Good morning from Washington,
The Padres were not good enough against Shohei Ohtani or Jesus Luzardo or Aaron Nola.
They have not been good enough against Jacob Misiorowski or Tarik Skubal or most of the other top-tier pitchers they have faced this season.
It could not have been a surprise to anyone that they were not good enough yesterday against Cristopher Sánchez.
The good news is they get to face him again next week in Philadelphia.
Really, it’s good news.
“There’s nothing better than playing major league baseball and getting to take on the best and getting to figure out if you’re good enough to compete and if you can beat that person,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “And so today was a challenge that we didn’t have success with, but we’re going to see a guy like that down the road. Probably in a week, we’re going to see him again. And we’re going to step up to the plate and take that challenge on and have some fun with it and try to figure out if we’re good enough.”
That is actually the only philosophy a manager and his players should have.
Does it mean Stammen was thrilled that his team, which had six players in the starting lineup with an OPS of .686 or lower and three players on the bench with a sub-.600 OPS, was facing a pitcher on an historic run of scoreless innings? No.
But he knows the Padres have to find a way to score a few runs against pitchers like Sánchez or at least get him out of the game before he completes seven innings.
You can read in my game story (here) how that didn’t happen and how the Padres could not capitalize on Walker Buehler being exceptional for five innings.
We won’t dwell today on the Padres offense, which ranks last in the major leagues in batting average and second-to-last in OPS.
We do that almost every day. Over and over and over. Talking about their offense has become as boring as watching it.
Also, a look at various aspects of their offense will be a part of my off-day story that will post later today assessing the Padres and where they stand one-third of the way through the season.
Further, this would be an odd day to go too hard on their inability to produce.
Nobody has scored against Sánchez in his past five starts. He is the rare pitcher who can just throw pitch after pitch on the edges of the strike zone. Any count. Any situation.
He isn’t just a good pitcher. He is a good pitcher on the kind of heater only a few men have ever been on.
Yesterday was Sánchez’s fifth straight start completing at least seven innings. That made him the sixth pitcher to ever accomplish that. The last time it was done was by Brandon Webb in 2007. The other pitchers to do it: Orel Hershiser (six) in 1988, Hall of Famers Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson in 1968 and Doc White in 1904.
Sometimes, you tip your cap and move on.
But before we move on, let’s take a look at just how poorly the Padres have fared against the best pitchers in the major leagues.
They have seen their share.
The Padres have faced six of the 11 starting pitchers who have thrown at least 40 innings and have a Stuff+ rating of 109 or higher. (That means that based on factors such as velocity, movement, spin rate and release point, those pitchers all have “stuff” that is considered at least 9% better than the average pitcher.)
No other team has faced as many pitchers rated that high.
Here is how the Padres did against those six pitchers compared with how other teams have done against them.
Gotta get going
OK, OK.
A little more about the offense, courtesy of Manny Machado.
He just keeps finding ways to take the offensive failings upon himself and to put in perspective how unsustainable the Padres’ success is without the team’s best hitters actually being their best hitters.
Asked whether he thought Jackson Merrill getting two hits off Sánchez could spark him getting hot, this is what Machado said:
“I hope. For me too. Our team needs us, and we’re trying to get back on track. I think a lot of these guys in here who’ve been carrying the load earlier in the year, we’re starting to feel it as a group overall. So we’ve got to pick up the slack. I know Jackson, how he is, that he’s doing everything he can to get back on that path, and so am I. I know everyone here is doing what they need to do to get back on path. I know that our offense isn’t playing to our capabilities, but we’re confident that (if) we stick to the process things will start turning around here. And when they do, hopefully it stays.”
You can read in Jeff Sanders’ game preview (here) about Merrill’s ongoing struggles and what he had to say about them.
Yesterday was Merrill’s first multi-hit game since May 5, a span of 17 games in which he hit .102/.209/.153.
Machado is batting .169 with a .609 OPS. His average is 43 points lower and his OPS is 42 points lower than his previous lows 53 games into a season.
Yesterday, he hit two balls almost to the wall, including one to right-center field that Justin Crawford sprinted 118 feet to catch just before running headlong into the wall.
Justin Crawford slams into the wall for an INCREDIBLE catch!
Cristopher Sánchez is loving it 👏 pic.twitter.com/kAUOwT7sBr
— MLB (@MLB) May 27, 2026
That ball came off Machado’s bat at 104 mph. His other ball had a chance to leave the yard only because it was pulled, but that one had an exit velocity of just 98 mph and was skied with a 34 degree launch angle.
“I’ve been living here for eight years; I know how this ballpark plays,” said Machado, who is tied with Gavin Sheets for the team lead with nine home runs. “I hit the ball well. I missed the first one, missed it a little bit. Maybe thought it could sneak in there. The second one I hit it pretty well. Guy made a hell of a catch.”
Seen it before
Buehler watched the Padres as a division rival with the Dodgers for nine seasons, the last five of which the Padres were actually good.
This is what he said yesterday about the Padres’ state of mind at 31-24 but having been swept by the Phillies:
“I think the record says we’re doing pretty well. Annual playoff team comes in and wins three games. It’s baseball. That’s why we play 162. We’re a big kind of momentum-based team. Playing against the Padres for as long as I have, like, that’s part of the DNA here. We (can) catch momentum and have a good road trip and I think hopefully go in there and do the same for them at their place.”
Quick work
Buehler was charged with two runs in 5⅓ innings. My game story touched on that, including how Buehler’s day ended with Adrian Morejón allowing the two runners Buehler left him to score.
But Buehler’s efficiency yesterday needs some more attention, as he continues to reestablish himself as a starter who can reliably position his team to win games.
He threw just 58 pitches yesterday.
He was through five innings in 49 pitches, which was equal to the fewest number of pitches he had taken to complete four innings in any game this season. It was the fewest pitches thrown by any starter who went exactly 5⅓ innings this season.
Buehler was removed because the Padres felt the left-handed Morejón was better suited to face left-handed-hitting Kyle Schwarber, especially with Schwarber set to see Buehler a third time.
“It’s left on left, and he throws 100,” Buehler said. “We’ll take that most days.”
(Schwarber hit a hard grounder through the right side that scored a runner from second and moved the other to third, and that runner scored on Trea Turner’s fielder’s choice.)
There were a couple other reasons Buehler was removed:
Buehler had allowed just two singles before yielding a single and hitting a batter with one out in the sixth.
His four-seam fastball velocity was up. He averaged 94.4 mph, an increase over his 93.8 mph average in his first 10 starts. He reached 95 mph 13 times, including in the sixth inning.
Buehler got six misses on 26 swings and went to three balls against just two hitters. The Phillies watched just six strikes. They struck out twice in 18 plate appearances.
“Got good results today,” Buehler said. “But when you only punch two guys, it’s not the most encouraging thing of all time. So find some ways to sequence and get deeper into counts. I think largely they were trying to put the ball in play. That’s a veteran team, and they kind of understand that I can make a lot of spin pitches, and that’s some of the stuff that they chase a little bit. So I think (the Phillies were) trying to get the bat head out early and get the ball in play. So luckily I kind of was efficient, but not quite exactly what we wanted to do. But I’ll take the result and kind of move forward, and I’ll probably have them again here in about a week.”
Buehler, as he has often this season, seems somewhat stuck between appreciating that he is increasingly effective after two seasons struggling in the wake of a second Tommy John surgery and weighing his current success against past success.
“I think there’s a point in your career where you’re kind of excited to be out there at all,” said Buehler, who had a 2.75 ERA in 94 starts from 2018-21. “I think I’m kind of putting it together. I feel a lot more confident in what I’m doing. I think the results aren’t — the ceiling isn’t where I want it to be yet. But I feel a lot more confident walking out there than I have in years past. … S0 (anything else) is auxiliary to feeling like you can walk out and win a major league baseball game, and I felt like I had that ability today. Just didn’t work out.
“I mean, I’ve punched 16 in a Major League Baseball game before, right? So the ceiling of what I can do is up there. Has been. So we’re kind of working towards certain things, and delivering quality consistent results is what we’re looking for.”
Coaches don’t play
Machado joined those offering a public defense of hitting coach Steven Souza Jr.
“Those coaches don’t grab a bat,” Machado said when asked about Souza. “It’s us grabbing the baseball bat and going up there and putting on our gear and facing Cristopher Sanchez today. It’s on us to go out there and perform. They’re giving us the information, and we’re going out there and we’re executing, we’re just not getting those results that we’d like. The game is like that sometimes.”
Machado then veered off into what sounded like an excerpt from a manual written by Souza.
“You’ve got to stick to the process,” Machado continued. “It’s the hardest sport in all of sports, because it’s an everyday grind. It’s tough. It’s not easy. You’ve got to stick to it, you gotta stick to your approach, you gotta stay mentally strong and just keep at it. That’s what we’re trying to encourage in here. We hit the ball well, we hit the ball hard today. We faced a good guy. We couldn’t get that run across. … This game is crazy, and there’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of rollercoasters. It’s not for the mentally weak. So stay mentally strong and keep moving forward and keep grinding every single day.”
I wrote a story on May 17 (here) about how the Padres had veered from their prescribed approach and how Souza and others were attempting to address that and get them back on course.
In that story, Stammen adamantly defended Souza. And he did so again yesterday.
“In my opinion, it has nothing to do with him,” the manager said. “This is the Padres hitting, this is the Padres organization and how we go about taking at-bats. It’s on all of us, and more specifically, probably on me. I’m the one in charge, and we’ve got to figure out a way to hit.”
That doesn’t mean Souza is immune from questions from within the organization.
His knowledge of hitting mechanics and what it takes to be successful in the major leagues appears unassailable. Some have wondered about the first-time hitting coach’s ability to communicate effectively and prepare players for what they will see in games.
It should not be surprising that there would be internal evaluations ongoing when the team’s batting average is down 34 points and its slugging percentage is down 29 points while its strikeout rate is up more than four percentage points from last season.
For some more insight into Souza’s philosophy, you can read Annie Heilbrunn’s Q&A with him (here).
Not even …
One way the Padres have produced enough to win is via their ability to move runners over with outs.
They rank second in the major leagues with 204 productive outs, two fewer than the Diamondbacks.
But in their ongoing streak of 35 at-bats without a hit with a runner in scoring position, they have even ceased moving runners.
Yesterday, they had a runner on second base with no outs in the first inning before two outs were made on a grounder to the left side and a strikeout.
After loading the bases with no outs in the first inning Monday, two strikeouts followed.
In the third inning of that game, a groundout to the left side and a double play followed the Padres having runners on first and second with no outs.
In Sunday’s ninth inning, the empty outs were a pair of strikeouts when a deep fly ball might have gotten the two runners they needed into scoring position.
In Saturday’s second inning, a weak grounder fielded by the pitcher resulted in the second out being made on a force play at the plate. (The Padres did go on to win that game.)
“Yeah, it’s definitely a grind,” Stammen said. “Just not taking advantage of some of the opportunities that we did have. There’s a little credit to their pitching, but also we’ve got to figure out a way to be better in those situations — runners in scoring position. We’re searching for that big hit. Maybe sometimes we’re trying to do a little too much. But we’ve got to stay within our approach and hit some line drives.”
Tidbits
The longest any Padres team has ever gone without a hit with runners in scoring position was 40 at-bats in 1972.
The Padres have not led at any point during their four-game losing streak. The losing streak ties a season high set against the two Chicago teams April 28-May 2.
The series against the Phillies was the Padres’ 17th of the season. This was the furthest the Padres had gone into a season without being swept since 2007. That club was not swept until its 20th series that year.
Jason Adam extended his scoreless streak to 10⅔ innings by working a scoreless eighth yesterday.
Fernando Tatis Jr. extended his on-base streak to 11 games by going 2-for-4 yesterday. He is batting .350 and with a .447 on-base percentage during the streak. Tatis is now second on the team with 12 multi-hit games, with four of those coming in his past eight games. (Xander Bogaerts has 14 multi-hit games.)
Miguel Andujar started for the 42nd time yesterday, already tied for his fourth most starts in any of his nine big-league seasons. The difference this year is the Padres have limited the oft-injured Andujar to designated hitter in 37 of his starts. He did start at third yesterday while Machado was the DH.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, so no newsletter tomorrow. Check our Padres page later today or tomorrow for my report on the state of the team with two-thirds of the season remaining.
The next Padres Daily will arrive in your inbox on Saturday morning.
Talk to you then.