Good morning from Washington,
Every once in a while, the way a game goes makes perfect sense.
Last night, the Padres exploited some bad pitching and bad defense and rode their excellent bullpen to a victory over the Nationals.
Those are all things for which both teams are known for this season.
I wrote about that in my game story (here) on the Padres’ 7-5 victory.
The game story touched on Jackson Merrill’s decisive homer, Lucas Giolito’s horrible start and Mason Miller getting the final four of the bullpen’s 19 outs in a victory that stopped the Padres’ four-game losing streak.
But those things — and more — deserve a closer look.
Merrill goes deep
Merrill stood in front of his locker and began his postgame comments with one word.
“Finally,” he said.
He didn’t just mean that he had ended a drought of 73 at-bats without a home run.
“It’s been so long since I’ve hit the ball that hard,” he said. “Not even necessarily out of a stadium, just hitting the ball that hard. So it felt good.”
The Kid checking in 💪 pic.twitter.com/9EbaLlMYvc
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) May 30, 2026
Merrill’s 108.5 mph blast, which traveled a projected 414 feet, was the hardest he has put a ball in play since May 4. Of the 46 balls he had put in play since May 5, just six had been hit 100 mph.
Merrill going 1-for-4 with a walk last night followed his 2-for-4 game Wednesday against the Phillies, which was his first multi-hit effort since May 5.
A lot of the focus for Merrill has been on relaxing. He had been pressing for some time as his batting average plummeted and eventually dipped below .200 while his OPS dropped below .600. (He is at .201 and .606 now).
He has chased pitches outside the zone at a 29.5% rate over his past 10 games compared to the 36.4% rate he was chasing before that. He has, most notably, cut down on chasing above the zone and inside, locations where even his bat-to-ball skills don’t allow him to do damage.
“Just less cloudiness at the plate,” he said. “I’m up there sticking to my approach, and that’s it. Short to the ball, easy to the ball, stay inside it and everything plays into itself.”
Miller (over)time
For whatever mechanical issues and whatever role being a little rusty played in the start to his night, Miller once again showed he can make a quick correction.
After walking Curtis Mead on five pitches and throwing a ball on his first pitch to CJ Abrams, Miller was visited by pitching coach Ruben Niebla. Miller proceeded to throw nine consecutive strikes before bouncing a slider and then finishing the game with a slider that Daylen Lile swung through.
“You get your legs back under you and it goes better,” Miller said.
Last night was reminiscent of a game against the Cardinals on May 9 when he walked two batters by throwing nine balls in his first 10 pitches and then finished with 12 consecutive strikes.
Miller attributed that to a mechanical adjustment. Last night, he said, was not so straightforward. He had not pitched in six days, and he was called on pretty quickly when the eighth inning got away from Jason Adam. And the fact is Miller has been struggling with command for the better part of three weeks.
“Maybe the product of some time off,” he said. “But I felt really good today. I thought my bullpen going into the game was really good. Obviously, a quick get up and get in. But it was not as sharp as I’d like to be. … It’s the same thing — walks and not getting hit. Just got to throw it in the zone.”
Miller finished the game by striking out Abrams, the Nationals’ cleanup hitter, getting Dylan Crews to hit a fly ball to right field and striking out Lile.
That closed out his National League-leading 17th save, and it was the third time in his past five saves he has gotten four outs.
He entered last night’s game after the Nationals got two singles off Adam in the eighth and immediately walked James Wood before retiring Luis Garcia Jr. on a line drive to left field.
The Padres don’t want to have to bring Miller in for more than an inning, but it is nice to know they can.
“It’s always hard to leave him in the pen, especially when their best hitter is coming to the plate,” manager Craig Stammen said. “We’ve kind of flipped that coin a couple times. So far, each time it has worked out well for us. It’s not easy to go an inning-and-a-third when you’re not used to doing it, coming in in the toughest situations against their best hitters. But he got the job done tonight, righted the ship.”
With the rest he got this week, Miller went from being on pace to work 73 games this season to now being on a 69-game pace. His 24 appearances and 25 innings are career highs at this point in a season.
The Padres could at some point have to make a decision to not use him in a four-out situation. But Miller has another solution for making sure he doesn’t have to work so hard.
“I don’t mind at all,” he said. “I’d like to come in and not make it a 30-pitch ordeal. But I feel good doing it. Obviously, I was well rested, so my body felt great. Stuff felt pretty good too. Just wasn’t throwing in the zone.”
Bright side
It is not just Miller who has worked a lot. In fact, while he recently got some rest, a number of relievers have lately been picking up the slack for the starting pitchers.
Giolito’s short outing was the seventh time in 21 games a Padres starter has gone 4⅓ innings or less. Relievers have had to get more than half the outs in one third of the Padres’ games over the past 3½ weeks.
Just in the final six games of the last homestand, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejón pitched four times. Bradgley Rodriguez and Adam made three appearances in that span.
But the good news for the Padres is that last night was not a terrible time to have to lean on the ‘pen, coming as it did after an off day and with another off day ahead on Monday.
“We haven’t really gotten a whole lot of length from our starters of late, going back a while,” Stammen said. “And to have an off day, three games and then another off day, I’ll be able to sleep a little bit better at night knowing we can hopefully get through these next two games.”
Giolito’s walky road
Giolito’s command issues the past two games could be easily understood as his not having a spring training, ramping up fairly quickly after signing with the Padres in April and now having to make adjustments as he pitches in the middle of a season.
“I think he’s getting his feet underneath him a little bit,” Stammen said. “Tonight, he clearly didn’t have it from the beginning of the game. He was fighting it. We saw that the (previous start), and he kind of righted the ship and figured out a way to get through it. And tonight, with their offense, the way they’ve been swinging it, they just made it really tough on him.”
Giolito is having none of that.
“Nothing,” he said when asked how much of his struggle could be attributed to his odd path in 2026. “I mean, it was just terrible. Obviously, the stuff we’ve been trying to work on, it’s not taking hold at game speed. I can put in all the work in between, but when it comes down to it, competing in the game, some of those adjustments have to take hold so that I can be more consistent. Because I’m not throwing enough strikes.
“I’m OK with giving up a home run here and there, giving up some runs, getting hit. But I have to throw strikes to get deep in the game. … It’s not viable to be having short outings like this.”
Giolito threw 41 strikes among his 77 pitches (53%) last night. He walked four of the 16 batters he faced while allowing five hits, including two homers. He was pulled with the bases loaded and two out in the third inning and the Padres down 4-2.
After not walking a batter in his first five innings of his season debut on May 17, he walked all three batters he faced in the sixth inning that day and five batters in five innings on Saturday against the Athletics.
“There’s no excuses for anything,” Giolitio said. “I’m a professional. You have to be ready to go, and today, that wasn’t it. Get back to work and find a way to get the kind of mechanical side to meet up with where I’m at mentally. Because mentally I feel ready to compete every time. I feel like I want to take the ball and give the team a chance to win. But it’s just not there right now.”
Lack of command coupled with a 91 mph fastball (down more than 3 mph from last season) is going to make for a long night against many teams, let alone one averaging almost six runs a game, most in the major leagues.
“There’s a few things that aren’t moving well,” Giolito said of his mechanics. “And it’s reflected in velocity, it’s reflected in command.”
Homecoming
Stammen had been back to Nationals Park several times as a player, but those occasions didn’t hit quite like his first time managing against the team he was drafted by and debuted for.
“I don’t know what it was,” Stammen said. “You feel like it’s another game, but it meant a little bit more for whatever reason. Just fun to be back here. And the video tribute, which I never would have expected, (was) pretty neat. … Maybe (ending) the losing streak kind of had a little bit to do with that. We really needed to get this game, get the momentum going back on our side. So today was big in a lot of different ways.”
Stammen was surprised when he was shown on the video board and the Nationals Park PA announcer introduced him before the game. Photos of his time pitching for the Nationals were shown as the crowd gave him an ovation.
My pregame notebook (here) touched on Stammen appreciating his return, Nick Pivetta playing catch for the first time, other injury updates and the timing for the vote on the Padres’ new owners.
Not old, just late
Manny Machado drove in a run with a single on a fastball on the inside edge he got just enough of to slice into right field in the third inning.
Other than that, last night was more of the same for the struggling star. However, beginning the night with a .169 batting average meant going 1-for-4 increased his batting average by two points.
Among the outs he made was a strikeout in the first inning that was emblematic of his struggles, as strike three came on a whiff on a 93 mph fastball in the heart of the plate. Also in that at-bat, he fouled off a 94 mph fastball up in the zone and over the middle.
He entered last night batting .208 on fastballs in the strike zone and .182 (2-for-11) on fastballs in the heart of the zone.
When also considering the amount of misses and foul balls on fastballs in the zone, it is a radical drop-off from previous seasons, when he feasted on such pitches.
There are a lot of theories about Machado’s struggles.
The most worrisome and perhaps most prevalent revolves around his being two months shy of his 34th birthday. Players’ skills deteriorate at different times and at different rates, but they almost all do at some point in the mid- to late-30s.
However, that does not seem to be what is going on with Machado, whose bat speed and hard-hit rate have declined but not significantly enough to mean the alarm is the ringing of Father Time.
You won’t see too much swing analysis in this space, because unlike the thousands of capable hitting coaches on social media, I am no expert on hitting mechanics.
However, once it was pointed out to me via video and I talked with a number of people familiar with the work Machado has done, it seems pretty clear his issue is with his body movement and, thus, his swing.
He is not opening up quickly enough and is therefore late getting to pitches.
This is not as easy to fix as it might sound. Multiple people said he did some work in the offseason that altered his mechanics, partly in an attempt to create more bat speed. It is taking some time, those people said, for him to make the alterations get right.
Machado, who does share the team lead with Gavin Sheets with nine home runs, has maintained for about a week that he is close to syncing up and getting hits more consistently.
Corrections
For those who got in touch — and even for those who did not – it is true that Cristofer Sánchez completing seven innings in five consecutive games would not be all that unique in baseball history. I omitted a word when I wrote about his accomplishment in Thursday’s newsletter. On Wednesday, the Phillies left-hander became the sixth pitcher to ever complete seven scoreless innings in five consecutive games.
I also wrote in Thursday’s newsletter that the Padres were second in MLB in productive outs with 204. I honestly have no idea where I got that number. However, the context of what I was saying was correct. As of yesterday, they ranked second in the majors in converting productive outs (34.7%).
Tidbits
Fernando Tatis Jr. went 3-for-5 last night to extend his on-base streak to 12 games, longest on the Padres this season. Tatis is batting .378 with a .462 OBP during the streak. He has one extra-base hit (a double) during the run.
Tatis has had multiple hits in five of his past nine games. He now has 13 multi-hit games, one shy of team leader Xander Bogaerts.
Ty France singled and scored a run that tied the game 4-4 in the fourth inning, and his solo homer in the sixth inning tied the game 5-5. The home run was his sixth in 98 at-bats this season, one fewer than he had all last season (444 ABs) playing for the Twins and Blue Jays. His rate of one homer every 16.3 at-bats in 2026 ranks 31st in MLB among players with at least 90 at-bats.
Sheets was 2-for-3 with a walk last night. One of his singles and the walk came against left-hander Andrew Alvarez. Sheets has three singles and two walks in his past 16 plate appearances against left-handers after starting the season 1-for-9 against them. Overall, he is batting .370 (17-for-46) with a 1.152 OPS over his past 15 games.
For all his struggles, last night was Merrill’s sixth go-ahead RBI of the season. That is tied with Ramón Laureano and Bogaerts for second on the team behind Sheets’ seven.
Yesterday was the Padres’ 14th victory decided in the seventh inning or later but their first since May 13. It was also their 15th comeback victory and first in a week.
Last night’s seventh inning was the first time the Padres led a game at the end of an inning since they beat the Athletics on Saturday. They had trailed after 35 of the previous 42 innings.
The game time of three hours, 18 minutes was the Padres’ longest for any game less than 12 innings this season.
The Padres bullpen has an MLB-best 1.19 ERA over the past 15 games (60⅓ innings). That has dropped its season ERA to 3.02, one-hundredth of a point better than the Dodgers.
Thanks in large part to Miller, Adam’s scoreless streak increased to 11 innings.
For some fun, read the latest installment of Jeff Sanders’ “Clubhouse Chatter” feature (here), in which Padres players talk about the big leaguers they idolized and emulated as kids.
Sanders also wrote (here) about the emergence of the Padres’ 2025 draft class, which he notes could help A.J. Preller make some moves at the trade deadline.
I wrote a story on the off day (here) that looked at the Padres one-third of the way through the season with an eye toward the the final two thirds.
All right, that’s it for me. Earlier game today (1:05 p.m. PT).
Talk to you tomorrow.
P.S. If you cannot see the stories I link to in the newsletter, try this link. You will be shocked — shocked, I tell you — at how inexpensive it is to subscribe to the Union-Tribune website.