Good morning,
No better starting pitcher than Germán Márquez to have been on the mound to illustrate the mirage the Padres have been much of this season.
That is not to say what they did through the season’s first 26 games — when they went an MLB-best 18-8 — was not impressive or won’t be recalled as having launched a successful season.
But in no way was it sustainable. And as we have discussed here for weeks, some stuff has to be fixed.
First of all, they were on a 112-win pace. Just three teams in the past 65 seasons have won even 111 games. Hardly more than one team a year wins even 100 games.
Moreover, the Padres simply could not keep winning in the manner they were winning.
Last night, they lost their third straight game and for the fourth time in five games.
The gist of my game story (here) was how the 8-2 loss to the White Sox was more like what a team ranked in the bottom 10 in average, OPS and starting pitching ERA (and in the bottom half in runs scored) can expect.
The Padres had won Márquez’s previous four starts despite his having allowed four runs in two of them. He was the only starting pitcher in the major leagues to enter yesterday with at least three wins and no losses with an ERA as high as his 4.38 mark.
The mirage of his 3-1 record and the futility of the idea the Padres can tolerate him making many more starts like this is not just that his ERA is now 5.76 five starts in. It is that he has allowed three runs in the first inning in one start, two runs in the first inning and two runs in the third in another start, four runs in the second inning in another and six runs in the second last night.
Not to let the Padres’ fizzling offense off the hook, but that is difficult to overcome. And despite their five comebacks from at least four runs down, it simply can’t be expected they will come back from big deficits anywhere near all the time.
The Padres are 19-12 (.613) and have a run differential of plus-2. The only team in the Expansion Era (since 1961) to have a winning percentage of .613 or better in their first 13 games of a season and have a lower run differential than the Padres was the Reds this season. They got to 20-11 on Thursday and had a minus-5 run differential.
Based on their run differential, the Padres’ expected record is 16-15.
That doesn’t really mean anything, except that it is confounding they remain seven games above .500.
They won’t be anywhere near that good for much longer if they don’t start getting better starting pitching. As we have talked about in the past two newsletters, changes are coming.
But …
“Germán will get back out there,” manager Craig Stammen said last night. “He’ll bounce back and be just fine.”
Griffin Canning is expected to make another rehab start before returning next week. That would give Márquez at least one more start. Lucas Giolito is two weeks away from joining the rotation.
As Jeff Sanders wrote (here) on Thursday, the Padres are pondering a lot of different ways to deal with their starting pitching situation in the coming weeks.
Hot, no homers
Fernando Tatis Jr. had half the Padres’ six hits last night, including a triple.
“Felt way better today and slowed it down there a little bit more,” said Tatis, who is batting .339 (21-for-62) over his past 17 games. “I feel really good at the plate. … Just a small twitch, mechanically, mentally.”
Everyone who follows baseball knows that Tatis has yet to hit a home run.
Last night, he ran his homerless stretch to 135 plate appearances. That surpassed the 132 plate appearances he went without a home run last summer, which was the longest drought of his career. (Technically, it has been 139 plate appearances since he homered going back to last season.)
No one in the major leagues has more plate appearances without a home run in 2026.
Tatis’ triple, on a line drive that rolled to the right field corner in the sixth inning, ended a career-high 15-game stretch without an extra-base hit.
If you had any appreciation of irony at all, you were rooting for a weird bounce off the foul pole or some other oddity allowing the ball to get away from White Sox right fielder Austin Hays and for Tatis to get an inside-the-park home run for his first homer of the season.
“I would have been crawling on my way home,” said Tatis, who had the flu this week. “I was out of air.”
Almost home
There isn’t a whole lot to dig into from last night’s game, so let’s talk about something that almost happened.
Because it was almost an exceptional play.
With no outs and runners at the corners in the second inning, Hays hit a grounder directly to Manny Machado. After freezing Chase Meidroth, the ru,nner at third, with a look Machado fired a throw to Tatis covering second. Meidroth broke for home when Machado threw, and after getting the force, Tatis chose to try to get him at the plate.
Only his throw was nowhere near the plate.
“Right execution,” Tatis said. “Just a really bad throw.”
Fernando Tatis Jr pic.twitter.com/ca2MNIZ2K6
— Goldschmidt Happened (@GoldyHappens) May 2, 2026
And it was the correct decision by Tatis.
“Oh yeah, for sure the right call,” Stammen said. “I bet you give him 99 more tries, and he throws it right there and that guy’s out by three, four feet. It’s pretty much exactly how we drew it up. Manny fields it, kind of checks and gets the pause, throws it to second. Got a guy with the best arm on our team throwing it home, and (he) just threw it a little wild.”
Instead of there being two outs and the Padres down 1-0, there was one out and they trailed by two. So a sacrifice fly made it 3-0 instead of ending the inning. And then Munetaka Murakami’s three-run homer made it 6-0.
Left out
With left-hander Noah Schultz starting for the White Sox and Jake Cronenworth and Jackson Merrill struggling, the time was right for both of the slumping left-handed-hitting regulars to sit.
(The Padres weren’t the first team to adopt the strategy against Schultz. In his first three starts, left-handed batters were 0-for-12 against him.)
Merrill has actually hit left-handers better than right-handers this season, but the day off was about more than who was pitching.
“Coming off that trip to elevation in Colorado and Mexico, trying to get a day for a lot of these guys that are mostly everyday players and figure out what’s best for them and try to partner with them on that,” Stammen said. “And so today was the day Jackson and I decided would be a good day for him to take a break.”
Gavin Sheets was also on the bench, making last night the first time since July 28, 2019, that the Padres had no position players batting from the left side in the starting lineup. They had a handful of games in 2019 and ‘18 in which their only left-handed batter was their pitcher. The last time no one in the starting lineup batted from the left side had been Sept. 26, 2017.
Really left out?
The Padres have an intriguing situation approaching.
Tomorrow is the last day left-handed reliever Yuki Matsui can remain on his rehab assignment, and the contract he signed with the Padres in 2024 stipulated he cannot be sent to the minor leagues without his consent. Since that request was almost certainly denied, Matsui will either be joining the Padres or be released.
Stammen said yesterday, “We’ll see him back.”
Now, a manager is not always entirely current on every pending roster machination, but Stammen’s words would seem to indicate Matsui will join the Padres for Monday’s game in San Francisco.
That would likely mean lefty Kyle Hart is on his way to Triple-A, as he can be optioned.
Hart has a 5.87 ERA in 15⅓ innings (10 games). But he has been effective in his first inning of work against the batters he is brought in to face and matches up well against. His struggles have been when he comes back out for additional innings.
The Padres have been building up Matsui, who was slowed in spring training by an adductor strain, to work multiple innings.
Tidbits
If there was a “Down-to-Earth Scale” for big-league ballplayers, Will Venable would be a 10 out of 10. Just a fine human being. The former Padres player is in his second season managing the White Sox. Sanders caught up with Venable on his first visit to Petco Park as a manager (here).
You can read in Sanders’ game preview (here) about the return of Jeremiah Estrada and the exile of David Morgan to Triple-A. The story has quotes from Estrada on his weight gain and from Stammen on what Morgan has to work on while down in the minors.
Not only was Ty France 6-for-11 with two home runs, a double and a triple in his four games leading up to last night, 10 of his 15 balls in play in that span had an exit velocity in excess of 100 mph. Last night, he went 0-for-4 and none of the four balls he put in play left his bat at more than 94 mph.
Freddy Fermin threw out his fifth would-be base stealer last night. His 41.7% caught stealing rate is third best among the 49 catchers who have faced at least 10 attempts
Schultz was the 14th pitcher to have a quality start against the Padres and the fourth of those to go at six scoreless innings.
The Padres have had at least one extra-base hit in 34 consecutive games, their longest single-season streak since they finished 2024 having done so in 43 consecutive games.
For all their offensive shortcomings, last night was just the fourth time this season the Padres have gone seven innings at any point in a game without scoring.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.