck.
Through his first six appearances, he had a 10.80 ERA and had allowed a run or allowed an inherited runner to score every time he was on the mound. But underlying numbers strongly suggested he was highly unfortunate.
Two things that really showed how bad things had gone for him in terms of soft contact turning into hits was his 2.11 FIP (a metric like ERA that eliminates defense and luck) and the astonishing .500 batting average on balls in play he had yielded.
“It’s just great to get Adrian in a game right there where he comes in and (it) could have went a lot of different ways, and he just kind of mows them down,” Stammen said. “He’s had a couple outings where it didn’t go his way, but he just showed his mental toughness, his toughness overall, to go out there, believe in himself and really just dominate that sixth and seventh inning. Really probably the key to us getting the victory.”
Honoring RJ
Miller’s scoreless streak is up to 30⅔ innings, second in Padres history behind Cla Meredith, who went 33⅔ innings without allowing a run during the 2006 season.
Miller’s second out last night moved him past Randy Jones, who put together a 30-inning scoreless streak in 1980.
“The more times his name is mentioned, that’s part of remembering him and what he did,” Miller said of Jones, whose number 35 is retired by the Padres. “The fact he was around still, I was here two months and I saw him five times maybe.”
Unmatched
Miller has faced 104 batters in 29 regular season appearances dating back to Aug. 6.
Of those, 65 have struck out, 10 have walked, five have gotten hits and none have scored.
When including last year’s National League Wild Card series, Miller has struck out 20 of the past 23 batters he has faced, 30 of the past 38 batters he has faced, 40 of the past 55 batters he has faced, 50 of the past 70 batters he has faced, 60 of the past 89 batters he has faced, 70 of the past 109 batters he has faced and 80 of the past 135 batters he has faced.
According to OptaStats, no pitcher has ever matched any of those stretches at any point in his career since at least 1976.
Last night, all three Mariners to face him struck out looking.
“That’s not a bad strategy, I guess,” Miller said.
Maybe, since he is getting misses on an MLB-high 61.3% of the pitches batters swing at. That includes a 74.2% miss rate on pitches batters swing at outside the strike zone.
There aren’t as many of those pitches as in the past. He is in the zone with 51% of his fastballs compared to 49% last year. Moreover, he has thrown a first-pitch strike to 22 of the 30 (73%) batters he has faced compared to a 50% first-pitch strike rate last year.
Miller said in spring training his primary goal this season was to cut down on his walks. He had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.71 last season. That ratio is 23 this year.
“Historically, when I get beat it’s after a walk — self-inflicted damage, if you will,” Miller said last night. “I’m just trying to come at guys and force them to make decisions and not put myself in bad counts. … That’s part of setting a goal and having a plan and executing it. And seeing results trend afterward, it shows you you’re on to something.”
It’s not over at two
My game story (here) focused on the winning streak and mentioned how the offense has propelled the Padres by making two-out noise.
Let’s expand on that now.
Getting on base with two outs played a significant role in five of the Padres’ seven victories on the homestand that was completed last night.
In the first game, on April 9, Luis Campusano’s two-out double tied the game in the 11th inning, giving Xander Bogaerts a chance to win it in the 12th with a walk-off grand slam.
Two nights later, on Saturday, a two-run homer by Manny Machado with two outs in the third inning cut the Rockies’ lead to 4-3 and a three-run homer by Ramón Laureano with two outs in the fourth inning gave the Padres a 6-4 lead they never relinquished.
Tuesday, Bogaerts’ two-out, two-run single in the third inning broke a 1-1 tie in a game the Padres won 4-1.
Wednesday, Campusano and Laureano drove in runs with two-out singles before Jackson Merrill’s two-run double walked off the Mariners.
Last night, it was Fernando Tatis Jr.’s two-run single with two outs in the second inning that was the deciding hit, as it put the Padres up 4-0.
I would argue, too, that Bogaerts’ two-out single in Wednesday’s fourth inning and Jake Cronenworth’s two-out walk in the fifth played pivotal roles even though the next batters made outs, as they forced Emerson Hancock to throw more pitches. That helped get him out of the game after six innings instead of seven.
Getting after it
The Padres have been one of the most productive teams in the league over the past 11 games.
Their six runs a game are tied for third most. Their 1.27 home runs per game are tied for sixth. Their .811 OPS is fourth. Their .274 average is third.
And during that time, they have seen the fewest pitches per plate appearance (3.73) of any team.
While getting deep in counts can be a trait of a good at-bat, it isn’t necessarily a good aim when facing top-caliber pitchers like the Padres routinely have during the season’s first few weeks.
“It’s about executing the game plan,” Machado said.
Against the Mariners, in particular, the Padres were aggressive. They averaged 3.64 pitches per plate appearance over the three games.
“They’re the No.1 team in the league at throwing strike one,” hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. said yesterday. “You have to beat them. They’re No.2 in the league in walk rate. They just don’t walk guys. So our goal is we’ve just got to beat them. Their starters all go deep in games. So if we’re gonna go up there and try to work pitches, it’s just not gonna work. We’re gonna be 0-2 a lot of times.”
He’s No.1
Laureano was 1-for-4 with a walk last night and is 9-for-23 with two doubles, a triple and a home run since moving into the leadoff spot permanently six games ago.
And it does appear to be permanent.
After searching for his No.1 hitter through spring training and the season’s first two weeks, Stammen decided at the start of this homestand that Laureano was the man for the job.
“Every time we put somebody in the leadoff, they kind of (went) in a slump, and he just didn’t go in a slump,” Stammen said. “I think that maybe the first home run that he hit from the leadoff spot (Saturday), within the course of the game, we just felt we saw a lot of good at-bats from him, and him being in that spot didn’t affect his at-bats. He was taking them the same whether he was batting first, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, whatever, you know, when I was dumb putting him lower in the lineup.
“We felt really good with his attitude leading us off and setting the tone for our team. He does a great job of that, and the guys feed off of him too. He’s got that personality.”
Laureano has steadfastly maintained he is the same batter wherever he hits.
“I can hit one through zero,” he said a couple weeks ago. “For me, it’s just the same. They have a ball and they are trying to throw strikes (over) this 17-inch home plate, and I just hunt for that area.”
While he has especially thrived in the bottom half of the lineup, Laureano’s career numbers support his contention that where he hits does not matter to him. He has between 200 and 546 plate appearances at every spot in the order except ninth and has an OPS of .735 or higher at six of those spots.
For the season, Laureano leads the Padres with a .290 average and .902 OPS. His 155 wRC+ ranks 15th in the National League. The next-highest-ranked Padres players are Merrill (118) and Gavin Sheets (116).
“He’s a baller,” said Tatis, who hit first in five games this season and has settled into the No.2 spot. “He has been our best offensive player so far. It’s been really fun to hit behind him.”
Rising Core
Machado is still not firing at anywhere near optimal level, but the other members of the Core Four are surging.
Even after going 0-for-4 last night, Bogaerts is 15-for-39 (.385) with a double and three homers over his past 10 games. Merrill is 10-for-24 (.417) with four doubles and a home run during a six-game hitting streak. Tatis is 7-for-15 (.467) over his past five games.
Machado did go 2-for-4 last night to raise his batting average to .206 for the season.
The four stars have driven in 37 of the Padres’ 69 runs during the team’s 11-1 stretch.
Finally
Cronenworth hit a grounder to the left side in last night’s eighth inning, crossed first base before the throw and raised his hands in a sort of hit hallelujah.
He had gone 17 at-bats without a hit, and his average had dropped to .133 (8-for-60).
Cronenworth’s .163 batting average on balls in play going into last night’s game was sixth lowest among the 189 qualifying major league hitters.
“The quality of the at-bat has been there,” Cronenworth said. “The frustration is the result hasn’t been there. It’s been one of the most difficult stretches of my career, because I’m doing everything right and the result isn’t there. I’m looking for the things that are wrong and nothing is wrong. It’s just the result, which sucks.”
Waldron dropped in
Waldron starting tonight’s series opener against the Angels means he is being slotted in front of Márquez, whose turn would normally have him pitching tonight.
The move was made because Waldron has not pitched since April 9.
“Just give him that one less day off,” Stammen said. “We were able to manipulate the starting rotation in a way that made sense.”
The Padres will be able to manipulate it again next week, should they choose, because they are off Monday before three games against the Rockies in Denver and Friday before two games against the Diamondbacks in Mexico City.
They could have Márquez, who will start tomorrow, go against his former team again in the mile-high park where has made 96 starts. But that might be more tempting if their next series was not also at (even higher) elevation.
Tidbits
Campusano is batting .375 (9-for-24) during his career-best eight-game hitting streak. He has an RBI in six of those eight games.
Sheets hit his eighth double of the season, which is one off the National League lead shared by the Giants’ Willy Adames and Braves’ Matt Olson. Sheets has five doubles and two home runs over his past seven games, his most extra-base hits in a seven-game span in his career.
In his first game since Saturday, Miguel Andujar went 2-for-4. He is batting .317 with an .803 OPS.
The Padres’ eight straight home victories are tied for the third-longest streak in a single season in franchise history. The 11 in a row they won to start last season is the team record.
The Padres finally repeated a lineup they had used before. Jeff Sanders wrote (here) in his game preview about that and catcher Freddy Fermin being cleared to play after taking another hard foul tip to the facemask.
As expected, the Padres kept infielder Sung-Mun Song in Triple-A after his rehab assignment ended. You can read about that in Sanders’ notebook (here) from yesterday.
After committing 11 errors in the first 11 games, the Padres have not committed an error in their past eight games.The last time they had a longer errorless streak was over nine games from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, 2024.
While Padres pitchers have allowed just five unearned runs, the Padres have capitalized on their opponents’ errors by scoring 12 unearned runs. That included three in last night’s four-run second inning.
After seeing four left-handed starting pitchers in the first nine games, the Padres will see their 11th consecutive right-handed starter tonight in Anaheim (Jose Soriano). That is their longest such stretch since September 2024.
Arguably the most impressive part about Tatis as a right fielder is the amount of times his speed and athleticism allow him to make a play despite some sort of misstep or circuitous route. On this play for the third out in the second inning, Tatis was battling the shadows and took a step back before running up and making a sliding catch.
Fernando Tatis Jr. makes an inning-ending sliding catch to end the top of the 2nd inning#MLB #ForTheFaithful pic.twitter.com/lYdXhHNZg9
— San Diego Strong (@PadresStrong) April 17, 2026
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow from Anaheim.